Tim Waggoner's Blog

I’vejust gotten back from watching Weapons in the theater as I write this. Ireally enjoyed the movie, especially the actors’ performances, the direction,and the cinematography. The script, however, had some problems for me. I onlywant to focus on two of those problems for this blog entry, though, becausethey’re among the most common ones I see as a writing teacher, often instudent-written stories, but sometimes in professionally published (or filmed)ones, too. (Don’t worry; I’m not going to give any spoilers for Weapons.)

ProblemNumber 1: ForgettingThat Media is Everywhere

Ifirst became aware of this problem when I read a horror novel in the early1990s (and no, I’m not going to say which one to avoid spoilers). It was agreat book, an award-winner, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. But the eventsthat occurred within it were realistic, the public was aware of them, and theywere so bizarre that both print and TV reporters would’ve been all over thestory throughout the novel. But there was no media presence in the book whatsoever.

A morerecent example (which I will name) is Bentley Little’s The Bank (2020).I love Bentley’s fiction, and I enjoyed the book quite a lot. But in the novel,nearly twenty people, all who work at the same bank, are found dead in a fieldoutside town. (This happens early in the novel, so my telling you isn’t much ofa spoiler.) One of the dead people has an obvious cause of death, but theothers don’t. Weird, right? But no news media – not even a single localreporter – shows up to cover the story.

I seethis failure to address the presence of media happen a lot in horror –including in Weapons. Given the mysterious circumstances – seventeenchildren all disappear at 2:17 a.m. on the same night – and the fact the eventsof the story go on for weeks, local, state, national and international mediawould quickly show up to cover the story, and they’d stay on it. The mediawould be omnipresent in town, and they’d bug the elementary school teacher, theone child who didn’t disappear, the kids’ parents, law enforcement (both localand federal), and regular citizens alike to get interviews and sound bites –and they would not stop.

Add tothis all the people who’d be texting each other, posting on social media,making YouTube and TikTok videos about the case, discussing it on podcasts –especially in this age of true-crime entertainment – and people would flock tothe town: influencers, true-crime writers, paranormal investigators, conspiracytheorists, dark tourists… The entire world would become obsessed with thedisappearances. And the parents of the missing children would use this to theiradvantage, granting interviews to the media to put more pressure on lawenforcement to find their kids. But there’s nothing but crickets in the film asfar as the media is concerned.

Now,in a more intimate, character-focused story like Weapons, the writersmight decide not to make the media a major aspect of the story, and the mediamight fade out of the story for the most part as the plot moves on, but they’dstill be in the background somewhere. But not having any media atall present is extremely unrealistic – and it always strains my suspension ofdisbelief.

Here’show I handle the issue of the media in my fiction:

Many of my novels take place over the course of a few hours, and there often isn’t time for news media to become alerted to the weird stuff going on.

My characters are usually so caught up in dealing with weird stuff that they don’t have time to text anyone or post about it on social media.

The weird stuff is usually supernatural, and characters may perceive it, but the rest of the world doesn’t, so no media becomes involved.

The situation might only impact a few characters, so the incidents aren’t known – and maybe never will be known – outside their circle.

I might have law enforcement try to conceal the more bizarre/extreme aspects of an incident to keep news media from becoming involved (as long as they can, anyway).

I have news media show up for a scene or two to establish their presence, but they don’t play a big role in the story.

I’ll show someone post a message on social media or read one, send a text or receive a text, talk to someone on the phone, etc. about what’s happening. I’ll do this once or twice to show that people are upset about what’s going on and talking about it, but I don’t make it a major part of the story.

Sometimes I’ll make the news media and social media a significant aspect of the story. I may do this by having one reporter be a supporting character or even a main character. This reporter stands in for all the other media that’s present in the background. I might have characters stay in regular phone/text/social media contact with friends or family during a story (although I’ll make sure not to overdo this).

Problem2: Not Checking Your Plot Forward AND Backward

Writers seem so focused onmoving their plot forward that they sometimes don’t fully consider theramifications of the events they’re writing about. They write a cool scene revealingthe central mystery of the story, but they don’t go back to the beginning ofthe draft and check to make sure everything else in the story fits theexplanation. This happens in Weapons, but I can’t talk about where andhow without spoiling aspects of the film. But I’ll give you an example fromTobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot (1979) All the vampires in the miniseries arerepelled by the cross – except master vampire Barlow. When Father Callahanshoves a metal cross toward Barlow, he reaches out, crumples it in his hand,and tosses it away. No explanation. The audience can guess that Barlow is sopowerful that the cross doesn’t affect him, but in the novel, King makes itclear that the bearer of the cross must have faith for it to work, and FatherCallahan’s faith is more than a little shaky at that point in his life. I’msure Hooper loved the imagery of Barlow crushing the cross without anyexplanation, but King’s version is infinitely better – and it’s logical withinthe confines of the story. It often doesn’t take much to fix a problem likethis. Fright Night (1985) dealt with this same issue in one line. WhenPeter Vincent thrusts a cross toward master vampire Jerry Dandridge, Dandridge laughs,then says, “You have to have faith for that to work on me.” If you’regoing to establish rules in a story – whether explicitly through dialogue orshowing them through action – they need to be consistent, and when there’s anexception to the rules, the audience needs to know why.

The original 1978 Halloweenhas a different problem. When Michael Myers escapes from the mental hospitalwhere he’s been confined since he was a child, he steals a hospital vehicle anddrives away. When did he learn to drive? It’s established that he’s beencatatonic the entire time he was in the hospital, so even if someone wanted toteach him, he wouldn’t have responded to them. In the novelization of Halloween,one of the hospital staff gives Michael driving lessons, which isn’t believablegiven what the script says about his mental condition, but at least it’s somekind of explanation.

Probably the horror movie mostguilty of plot inconsistency (at least for me) is M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs.At the end of the movie, humans discover that water is like acid to the alieninvaders. They use it as a weapon against the aliens, and the survivinginvaders, evidently realizing the egregious error they’ve made, get the helloff the planet. My guess is that Shyamalan loved the symbolism of pure waterdefeating the evil aliens so much, that he didn’t bother to ask why wouldaliens with super-advanced tech come to a planet and not know its water wasacid to them? Don’t they have sensors? Probes? Water-testing kits? Couldn’tthey have seen a buddy step into a puddle and lose a foot and realize somethingwas wrong? Or couldn’t they have done what we humans do when we go into ahostile environment and wear fucking protective gear? I mean, those dudes walkedaround Acid World naked! (And what if it rained on the aliens or they went to aplace with a shit-ton of humidity, or…) It also irritates the hell out of methat Shyamalan seems to imply the entire alien invasion – and all the humancasualties that resulted – was created by God to restore one man’s faith.

Assuming Shyamalan had theending of his story in mind first, he should’ve figured out why the alienswanted to come to Earth and take it over, and why they were unaware that wateris acid to them. He wouldn’t have to address either issue in the film, but hisknowing those things would’ve allowed him to avoid what turned out to be anextremely bad ending. So imagine him rereading his script and realizing it’sdumb as hell for aliens to come naked to a world that’s mostly acid to them. Hethen asks himself why they wouldn’t know ahead of time what water could do tothem. Answer: Because it’s not just water that harms them. It’s water combinedwith another liquid, a combination the aliens could not foresee. So JoaquinPhoenix swings his bat, smashes the water pitcher and a cup of coffee. Themixture hits the alien, and it melts like the Wicked Witch of the West. Joaquinsays, “Holy shit! Water and caffeine together! Who knew?” Again, it doesn’ttake a huge adjustment to fix problems like this. (I’d probably have Joaquin orsomeone else hurl a different liquid at the alien first, then he could add thewater by smashing the pitcher, just to make the combining of liquids seem morerealistic.)

Now, I don’t need to haveeverything spelled out for me in stories. To me, Michael Myers is a liminalbeing that exists somewhere between the real and the unreal. His driving isjust another part of the mystery that is this unknowable creature. And Ifucking love David Lynch’s films and TV shows, and they don’t make alick of sense, nor are they supposed to. My favorite stories are ones wherebizarre shit happens for reasons we will never understand or for no reason atall. Most of the horror fiction I’ve written in my career is in this vein,especially my short stories. But if you are going to write morerealistic horror fiction (or really, any kind of realistic fiction), you needto mentally sweep through your story forward and backward – as well as considerthe story before the story – to make sure everything fits, or at leastfits as well as it needs to.

I don’t mean to trash Weaponshere. If you haven’t seen it already, you should check it out. Like I saidearlier, it’s a really good film, and afterward, I heard members of theaudience talking about how scary it was, and that’s always a good endorsementfor a horror movie!

DEPARTMENTOF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

THE WORLD TURNS RED

 

My newhorror novella, The World Turns Red, came out in June, and reactionsfrom reviewers and readers alike have been overwhelmingly positive! Here’s asample:

 

“A dark,disturbing masterpiece worth binge-reading in one sitting.” – S.E. Howard

 

“This isa very dark, intense read with a surreal quality that pulled me in from pageone and held me spellbound to the bitter end.” – Well Worth a Read

 

TheWorld Turns Red isanother in a long line of brilliant horror work by Tim Waggoner. There wasnever anyone who could blend the real with the surreal so seamlessly that, aswild as the story gets, it makes perfect sense somehow. Now THAT takes one hellof a writer. The book is a flawless masterpiece…6 out of 5 stars.  – Carson Buckingham

 

Synopsis:

 

Welcometo the meat room.

 

At first,it’s a whisper on the edge of your consciousness.

 

As itgets louder, you begin to make out words—dark, sharp, dangerous words… You clapyour hands over your ears to shut them out, but you can’t escape what comesfrom inside you.

 

The voicetells you to do things to yourself. Bad things. Awful things…

 

Thelonger you listen, the more they seem reasonable. Desirable.

 

Inevitable.

 

And asyou reach for the nearest knife, gun, or rope, the voice speaks the last fourwords you’ll ever hear:

 

Allhail the Unhigh.

 

CemeteryDance: https://www.cemeterydance.com/TheWorldTurnsRed

 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/5cabrjn2

 

Barnesand Noble: https://tinyurl.com/kzphuep7

 

CONAN: SPAWN OF THE SERPENT GOD

 

The timeis drawing nigh! My Conan the Barbarian novel, Spawn of the Serpent God,will be released October 28th! The novel ties into the comic book event Scourgeof the Serpent Men (Conan being said scourge, of course, although it lookslike King Kull may be involved, too). You won’t have to read the comics tounderstand my book, and vice versa, but if you’re a Conan fan, you might enjoyreading both. Here’s a link to the first issue of Scourge of the Serpent Men:https://titan-comics.com/c/2316-conan-the-barbarian-scourge-of-the-serpent/

 

You canfind various preorder links for the novel at the Titan Books site: https://titanbooks.com/72365-conan-spawn-of-the-serpent-god/

 

And whileI’ve had no official word (because nobody ever tells writers anything), itlooks like Spawn of the Serpent God will be getting an audio edition!I’m super excited because the narrator is Bradford Hastings, who’s not only anexcellent reader and performer, but his Conan is my absolute favorite portrayalof the character. The audiobook is due out in late December, and you canpreorder it at B&N and Amazon. I’m sure it’ll be available directly fromBlackstone Audio (who’s the publisher of the audio version) as well.

 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/bn6hh2m

 

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/conan-tim-waggoner/1148011208?ean=9798228671591

 

Synopsis:

 

InZamora, the city of thieves, Conan meets Valja, a thrill-seeking thief. Sheentices him to join

her on aheist, where they steal a golden statuette of Ishtar, said to contain thegoddess herself.

Afterkilling a dozen guards and failing to escape, the pair are saved by priestessesof Mitra. But

Conanknows that nothing is free.

 

Thepriestesses have need of their skills. They have waged war against Set, god ofchaos and

serpents,who demands constant sacrifice from his subjects and massacred thousands of his

followers.Yet they are no match for Uzzeran, a powerful sorcerer, who has been performing

unspeakableexperiments on humans in the name of Set. To defeat Uzzeran, they will need a

legendarywarrior on their side. They need Conan the Barbarian.

 

ISCREAM, YOU SCREAM

 

WeirdHouse Press is going to bring out my middle-grade horror novel I Scream, YouScream. Joe Morey, publisher at Weird House, says “We are going to do a deluxe signed andlettered hardcover with slipcase, and double lettered deluxe hardcover (noslipcase), a signed hardcover edition, and a signed and numbered tradepaperback edition sometime next year. Also an Amazon trade paperback editionand ebook.”

Check out thatcover! The art from Derek Rook is perfect for the novel! It reminds me of theartwork that appeared on the covers of the DC horror comics I read as a kid – TheHouse of Mystery and The House of Secrets. Young Timmy would befreaking out even more than old(er) Tim is!

If you’re a fan ofmy adult horror fiction, this story is just as weird and bizarre as anythingelse I’ve written, but geared toward younger readers. I think older readerswill enjoy it, too, if for no other reason than to see how I translate my darkand surreal style for a middle-grade audience.

Synopsis:

Eighth-grader JoelTaylor just moved to Shadow Springs with his mom. He likes his new home wellenough – until a sinister being called Mr. Freezee begins driving his creepyice-cream truck up and down the streets at night, playing “Pop Goes theWeasel.”

Joel heard themusic.

He looked out thewindow.

He saw Mr. Freezee,and what’s worse…

Mr. Freezee saw him.

Now Mr. Freezeewants to take Joel to a very special place where the world is made of everyflavor of ice cream you can imagine – all of them deadly. Mr. Freezee bringsall his new friends here, and they love it so much that they never leave.

Mr. Freezee makessure of it.

Welcome to SweetLand, Joel.

Welcome to anightmare that never ends.

Here’s a link to the book’s page on the Weird House. Preorder info isscheduled to appear on August 26th: https://weirdhousepress.com/products/i-scream-you-scream-by-tim-waggoner

 

SCHEDULEDAPPEARANCES

 

 

Moon Lit Tales and Haunted Trails.Oct. 11-12. St. Albans, West Virginia.

 

2026

 

SuperstarsWriting Seminar. Feb. 4-5. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

 

AkronBook Fest. March 7. Akron, Ohio.

 

StokerCon.June 4-7. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

 

Into theSprings Writers Workshop. August 7-9. Yellow Springs, Ohio.

 

WHERETO FIND ME ONLINE

 

Want tofollow me on social media? Here’s where you can find me:

 

Website: www.timwaggoner.com

NewsletterSign-Up: https://timwaggoner.com/contact.htm

AmazonPage: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tim-Waggoner/author/B001JP0XFM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/timwaggonerswritinginthedark

Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/133838.Tim_Waggoner

Instagram:tim.waggoner.scribe

Threads:@tim.waggoner.scribe@threads.net

Bluesky: @timwaggoner.bsky.social

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/tim.waggoner.9

 

As I’ve mentioned before in my blog and on social media, I don’t use AIfor myself. But as a college writing instructor, I experiment with it beforeeach semester so I can better advise students on the pros and cons of using it,as well as help me get a better feel for AI-generated text vs human-written text. My experiments mostly focus on asking questions about mywork because I know it intimately and can spot mistakes easily. The lastexperiment I typically run before the semester starts is to have AI write aliterary analysis essay of my work. This year, I asked DeepSeek and ChatGPT towrite such an essay. DeepSeek’s contained numerous errors, fabricated information,and its analysis was surface-level. I decided to give ChatGPT a more detailedprompt. ChatGPT took a long time to think about the essay, then gave me anerror message. I tried again, and this time it thought for three minutes andproduced an essay fulfilling the prompt I’d given it. It cited its sources,too, but I didn’t tell it to use any specific citation system, and thehyperlinks looked different on the ChatGPT site than they do in this document.They were small ovals that said things like Tim Waggoner’s Site, so the links looked neater than what appears in thecopied and pasted version below. I could’ve easily asked ChatGPT to use MLA orAPA, or any other citation system, though.

What was weird was that I was able to view its process in real timebecause, as it worked, messages such as Gathering Sources, ConstructingOutline, etc., appeared on the screen. I’d never seen that before.

There are a few minor errors in ChatGPT’s essay. For example, my novel AHunter Called Night takes place in a small office building, not anapartment complex. ChatGPT used the word affect, perhaps intentionally, in a couple of places, but it seems like effect would’ve worked better. Butwhat do I know? I’m a creative writing guy, not a lit crit guy. A couple ofsubtler details about my work feel a bit off, but only a bit. Some of the language is overly pedantic, too, which makes the "writer" seem as if it's trying too hard.

After the essay was finished, I asked ChatGPT how it would improve theessay just to see what it would say, but I didn’t ask it to create a newversion.

Here’s the essay:

ChatGPT

August 17, 2025

You said:

Please write a 2000-word literaryanalysis of the work of author Tim Waggoner. Please use specific examples andexplore his work in depth and provide sophisticated insight.

ChatGPT said:

Thought for 3m 21s

“Where the World Is Always ComingApart”: A Literary Analysis of Tim Waggoner’s Horror

Tim Waggoner’s fiction sits at the weird, volatile seam where realityfrays—where perception turns unreliable, identity becomes porous, and thefamiliar shakes loose into nightmare. Over a career spanning decades and morethan fifty books, Waggoner has become one of contemporary horror’s mostdistinctive stylists and architects, equally at home in original novels, seriesfiction, and media tie‑ins. He’s also an influential teacher and critic of thegenre: his craft book Writing in the Dark won the Bram Stoker Award forNonfiction (2020), and his long fiction The Winter Box won the BramStoker Award in 2016. Most recently, his Terrifier 2 novelization earnedthe 2025 Scribe Award for Best Adapted Novel. These credentials matter becausethey illuminate the two poles of Waggoner’s work: a patient, craftsmanlycontrol of technique and a restless commitment to pushing horror toward theirrational edge. GrimdarkMagazineTim WaggonerWikipediaPenguinRandomhouse.com

Waggoner’s fiction theories and practice feed each other. A full‑timeprofessor who teaches creative writing at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio,Waggoner has spent years articulating the mechanics of fear—tone, imagesystems, point of view, escalation—then stress‑testing them in books thatinterleave body horror, surreal dread, and noir momentum. That dualidentity—teacher/practitioner—helps explain why even his most phantasmagoricalnovels feel engineered for maximum affect: they are dreamlike but neverformless, wild but meticulously staged. Tim Waggoner

Below, I trace a set of recurring concerns and techniques acrossrepresentative works from early and recent career phases: the urban‑weird of TheHarmony Society and Like Death; the “otherworld leakage” novels likeThe Mouth of the Dark and Your Turn to Suffer; the haunted‑communitybooks The Forever House and We Will Rise; the identity‑erosionhorror of The Way of All Flesh; and the urban‑fantasy/noir experiment ofthe Nekropolis cycle. Along the way, I’ll consider how Waggonertransforms stock elements—ghosts, cults, monsters—into metaphysical machinesfor examining grief, guilt, and desire.

1) Early Urban Weird: Maps of a CityThat Doesn’t Want to Be Understood

Waggoner’s earliest notable novels are urban cartographies of rupture. TheHarmony Society reads like a Baedeker to a city whose metaphysical plumbinghas broken. Reviewers have noted its “strange and surreal urban fantasy”texture: neighborhoods and subcultures comprise not a social fabric but a setof overlapping reality‑systems, each with its own rules and predators. Thebook’s power lies in its refusal to allegorize neatly; instead, the city feelslike a living ecosystem that feeds on attention and fear. AmazonCanada

Like Death intensifies this method. Where many horror novels translate urban blightinto a moralized monster, Waggoner lets the city’s detritus—abandoned theaters,decayed streets—generate a polymorphous hauntology. Critics reading the bookhave emphasized its blend of psychosexual trauma and hallucinatory set‑pieces,a union that feels closer to the transgressive surrealism of Kathe Koja or thedream logic of Clive Barker than to conventional thriller beats. The result isa portrait of place as a predatory memory palace: the city remembers what itsinhabitants would rather forget, and it manifests those repressions as entitiesthat look back. Goodreads

Formally, these books demonstrate a signature Waggoner technique:establishing the ordinary world with clear, grounded prose and then letting thediction drift, image by image, toward the unaccountable. The prose grows moresensorially “noisy”—textures and smells crowd the sentence; comparisons getstranger; metaphors literalize—until the boundary between figurative andfactual collapses. That slow bleed from realism into the unreal sets a templatehe continues to refine.

2) The “Leakage” Novel: When theOtherworld Won’t Stay Put

In later work, Waggoner often engineers scenarios where a parallel domainseeps into ours and starts rewriting us. The Mouth of the Dark isexemplary: a father searches for his missing daughter and slips into a shadow‑realmsuperimposed on our own—an interstitial ecology of predators and pleasures thattargets human appetites with weaponized seductions. Reviewers have stressed theharsh, uncompromising surrealism of its set‑pieces and the way the bookliteralizes desire as an external force that colonizes the body. That’sWaggoner’s twist on body horror: bodies become contested sites where theworld’s unspoken rules engrave themselves. Amazon

Your Turn to Suffer makes the “leakage” institutional. The Cabal—a secretive order—accusesKara of a crime she can’t remember and subjects her to trials that bendreality. The premise looks procedural (prove innocence), but the novel’s affectis fever‑dream: cause and effect decouple; consequences arrive before actions;and the antagonist is not a person but a cosmology of contempt. What’s strikingis Waggoner’s ethical argument embedded in the weirdness: shame is aninstrument of control that acquires mystical force when shared; the cult onlyworks because we are already good at punishing ourselves. Goodreads

Across these books, Waggoner’s plot architecture is modular: scenes readlike discrete set‑pieces—each with its own monster, rule set, and moral—butthey accrue meaning as variations on a theme. The result is musical rather thanpurely causal narrative momentum: the reader moves forward because the next“track” might reconfigure what every previous track meant.

3) Haunted Communities: Houses, Towns,and the Politics of Dread

Waggoner’s most emotionally resonant work often scales fear up from theindividual to the communal. The Forever House begins as a familiarsuburban fable—new neighbors, too perfect—and detonates into pocket‑dimensionhorror when the predatory Eldreds transform a home into a labyrinth whereemotions are harvested. In interviews, Waggoner has emphasized his fascinationwith the house as a machine for producing identity and secrecy. That’s key: theEldreds don’t simply torture; they curate. The book’s spatial puzzles—roomsthat rearrange, thresholds that betray—externalize the lies families tellthemselves to sustain a façade of normalcy. thebramstokerawards.comsfbook.com

We Will Rise pushes that communal logic to the nation‑scale. The premise isaudaciously simple: ghosts rise everywhere, all at once. A catastrophe novelbecomes a grief novel as hauntings function like mass reckonings withunacknowledged losses and old harms. Because the phenomenon is global andsimultaneous, the book evacuates the specialness of any single ghost andfocuses instead on how communities respond: some form mutual aid; othersmetastasize into violence. Horror becomes sociology without losing its teeth.Publisher copy and reviews highlight this “ghost apocalypse” conceit; its realinnovation is to treat ghosts as a public utility of memory—inescapable,infrastructural, and unevenly distributed. FlameTree Publishing

Notably, both books maintain a driving, cinematic readability whilesmuggling in complicated questions: What do we owe the dead? What is a home ifnot a consensus hallucination? How much of ourselves do we outsource to theplaces we live? Waggoner’s answer is uncomforting: places are not neutral; theyare predators or parasites or at best symbionts.

4) Eroding the Self: The Way of AllFlesh

Few horror novels tackle identity dissolution as intimately as The Wayof All Flesh, which proceeds from the radical gambit of telling a ghoulstory from the perspective of the ghoul. Inverting the zombie’s traditionalrole, Waggoner focalizes a consciousness struggling to remain human even asappetites and perceptions convert. The book’s critical descriptions underlinethat the narration makes the monstrous empathically legible withoutsentimentalizing it. Horror here is neither jump scare nor gore fest; it’s theminute‑by‑minute attrition of a self. Reading the novel feels like watching alanguage lose the words for “I.” SFFWorld

Technically, the novel showcases Waggoner’s mastery of close point ofview. As the protagonist’s sensorium deforms, diction and syntax deform withit. This is a central Waggoner technique: the sentence itself is the monster’sfootprint.

5) Noir as Pressure Cooker: Nekropolisand the Comedy of the Grotesque

Waggoner’s zombie PI cycle—Nekropolis, Dead Streets, DarkWar—seems at first a tonal departure: urban fantasy built on witty premise(Matt Richter, private eye, is dead) and genre cross-pollination. But theseries reveals a consistent Waggoner concern: bureaucratized monstrosity.Nekropolis is a fully functioning city, complete with vampire districts, demoncartels, and municipal grime. Reviews and publisher materials emphasize thesetting’s density and “morbid wit,” but the comedy is acid: institutions designedto manage the monstrous inevitably become monstrous themselves. When Mattliterally loses his head in Dead Streets and his body commits crimeswithout him, the gag hides a bleak joke about autonomy under systems too big tofight. AngryRobotHidden inPages

What makes Nekropolis artistically relevant to Waggoner’s largerbody of work is its worldbuilding method. The city’s logic is not arbitrarywhimsy; it is rule-bound, like a nightmare that insists you respect its localphysics. That insistence is at the heart of Waggoner’s horror: the irrationalis rational on its own terms, and we’re punished not for disbelief but formisunderstanding the rules.

6) Predators with Philosophies: AHunter Called Night and the Ethics of Survival

One of Waggoner’s recent novels, A Hunter Called Night, compresseshis strategies into a single building. A monstrous presence infiltrates anapartment complex; strangers are forced into uneasy alliances; survivalrequires ethical compromise. Synopses and jacket copy emphasize the “viciousdemonic monster” and a locked‑space siege structure, but what lingers is howWaggoner uses constricted geography to stage moral experiments. Who are we in aclosed system that rewards predation? How quickly does community devolve intocalculative self‑interest? The book’s taut plotting gives these questionsteeth. Amazon

7) Craft Consciousness: Writing inthe Dark and the Engineering of Dread

Because Waggoner articulates his methods in Writing in the Dark,readers can triangulate his fiction against his theory. The book—published byRaw Dog Screaming Press and recognized with the Bram Stoker Award—lays outpragmatic strategies for generating and sustaining fear: escalatinguncertainty, sensory specificity, character vulnerability, and the disciplineduse of imagery to create thematic resonance. You can see these practices inaction throughout his novels: the “image grid” of The Mouth of the Dark(flowers, skin, darkness, appetite) or the motif recursion in The ForeverHouse (rooms, thresholds, keys). Waggoner’s horror is designed, notimprovised; its irrational effects are products of rational craft. FlameTree PublishingGrimdarkMagazine

That craft orientation also explains the consistency of his sentence‑levelmoves: verbs do heavy lifting; metaphors arrive as sudden ontological claimsrather than decorative comparisons; and there’s an economical clarity even inthe most baroque scenes. He has a journalist’s sense of pacing and a poet’spatience for exact nouns. The result is that readers rarely feel lost even whenthe book wants them to feel lost: disorientation is achieved cleanly.

8) Tie‑Ins as Laboratory: Alien:Prototype, Halloween Kills, Terrifier 2

Waggoner is a prolific writer of media tie‑ins, a practice sometimesdismissed as purely commercial. In his case, tie‑ins function like a laboratoryto test how much of the Waggoner method can be smuggled into a shared IP whilerespecting franchise constraints. Alien: Prototype shows him workingwithin the Alien universe’s industrial‑horror idiom—bioweapons,corporate malfeasance—and punching up the visceral immediacy of the xenomorphthreat without losing character‑centric stakes. Halloween Kills threadsthe needle of honoring a slasher’s mythic simplicity while giving interiorshape to fear and grief. Terrifier 2 demonstrates how a novelization canboth mirror a film’s gleeful extremity and expand its implications; its ScribeAward recognition suggests peers saw more than transcription. In all three, hetreats set‑piece logic as a chassis for point‑of‑view intensity and sensorydesign. titanbooks.com+1PenguinRandomhouse.com

This side of his oeuvre also showcases a complementary virtue:discipline. Tie‑ins demand problem‑solving within strict scaffolds—canon,timeline, brand voice. Waggoner’s ability to make those constraints generativespeaks to the precision that underwrites even his loosest, dreamiest work.

9) Thematic Spine: Appetite, Memory,and the Slow Violence of Shame

Across modes and periods, three motifs repeat:

Appetite as Ontology. Waggoner’s monsters often hunger not just for flesh but for meaning: theEldreds siphon emotion; entities in Mouth of the Dark harvest desire;the ghoul’s hunger in Way of All Flesh is as much epistemological asnutritional. Appetite explains the world: to want is to be vulnerable to theworld’s counter‑wanting, and supernatural predators take advantage of thatasymmetry. Amazonthebramstokerawards.comSFFWorld

Memory as Infrastructure. In We Will Rise, hauntings scale from personal to systemic,making memory a public hazard and a civic duty. Even earlier work like LikeDeath positions the city as a mnemonic machine that refuses to let traumastay buried. The past is not past; it’s load‑bearing architecture. FlameTree PublishingGoodreads

Shame as Technology. Your Turn to Suffer literalizes shame as a supernaturalpunishment system, but many Waggoner antagonists leverage shame to collapseresistance. What Waggoner grasps is that shame pre‑polices the self; horror’sjob is to dramatize that pre‑policing as an external pressure that can befought. Goodreads

10) Character and Compassion

For all his baroque monsters, Waggoner’s fiction works because he’sattentive to ordinary people under intolerable pressure: grieving parents,burnt‑out cops, compromised neighbors, lonely outcasts. There’s a consistentrefusal to mock vulnerability. Even when characters behave badly, the booksseek out the causal chain—what grief, need, or fear made this outcomeplausible—without collapsing into determinism. That’s most apparent in TheWay of All Flesh, where empathy for a transforming consciousness becomesthe terror’s engine; in The Forever House, where families’ smalldeceptions have enormous metaphysical cost; and in Nekropolis, wherewisecracks never negate the pathos of a dead man trying to do good in anunlivable city. SFFWorldthebramstokerawards.comAngryRobot

Technically, this emphasis shows up as sustained close point of view andan ear for interiority under stress. Waggoner rarely writes “stoic competenceporn.” Instead, he lets fear act on perception: breath shortens, time dilates,details over‑resolve into the grotesque. That phenomenology of terror—what it’slike to be inside the moment—distinguishes his set‑pieces from mere actionchoreography.

11) Image Systems and the Felt Shapeof a Book

One way to understand Waggoner’s design intelligence is to track imagesystems across his books. He builds clusters of recurring motifs that carrythematic load:

Thresholds/Keys/Rooms (The Forever House): the domestic as a series of controlled entries and exclusions; hospitality inverted into predation. thebramstokerawards.com

Flowers/Skin/Darkness (The Mouth of the Dark): sensual beauty turned carnivorous; the erotic coded as a trap. Amazon

Hands/Teeth/Names (Your Turn to Suffer): agency, consumption, and identity shredded by a tribunal that denies the protagonist’s say in who she is. Goodreads

Windows/Water/Weight (We Will Rise): the dead as a pressure system that seeps, floods, and settles over communities. Flame Tree Publishing

These aren’t just aesthetic choices; they’re mnemonic devices that teachthe reader how to read the book. Horror often risks incoherence when theirrational takes over; Waggoner’s image grids give even his wildest episodes asense of inevitability.

12) Pacing, Clarity, and the Ethics ofExtremity

Waggoner writes violence and grotesquerie with unapologetic candor. Yetan ethical through‑line tempers the extremity: scenes exist to crystallize acharacter’s conflict or to reveal a rule about the world, not simply to shock.That clarity is partly a product of his prose economy—clean syntax, activeverbs—and partly of his teacher’s commitment to reader trust: he will not trickyou with nonsense. In A Hunter Called Night, for instance, the siegestructure creates continuous jeopardy, but Waggoner refuses to collapsecharacters into meat puppets; the choices that doom or save them feel legible. Amazon

This also explains why his tie‑ins often feel more “novelistic” thanexpected. In Alien: Prototype and Halloween Kills, the carnage isanchored by comprehensible stakes and tactile spaces; you know where peopleare, what they want, and how the scene’s physics work. Even Terrifier 2,which celebrates splatter as spectacle, uses interior perspective to makesensation matter. titanbooks.com+1PenguinRandomhouse.com

13) Where to Start: A Reader’sTrajectory (and Why)

If you’re new to Waggoner and want the fullest sense of his range:

Start with The Forever House to experience his haunted‑community mode at peak control—tight structure, strong ensemble, and a devastating metaphor for domestic secrecy. thebramstokerawards.com

Move to The Mouth of the Dark for the fullest blast of his surreal, transgressive imagination. Amazon

Read We Will Rise to see him scale personal horror to civilizational stakes. Flame Tree Publishing

Then sample Nekropolis to watch him warp noir into monster‑city worldbuilding without losing thematic bite. Angry Robot

Finish with The Way of All Flesh for a stripped‑down, intimate study of identity under erasure. SFFWorld

Parallel to that, Writing in the Dark will deepen yourappreciation of how deliberately he builds fear on the page. FlameTree Publishing

14) Conclusion: Horror as a Theory ofReality

Tim Waggoner’s work advances a coherent thesis about horror: the world isnot stable; meaning is negotiated under pressure; and the self is a contestedfrontier, susceptible to colonization by appetite, memory, and shame. The taskof the horror writer is to give that instability form—to build narratives andimage systems sturdy enough to contain the uncontainable for as long as a booklasts. Waggoner does this with unusual reliability. His novels aren’t merelytours through inventive hellscapes; they are arguments, staged as nightmares,about what it costs to keep being a person when the rules change withoutwarning.

That’s why he matters in the contemporary field. He brings the genre’svisceral intensities into contact with ethical and metaphysical questionswithout becoming didactic; he treats readers not as thrill‑seekers to bemanipulated but as witnesses to be entrusted with difficult recognitions. Andhe writes like someone who has diagrammed fear and still respects it. If youwant horror that remembers people even as it dismembers them, Waggoner is oneof the surest bets we have.

 

How would you improve this essay if Igave you a chance to rewrite it?

ChatGPT said:

Here’s what I’d suggest if you gave me a chance to rewrite the essay forimprovement:

1. Sharper Thesis and Through-Line

Right now the essay frames Waggoner as a craftsman of surreal horror, butthe central thesis could be distilled more strongly into a single sentence andrepeated as a guiding thread—something like: “Waggoner’s horror dramatizeshow appetite, memory, and shame destabilize identity and community, usingsurrealism as a rigorous narrative tool.” That through-line would make thesections feel even more connected.

2. More Close Reading of Scenes

I summarize many books and mention their themes, but I don’t unpackspecific passages or moments at the sentence level. Adding close readings—forexample, a paragraph analyzing how Waggoner’s prose in The Mouth of the Darkliteralizes metaphor, or how point of view in The Way of All Fleshconveys sensory distortion—would deepen the “literary analysis” aspect.

3. Stronger Comparative Frame

I briefly mention Koja and Barker, but more sustained comparison to otherhorror stylists (Ramsey Campbell’s psychological unease, Brian Keene’sapocalyptic community horror, even Shirley Jackson’s haunted domesticity) wouldsituate Waggoner more firmly in a lineage, which is often expected inacademic-style criticism.

4. Tighter Section Transitions

The essay moves book by book, which is useful, but the transitions couldhighlight how each phase evolves organically from the previous one (e.g., howthe cityscapes of Like Death anticipate the community horror of TheForever House). This would help the essay feel like a single arc instead ofa series of dossiers.

5. More on Style

I discuss “verbs do heavy lifting” and “image grids,” but a more nuancedanalysis of his sentence rhythm, imagery density, or tonal shifts wouldshowcase what makes his language distinctive, not just his structures.

6. Balance of Summary vs. Argument

Some parts lean toward plot summary (especially the sections on tie-ins).A rewrite could trim these down and emphasize interpretive claims: what thetie-in shows us about Waggoner’s core concerns, rather than what happens inthe book.

7. Punchier Conclusion

The conclusion works, but it could tie more directly back to contemporaryhorror culture—why Waggoner matters right now in a landscape crowdedwith cosmic horror, folk horror, and extreme horror. That would leave astronger final impression.

 

WhenChatGPT finished with all this, I copied the text of the essay (but not theprogram’s insights into possible revision) and pasted it into three onlineAI-detection sites. Two of the three came back with a result that the text washuman-written.

 

In thelast few years that I’ve been running these before-semester experiments to geta sense of what AI-written essays look like, this is the best (or worst) resultI’ve gotten. Best if you’re a student wishing to cheat. Worst if you’re ateacher wishing students would create original work. ChatGPT produced what Iasked for – a sophisticated essay using examples and providing insight.

 

Bottomline? I suspect AI-assisted writing is going to become a new, separate fieldfrom traditional composition instruction. I dread teaching research writingthis academic year, and as I’ve said before, I’m glad I'll retire soon.

 

I won't use generative AI for myself, but as a college writing teacher, I have to address it with my students. Every semester, I ask an AI program (in this case, ChatGPT) to tell students the pros and cons of using it. This way, I -- a 61-year-old -- am not telling them about AI. AI is telling them. I post these documents on our course page, and we discuss them early on. I asked ChatGPT to generate such documents for me today, and it occurred to me to post them on my blog in case any other teachers out there would like to use them. (This way, you don't have to use AI and make it waste any more energy, water, etc.) So here they are!

From ChatGPT

8/15/2025

You said:

I teach college composition courses.How can you help my students without actually writing essays for them?

ChatGPT said:

I can be useful to your composition students without crossing into “doingthe work for them” by functioning as a thinking partner, skills coach, andfeedback tool rather than a ghostwriter.
Here’s how that might look in practical terms:

1. Prewriting & Idea Development

Brainstorming prompts: Offer structured brainstorming exercises to help students find a topic or angle.

Question-driven guidance: Ask them Socratic-style questions to clarify their stance or refine a thesis.

Mind-mapping help: Suggest how to group their ideas into themes, or show them common essay structures (argumentative, analytical, compare/contrast).

2. Research Skills & SourceEvaluation

Finding credible sources: Teach them how to identify scholarly articles, credible news, or primary sources.

Summarizing practice: Show examples of how to paraphrase without plagiarism.

Source analysis: Walk through how to determine a source’s bias, scope, and relevance.

3. Thesis & Structure Coaching

Help them test their thesis statements against criteria (specific, arguable, supportable).

Offer outline templates for different essay types.

Demonstrate how to sequence ideas logically (e.g., strongest-first vs. building-to-climax structures).

4. Style & Clarity

Grammar tutorials: Give mini-lessons on common issues (comma splices, fragments, subject–verb agreement).

Tone adjustments: Show how to shift from casual to academic voice.

Sentence variety: Provide examples of how to break up choppy writing or streamline overly complex sentences.

5. Revision & Feedback

Rubric-based checklists: Students can self-assess before submission.

Modeling revision: Show how to take a vague paragraph and make it concrete, without giving them the final answer.

Feedback on drafts: Highlight strengths and point out areas needing more evidence or clarity—but leave the rewriting to them.

6. Academic Integrity Support

Explain what counts as plagiarism (including “patchwriting”).

Teach citation basics (MLA, APA, Chicago).

Provide sample in-text citations and works cited entries for the sources they bring.

Sample “Boundaries” for My Help

✅ Explain concepts, structures, and strategies
✅ Give examples on a different topic than the student’s
✅ Help them revise their own words
✅ Teach citation and research skills
❌ Write paragraphs for them
❌ Supply fully formed thesis statements on their actual assignment topic
❌ Insert evidence or arguments they didn’t find themselves

If you’d like, I can put together a “composition help menu” youcould give to your students so they know exactly what kinds of AI-assistedguidance are ethical and useful in your class. That way, they can get helpwithout crossing into academic dishonesty.

You said:

Yes, please.

ChatGPT said:

Here’s a “Composition Help Menu” you could hand to your studentsso they understand what kind of AI-assisted guidance is ethical and effectivefor your course.

College Composition – AI Help Menu

How to get writing help without crossing into academic dishonesty

✅ Ethical &Helpful Uses

You can ask AI to:

Understand the Assignment

Rephrase your professor’s instructions in simpler terms.

Explain differences between essay types (argumentative, analytical, narrative).

Plan Your Essay

Generate brainstorming questions to explore your topic.

Suggest possible angles or approaches (but you choose the topic).

Create outline templates you can fill in.

Strengthen Your Thesis

Test your thesis statement against clarity/arguability criteria.

Suggest how to make your claim more focused or specific.

Improve Organization

Show models for essay structure.

Suggest logical flow of points without adding new ideas.

Practice Writing Skills

Explain grammar rules and give practice examples.

Demonstrate how to vary sentence structure or improve clarity.

Enhance Revision

Identify vague or unsupported sections in your draft.

Point out overuse of passive voice or unclear pronouns.

Offer general ways to make a paragraph more engaging.

Support with Research Skills

Explain how to evaluate a source’s credibility.

Show proper MLA/APA/Chicago citation format for the sources you provide.

❌ Not Allowed

You should not ask AI to:

Write any part of your essay for you.

Give you a finished thesis statement for your assigned topic.

Find sources and insert them directly into your paper.

Rewrite your draft so extensively that it no longer sounds like you.

Provide “ready to submit” paragraphs or essays.

💡 Pro Tip forAcademic Integrity

Always keep a record of your work before and after AI help.
This proves that the ideas and final writing are yours—and that AI was used asa tool, not a ghostwriter.

Example of Ethical AI Use

Before AI: “I want to write about social media, but I don’t know how to focus mytopic.”
AI Help: Suggests questions like: “How does social media affectself-esteem?” or “Should schools limit social media use?”
After AI: Student picks one question, develops their own thesis, doestheir own research, and writes the essay.

You said:

What limitations do you have when itcomes to helping college composition students?

ChatGPT said:

When helping college composition students, my main limitations fall into threecategories—ethical, pedagogical, and practical.

1. Ethical Limitations

These protect academic integrity and prevent ghostwriting:

No original work for graded assignments
I can’t write thesis statements, paragraphs, or essays on their specific assigned topic in a way that would count as submitting AI-generated work as their own.

No direct insertion of research
I can’t pick sources for them and embed them into finished drafts—they need to find and read the sources themselves.

No heavy rewriting
I can’t rewrite so extensively that it changes the voice to the point where it’s no longer the student’s work.

No bypassing learning
My role is to guide thinking and skill-building, not to complete the work that the course is designed to teach.

2. Pedagogical Limitations

These are about helping them learn instead of simply fixingtheir papers:

I can’t replace reading or class participation
If they haven’t read assigned texts or participated in class discussions, I can’t supply that experience.

I won’t give “final answers” without explanation
I can model an example, but I’ll explain why and how so they can replicate the process themselves.

I can’t guarantee a specific grade
Writing quality is judged by the instructor’s criteria, which I can’t override.

I won’t skip the struggle stage
Some confusion and trial-and-error are part of becoming a stronger writer.

3. Practical Limitations

These affect how well I can give feedback:

I can’t read the student’s mind
I need them to tell me their intended audience, tone, or purpose for the piece.

I may not have access to course-specific rubrics
If they don’t share the grading rubric, I can only give general writing advice.

I can’t check against proprietary plagiarism databases
I can explain plagiarism rules and show how to paraphrase or cite, but I can’t scan their work like Turnitin does.

I can’t replicate an instructor’s unique style or grading quirks
Every professor has personal preferences—my advice will be based on general best practices unless they share your exact expectations.

ChatGPT said:

Here’s the Boundaries of AI Help in College Composition handout ina clean, ready-to-copy format.

Boundaries of AI Help in CollegeComposition

How to use AI responsibly while keeping your work your own

1️ ⃣   Ethical Limitations

AI will not:

Write original work for graded assignments – no thesis statements, paragraphs, or essays on your assigned topic.

Insert research for you – you must find, read, and evaluate your own sources.

Heavily rewrite your work – AI won’t change your writing voice into something unrecognizable.

Replace the learning process – AI is a guide, not a ghostwriter.

2️ ⃣   Pedagogical Limitations

AI will not:

Replace reading assigned texts or participating in class.

Give “final answers” without explaining why.

Guarantee you a specific grade.

Skip the necessary struggle stage of writing that builds lasting skills.

3️ ⃣   Practical Limitations

AI cannot:

Guess your intended audience, tone, or purpose unless you tell it.

Access your specific course rubric unless you share it.

Check plagiarism the way Turnitin or other databases can.

Mimic your instructor’s personal grading style or preferences exactly.

💡 Reminder:
AI is a learning partner, not a shortcut. Use it to clarify, practice,and strengthen your skills—never to replace your own thinking and writing.

 

 

TheFall semester at my college (www.sinclair.edu)begins in a couple of weeks. It will mark the start of my twenty-sixth yearteaching composition and creative writing there, and my thirty-sixth year ofteaching overall. Teachers everywhere are contending with how best to deal withAI in their classes, and if you’re among them – or just interested in how I doit – here are some of the strategies and tactics I use in the ongoing struggle withlarge language models.

 

FirstThings First

•       Asgenerative AI currently stands it:

•       Wastrained on stolen texts (including thirty of my novels).

•       Usesan immense amount of energy to power it.

•       Usesan immense amount of water (for cooling its servers).

•       Isoften inaccurate, sometimes wildly so.

•       Canhallucinate.

•       Thereis no way to use AI ethically as it currently stands.

•       Butthen again, there’s no way to use most of our tech ethically.

•       AIis becoming embedded in all our tech, whether we like it or not, or are evenaware of it. It’s becoming almost impossible NOT to use it somehow.

•       Theworld currently has a Gold Rush mentality toward AI.

•       Ourstudents are advised, encouraged, and demanded to use AI by the world aroundthem.

CurrentConditions

•       Morestudents are using generative AI to write essays for them than ever.

•       AI-detectionprograms mostly suck. They often give false positives, but even so, they’re thebest tool teachers have to identify AI use in writing.

•       Acertain percentage of students have and will likely always cheat. I’ve taughtfor 35 years. Students used to turn in a friend’s essay with their name on itor pay someone to write an essay for them. Personal computers made it easierfor students to share essays. Then they downloaded essays from the Internet.Now they use generative AI to compose their essays.

•       Theproblem with generative AI is that the current generation of students doeseverything via technology, and AI is so easy to use, so it’s a lot more temptingto cheat.

•       Sure,it’s possible that in the future humans will not write anymore, at least notthe same way we know writing. Who cares? We live and teach now.

TheRealist’s View of Students Using AI in Writing Courses

•       Acertain percentage of students will always cheat.

•       It’simpossible to prevent all students from cheating.

•       Teachersmay think they can identify an AI-written paper on their own, but studies haveshown they mostly can’t.

•       Someteachers are returning to having students write on paper in class without usingtech of ANY kind. But this negates decades of research showing that the processapproach to teaching writing works best, and using word processing programs towrite encourages more process-oriented work from students.

EducationalConsiderations

•       Thepurpose of an education is to prepare students to live and work in the currentday and the future, using the best practices in their field in the most ethicalways possible.

•       Teachers:Who’s your class primarily focused on? You or the students?

•       Ifyou’re primarily choosing to police AI use, are you doing it for your students’benefit or yours?

•       Byhaving students write on paper in class, you may teach them basic skills ofcomposition, but you will teach them nothing about making ethical choices whenusing AI, which they will have to do in other classes and in the workplace,especially as AI becomes embedded in so many other types of technology.

•       Youteach students one ethical stance – doing their own work – but not WHY it’simportant to do their own work. You create only a requirement to fulfill, ahoop to jump through, a rule to follow because a teacher says they must. Thisis, in its own way, as mechanical an approach to teaching as students using AIto write their essays.

Reckoningwith AI

•       Myapproach to teaching is a student-centered one, not a subject-focused one. I’mteaching human beings, not a subject.

•       Everythingabout writing comes down to thinking, creating, and most of all – makingchoices. This idea, not that idea. This idea first, that idea second. Thisword, not that word.

•       Whenwe force students to adhere too strictly to rules, we take away (or at leastseriously hinder) their opportunity to think, create, and CHOOSE.

•       AIis an opportunity to reinforce the role of a student’s agency and choice. Theycan choose to use AI or not. They can use AI in a limited way, such as tosuggest a topic or to check grammar and spelling (the same way word-processingprograms have for decades). They can choose to use AI to aid but not replaciethem in the writing process.

•       AIis a tool. A knife is a tool as well. You can use it for its intended purposeor you can harm someone with it. But stabbing someone has immediateconsequences most people would rather avoid. Using AI has no immediateconsequences, and there’s a good chance students won’t get caught. Thus, it’sharder to get them to use AI in the “proper” way (as in there’s a proper way touse a knife and many improper – and sometimes destructive – ways).

•       Soteachers must CONVINCE students.

•       Wemust teach them why writing is important, why writing their own work isimportant, what it can do for them, and what it can do for their readers. We mustteach them what makes good writing and why good writing is important. We mustteach them to value their thoughts and ideas and show them the rewards forsharing those thoughts and ideas in written form.

•       Inmany ways, what teachers need to do is treat writing like a religion, wherethere’s a moral reason for students to do their own work, and they shouldresist the seduction of the “evil” side of AI.

•       Thisis how higher education used to be before it became expensive job trainingprograms. It’s the humanities-based approach to teaching and learning.

•       ButI’m also a pragmatic teacher, so…

What IDo Now and What I Intend to Do Going Forward

•       Idiscuss the pros and cons, including the ethical considerations, of AI-assistedwriting with my students early in the course.

•       Itell them I only use it so I can understand it enough to talk to them about it.My writing is “handmade” solely by me and always will be.

•       Butif there were absolutely no ethical issues with AI use, I’d use it to creatememos, business letters, a syllabus, and then tweak them as necessary. Simple,repetitive, grunt work writing.

•       Butbecause I’m a practiced, experienced writer, I know how to guide the shaping ofa document and what tweaks need to be made.

•       IfI wasn’t such a writer, using generative AI would be like asking a computer towrite an essay in a language I don’t understand, and when it’s finished, Ican’t read it to tell if it says what I want, if it’s accurate, if it will dothe job I need it to do, etc.

•       Iask a generative AI program to tell my students what it can do for them withoutdoing the work for them. Then I ask it to tell my students what it can’tdo for them. This way, I’m not telling them these things. AI is. I post thesedocuments on our course page and discuss them with the class early in thesemester.

•       Inthe future, I need to also ask AI what the ethical issues are in its use andhow students can make the most ethical choices when using it. (I haven’t donethis yet, so I don’t know if AI will say anything useful.)

•       Ihaven’t done AI-assisted writing exercises in class because I believe AI is unethicalto use, so I want to minimize its use in my teaching as much as possible.

•       Butif making ethical-as-possible AI use normal in the class means more studentsmight use it that way, maybe I should reconsider doing AI-assisted writingexercises. (But I’d have a really hard time doing this.)

FinalThoughts

•       AIisn’t going anywhere.

•       Peopleare going to use it for writing, and it’s decent enough at scutwork writing.This is what most of my students will use it for in the future because it’swhat their jobs will demand.

•       AImay one day replace humans, but cockroaches may replace us, too, so who cares?I’m teaching in the present, and right now, AI is like a preschool toy when itcomes to writing – simple functions with pretty lights and amusing sounds. Studentsstill need to learn how to write on their own.

•       Teachingis hard and frustrating, and it’s always been that way. Teachers don’tunderstand why others don’t love learning as much as they do, which is maybethe most frustrating thing of all for them. Accept you will never convinceevery student why letting AI do work for them and (in their eyes) make theirlives easier is a bad thing.

•       Ilearned long ago that convincing students that their thoughts and ideas arevaluable and that they can learn to express them effectively is the mostimportant thing I can do as a teacher. Because when students believe this, theyWANT to write. People want to feel valued and appreciated. And when thishappens in a writing class, students’ work starts to become better immediately –because they care about it. They put more time and effort into theirwriting because it starts to matter to them. It’s why students need more agencyin selecting topics and their approach to them.

•       It’sall about meaning, not about merely programming students like machines.If we treat them like that, why shouldn’t they rely on machines to do theirwriting? But if we can treat people like people – remind them that they arehuman and they are valued, even if we can do so only a few times and in smallways in a semester – then I think we stand a good chance against the machines.

•       Asa teacher, I give students what I can, and it’s up to them how much they takefrom the course and apply in the future. I know some will cheat and get awaywith it. I accept this and keep going, just as doctors know when they tell patientsto stop smoking, they may never stop or only stop for a while, then return tosmoking. I cannot be responsible for the choices other people make.

•       Butby not dealing with the thorny ethical issues of AI use in class, I would not becreating the conditions for students to be able to make the best choicespossible. So I must deal with it, whether I like it or not.

•       Iam so glad I’m only a few years away from retirement!!!!

•       NOTE:This is a blog entry to share my thoughts. It’s not a scholarly essay, so don’tcome at me in the comments asking “Source?” for some of the points I make. You’rean adult. You know how to use Google. Google is your friend. Google gets lonelywhen you don’t visit. Go see Google.

 

DEPARTMENTOF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

 

TheWorld Turns Red

 

 My newhorror novella, The World Turns Red, came out in June, and reactionsfrom reviewers and readers alike have been overwhelmingly positive! Here’s asample:

 

“A dark,disturbing masterpiece worth binge-reading in one sitting.” – S.E. Howard

 

“This isa very dark, intense read with a surreal quality that pulled me in from pageone and held me spellbound to the bitter end.” – Well Worth a Read

 

TheWorld Turns Red isanother in a long line of brilliant horror work by Tim Waggoner. There wasnever anyone who could blend the real with the surreal so seamlessly that, aswild as the story gets, it makes perfect sense somehow. Now THAT takes one hellof a writer. The book is a flawless masterpiece…6 out of 5 stars.  – Carson Buckingham

 

Synopsis:

 

Welcometo the meat room.

 

At first,it’s a whisper on the edge of your consciousness.

 

As itgets louder, you begin to make out words—dark, sharp, dangerous words… You clapyour hands over your ears to shut them out, but you can’t escape what comesfrom inside you.

 

The voicetells you to do things to yourself. Bad things. Awful things…

 

Thelonger you listen, the more they seem reasonable. Desirable.

 

Inevitable.

 

And asyou reach for the nearest knife, gun, or rope, the voice speaks the last fourwords you’ll ever hear:

 

Allhail the Unhigh.

 

CemeteryDance: https://www.cemeterydance.com/TheWorldTurnsRed

 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/5cabrjn2

 

Barnesand Noble: https://tinyurl.com/kzphuep7

 

DarkTides 21: 24 Frames Per Second

 

I’mthrilled to have another new novella in the latest volume of Crystal LakePublishing’s Dark Tide Series – 24 Frames Per Second – alongside AndrewNaldony and Gary A. Braunbeck.

 

Step intothe terrifying world of Hollywood horror, where the line between fiction andreality blurs, and the consequences of cinematic creation become all too real.In 24 Frames Per Second, three chilling novellas bring to life thedarkest corners of the movie industry—where horror isn’t just confined to thescreen.

 

“The LastCannibal Movie” by Tim Waggoner: A group of student filmmakers embark on aproject to create a cannibal holocaust film—but soon, their fictional nightmarebegins to unfold in real life. As their imagined horrors come to life, theymust face the terrifying reality of their own creation.

 

“I Am theRainbringer” by Andrew Nadolny: A woman is transformed into a serial killer byher father’s dying wish, and her husband turns her deadly past into a movie.But the ghosts of his parents—and her brutal history—soon rise to haunt themboth, blurring the line between the living and the dead in a nightmare thatcan’t be escaped.

 

“This IsNot My Movie” by Gary A. Braunbeck: After a movie theater is consumed by fire,the charred ruins become a nexus for ghosts and alternate realities. A hauntingtale of how a beloved movie theater's destruction births a dark, sentientforce, trapping the souls of those killed in the blaze.

 

In 24Frames Per Second, horror reaches beyond the screen and becomes part of thefabric of reality, where the true cost of creation is more horrifying than anyfictional tale. Each novella is a unique exploration of terror, art, and theboundaries of reality, set against the backdrop of Hollywood’s darkest secrets.

 

CrystalLake Publishing: https://www.crystallakepub.com/product/24-frames-per-second-dark-tide-book-21/

 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/8u7jh8f

 

Barnes& Noble: https://tinyurl.com/873tj3vj

 

Conan:Spawn of the Serpent God

 

The timeis drawing nigh! My Conan the Barbarian novel, Spawn of the Serpent God,will be released October 28th! The novel ties into the comic book event Scourgeof the Serpent Men (Conan being said scourge, of course, although it lookslike King Kull may be involved, too). You won’t have to read the comics to understandmy book, and vice versa, but if you’re a Conan fan, you might enjoy readingboth. Here’s a link to the first issue of Scourge of the Serpent Men: https://titan-comics.com/c/2316-conan-the-barbarian-scourge-of-the-serpent/

 

You canfind various preorder links for the novel at the Titan Books site: https://titanbooks.com/72365-conan-spawn-of-the-serpent-god/

 

And whileI’ve had no official word (because nobody ever tells writers anything), itlooks like Spawn of the Serpent God will be getting an audio edition!I’m super excited because the narrator is Bradford Hastings, who’s not only anexcellent reader and performer, but his Conan is my absolute favorite portrayalof the character. The audiobook is due out in late December, and you canpreorder it at B&N and Amazon. I’m sure it’ll be available directly from BlackstoneAudio (who’s the publisher of the audio version) as well.

 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/bn6hh2m

 

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/conan-tim-waggoner/1148011208?ean=9798228671591

 

Synopsis:

 

InZamora, the city of thieves, Conan meets Valja, a thrill-seeking thief. Sheentices him to join

her on aheist, where they steal a golden statuette of Ishtar, said to contain thegoddess herself.

Afterkilling a dozen guards and failing to escape, the pair are saved by priestessesof Mitra. But

Conanknows that nothing is free.

 

Thepriestesses have need of their skills. They have waged war against Set, god ofchaos and

serpents,who demands constant sacrifice from his subjects and massacred thousands of his

followers.Yet they are no match for Uzzeran, a powerful sorcerer, who has been performing

unspeakableexperiments on humans in the name of Set. To defeat Uzzeran, they will need a

legendarywarrior on their side. They need Conan the Barbarian.

 

SCHEDULEDAPPEARANCES

 

 

Moon Lit Tales and Haunted Trails.Oct. 11-12. St. Albans, West Virginia.

 

2026

 

SuperstarsWriting Seminar. Feb. 4-5. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

 

AkronBook Fest. March 7. Akron, Ohio.

 

StokerCon.June 4-7. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

 

Into theSprings Writers Workshop. August 7-9. Yellow Springs, Ohio.

 

WHERETO FIND ME ONLINE

 

Want tofollow me on social media? Here’s where you can find me:

 

Website: www.timwaggoner.com

NewsletterSign-Up: https://timwaggoner.com/contact.htm

AmazonPage: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tim-Waggoner/author/B001JP0XFM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/timwaggonerswritinginthedark

Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/133838.Tim_Waggoner

Instagram:tim.waggoner.scribe

Threads:@tim.waggoner.scribe@threads.net

Bluesky: @timwaggoner.bsky.social

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.waggoner.9

 

AIwriting will inevitably replace human writers, and there’s nothing you can doto stop it.

 

I’m sureyou’ve seen comments like this posted on social media over the last few years,and it usually precedes an argument about which is better: AI-createdart/entertainment or that created by humans. After seeing someone post theabove (paraphrased) statement on my Facebook timeline, I realized I have a newresponse to these sorts of comments.

 

Whofucking cares?

 

I’m 61.I’ve lived my entire life in a constantly changing world on the verge ofdestruction by one means or another. They say AI is an existential threat.Baby, the entire fucking universe is an existential threat, and it’s never beenotherwise. (And people wonder why I write dark fiction.) If AI does replacehuman writing in all fields – and I’m not convinced it will – that won’t keepme from writing. I write because I have to, because it’s the truest expressionof my Self, because it’s the only thing that uses all of my mind at once(although teaching sometimes comes close), and most of all, because it’s fun. I’vecontinued writing through rejection, depression, illness, divorce, the death ofthe midlist, several death-and-rebirth cycles of Horror, my first agent whogave up on my novel after a year, my first novel contract getting cancelled… Icould go on, but if you’ve been writing for any length of time, you’ve got yourown list of obstacles you’ve overcome. If all of those things couldn’t stop me fromwriting, why should an overhyped technological advancement?

 

And whileI’ve made it to my sixties, there’s no guarantee I won’t die as I’m typingthese words. (If I was handwriting this, this would be the point where my penwould trail off down the page.) I’ve got too much to do in whatever time I haveleft to worry about AI. But maybe you’re a younger writer with (hopefully) manymore years ahead of you than I have, and AI might seem like a real threat toyour establishing and maintaining a writing career.

 

Let’s talk.

·      Everythingdies. Not a cheerythought, but it’s the truth. The second law of thermodynamics is the closestthing to God we have. I often apply the deathbed test when I’m struggling witha decision. When I’m on my deathbed, will I look back over my life and regretnot having done X? If you’d regret giving up on writing because of the rise ofAI, then fuck AI and write. Yes, it’s possible that AI-produced writing willbecome the norm someday. Who cares? It’s what we do today that matters. Maybepeople in the future (assuming humanity has a future) will live to be200, 300, or maybe even be immortal. Does that mean my 61 to (if I’m reallylucky) 100-year-long life was worthless? Of course not. So all the writing Ihave produced in my life isn’t meaningless just because writing itself may bedifferent in the future.

·      Butsometimes things keep living – even if they occupy a different niche in theworld. There arestill blacksmiths, glassblowers, musicians who play medieval instruments, paintersof realism, stage actors… Manufacturing technology, instrument design andconstruction, photography, and film haven’t entirely replaced those oldercrafts. They’re still around, even if there isn’t as much demand for themanymore (then again, there are renn faires). You know that old cliché thatparents say? “If your friends all jumped off a bridge, would you?” Well, turnit around: “If none of your friends write without AI, would you?” Who gives ashit what other people do? It’s what you do that matters.

·      It’salways been hard to make a living in the arts. Maybe AI will make it harder for non-AIwriters to make money. I think that’s almost a certainty in business writingand simple nonfiction. I already have students who write web articles andlisticles, and their editors often require them to use AI. But how many of youreading this make all of your money solely from producing your art? (Notcounting any income a partner of yours brings in.) I never have, and I’ve beenwriting and publishing for forty years. The vast majority of my income comesfrom teaching. If I never made another cent from writing, the economic impacton me would be negligible. Yes, some people support themselves solely with theirwriting, even if they’re barely above the poverty level. (Author Tim Powersonce said that it’s easy to live as a freelance writer, “Once you learn to liveshabby.”) Maybe non-AI writers won’t be able to make a living from their art,but most of us don’t now anyway, so what would really change for us? There areplenty of literary writers and poets who know there’s almost no market demandfor their art, and they still produce it anyway. Maybe all non-AI writers willbe in the same situation one day, and that will suck, but the ones who need towrite will still write.

·      It’snot inevitable that readers will prefer AI writing to human writing. The AI-vangelists and the AI doomsayersboth assume that AI writing will replace human writing. But that all depends onhumans themselves. Humans make choices for many reasons – psychological,physical, environmental, societal… Humans will have to prefer AI writingand choose it over non-AI writing. Dense, complex literary fiction thatfocuses on character and setting more than plot (if there’s any plot at all)exists, but the vast majority of readers aren’t interested in it. It doesn’tgive them what they want from a story (which is, first and foremost, storyitself). I’m not knocking literary fiction. I like it just fine, so don’t comeat me in the comments or on social media. But there’s a reason why lit ficdoesn’t often show up on the bestseller lists and why it usually doesn’t makeany money. The Horror boom of the 80s became the Horror bust of the 90s whenpublishers started cranking out as many mediocre Horror novels as they could tosate the public’s demand. Readers got tired of reading sub-par novels andstopped buying Horror. The same thing could happen with AI writing. If peopledon’t find AI writing satisfying, and they do find that human writing fulfillstheir needs, that’s what they’ll read. People talk about supply and demand asif it’s all about money, but it’s really about need and desire.

·      AIwill inevitably surpass human writers. People tend to believe that technology advances at aconstantly accelerating rate, but this isn’t always true. All you need to do istake a look at old predictions of what people in the past thought (or hoped) thefuture would be like. But we don’t have flying cars, bases on the moon and Mars,intelligent robot companions, faster-than-light drive, etc. Technology canplateau and remain at that level for a long time. While there have beenadvancements in Windows, Word, PowerPoint, etc., they are essentially the sameprograms they were decades ago. AI-vangelists (and people who predict theSingularity occurring within a few years) are likely overly – if not wildly – optimisticin their predictions. AI might plateau at a certain point and remain there fora long time, perhaps a very long time. But even if AI continues to advanceand does so rapidly, the writing it produces won’t be better than what a humancreates. It will produce writing faster, and much of it might be as good aswhat an average writer produces, but I doubt it will be able to truly simulatethe perspective of individual humans. It might be able to write for its ownexperiences and perspective, though, and that would be very cool. But as I saidearlier about making a living from writing, more advanced AI might change themarket for writers (both traditionally published and indie writers). A friendonce told me that “There’s no difference between the average literary novel andthe average genre novel, except the average literary novel doesn’t getpublished.” (He told me this before the advent of current self-publishing tech.)A future of this quote might be “There is no difference between the averageAI-written piece and the average human-written piece, but the averageAI-written piece is produced faster and more cheaply.” (More cheaply in termsof not paying writers, not in terms of AI’s energy and water usage.) Readers inthe future might still read human-written writing, but they might read onlyhigh-quality work written from unique perspectives and/or interesting,innovative techniques rather than run-of-the-mill prose.

·      There’sno stopping AI. Isee people post on social media that “AI MUST BE STOPPED!” I never say anythingwhen I see such comments, but I always wonder how anyone can truly believe thisis possible. It’s like they’re standing on a beach, palms outstretched as agigantic wave rushes toward them, and shout, “THIS TSUNAMI MUST BE STOPPED!”Good fucking luck with that. You can choose not to use AI or consume anythingit produces (although this will become more difficult as AI becomes moreembedded in society), but humans are tool-users, and if an effective new toolis created, humans will rush to use it. It’s not “AI MUST BE STOPPED!” but “WEMUST STOP EVERYONE IN THE HUMAN RACE FROM USING AI!” Ain’t gonna happen. Thecollege where I teach is going to incorporate AI into all its classes startingthis Fall. How and how much we’ll use it is unclear right now, but it’shappening. And not just at my school. It’s happening everywhere.Children will grow up using AI in all kinds of ways, and the tool will beperfectly normal to them by the time they’re adults. I only use AI to theextent I need to in my classes, and I try to inform students about the best choicesthey can make when using AI. First, I tell them there is no ethical way to useAI, and I explain how AI was trained on stolen material and how it consumes aton of energy and water (making it hugely wasteful). But then I tell them thatthere’s no ethical way to use much of our technology, such as combustion engines.People need to weigh the pluses and minuses of using technology for themselvesas individuals and for the world at large, and then make their own choices. I tellthem that their classes and jobs may require them to use AI one day soon, andthey’ll have to make choices about that, too. I show them an AI program, showthem how to write prompts, etc. Then I ask the AI program to tell the studentswhat it can do for them without writing their essays. Then I ask the program totell students what its limitations are in helping them with their writing. Ipost both of these responses on our course page. This way, the AI program istelling them how and how not to use it, not me. I think it’s worth everyonetrying out AI programs a bit just to familiarize yourself with the tech sinceit’s rapidly becoming a common tool in society. And if you are rabidly anti-AI,keep fighting the good fight, and if you lose in the end, you hopefully madepeople consider their attitudes toward AI and how (or if) to use it, and that’sno small thing.

·      NoAI was used in the production of this work. Some people are starting to use statements like this toassure readers that their work is 100 percent human-written, like the labelsyou see on various products in the grocery proclaiming them to be gluten-free,no sugar added, 100 percent organic, no artificial sweeteners, etc. Not only isa non-AI statement a promise to customers, it’s also an effective statement of yourvalues. And likely, more effective than posting FUCK AI! on social media. It’sa positive statement that makes no criticism of AI or of others who may use AI.People tend to respond better to positive sales messages than negative ones(especially ones that don’t explicitly or implicitly criticize them).

·      Keepliving your best writing life. Ifthe world keeps changing around me until I’m the last writer on Earth not usingAI, so be it. I’m going to keep writing my stories my way and be thankful Ilived at a time when I could do so. That will be enough for me. But if nothingelse, don’t let your feelings about the advent of AI-assisted writing take upso much of your mental and emotional energy that you find it hard (and maybeimpossible) to write. Don’t let the existence of AI impede your creativity becausethen it really will win. Keep writing, you brilliant, beautiful humans.

DEPARTMENTOF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

Conan:Spawn of the Serpent God

 

I have aConan the Barbarian novel coming from Titan Books in October! It was a hell ofa lot of fun to write, and I hope fans of sword-and-sorcery action will enjoyit.

 

You canfind various preorder links at the Titan Books site: https://titanbooks.com/72365-conan-spawn-of-the-serpent-god/

 

Synopsis:

 

InZamora, the city of thieves, Conan meets Valja, a thrill-seeking thief. Sheentices him to join

her on aheist, where they steal a golden statuette of Ishtar, said to contain thegoddess herself.

Afterkilling a dozen guards and failing to escape, the pair are saved by priestessesof Mitra. But

Conanknows that nothing is free.

 

Thepriestesses have need of their skills. They have waged war against Set, god ofchaos and

serpents,who demands constant sacrifice from his subjects and massacred thousands of his

followers.Yet they are no match for Uzzeran, a powerful sorcerer, who has been performing

unspeakableexperiments on humans in the name of Set. To defeat Uzzeran, they will need a

legendarywarrior on their side. They need Conan the Barbarian.

 

TheWorld Turns Red

 

My newhorror novella, The World Turns Red, is unleashed upon the world, and sofar the reviews have been great! Here’s a sampling:

 

“A dark,disturbing masterpiece worth binge-reading in one sitting.” – S.E. Howard

 

“This isa very dark, intense read with a surreal quality that pulled me in from pageone and held me spellbound to the bitter end.” – Well Worth a Read

 

“TheWorld Turns Red is another in a long line of brilliant horror work by TimWaggoner. There was never anyone who could blend the real with the surreal soseamlessly that, as wild as the story gets, it makes perfect sense somehow. NowTHAT takes one hell of a writer. The book is a flawless masterpiece…6 out of 5stars.”  – Carson Buckingham

 

Welcometo the meat room.

 

At first,it’s a whisper on the edge of your consciousness.

 

As itgets louder, you begin to make out words—dark, sharp, dangerous words… You clapyour hands over your ears to shut them out, but you can’t escape what comesfrom inside you.

 

The voicetells you to do things to yourself. Bad things. Awful things…

 

Thelonger you listen, the more they seem reasonable. Desirable.

 

Inevitable.

 

And asyou reach for the nearest knife, gun, or rope, the voice speaks the last fourwords you’ll ever hear:

 

Allhail the Unhigh.

 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/5cabrjn2

 

Barnes& Noble: https://tinyurl.com/kzphuep7

 

DarkTides 21: 24 Frames Per Second

 

I’mthrilled to have another new novella in the latest volume of Crystal LakePublishing’s Dark Tide Series – 24 Frames Per Second – alongside AndrewNaldony and Gary A. Braunbeck.

 

Step intothe terrifying world of Hollywood horror, where the line between fiction andreality blurs, and the consequences of cinematic creation become all too real.In 24 Frames Per Second, three chilling novellas bring to life thedarkest corners of the movie industry—where horror isn’t just confined to thescreen.

 

“The LastCannibal Movie” by Tim Waggoner: A group of student filmmakers embark on aproject to create a cannibal holocaust film—but soon, their fictional nightmarebegins to unfold in real life. As their imagined horrors come to life, theymust face the terrifying reality of their own creation.

 

“I Am theRainbringer” by Andrew Nadolny: A woman is transformed into a serial killer byher father’s dying wish, and her husband turns her deadly past into a movie.But the ghosts of his parents—and her brutal history—soon rise to haunt themboth, blurring the line between the living and the dead in a nightmare thatcan’t be escaped.

 

“This IsNot My Movie” by Gary A. Braunbeck: After a movie theater is consumed by fire,the charred ruins become a nexus for ghosts and alternate realities. A hauntingtale of how a beloved movie theater's destruction births a dark, sentientforce, trapping the souls of those killed in the blaze.

 

In 24Frames Per Second, horror reaches beyond the screen and becomes part of thefabric of reality, where the true cost of creation is more horrifying than anyfictional tale. Each novella is a unique exploration of terror, art, and theboundaries of reality, set against the backdrop of Hollywood’s darkest secrets.

 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/8u7jh8f

 

Barnes& Noble: https://tinyurl.com/873tj3vj

 

“AndYou Will Live in Horror Forever”

 

I have anew short story in the latest issue of Cthonic Matter. If you’reunfamiliar with the journal, here’s a description from their submission page: “ChthonicMatter is a quarterly offering of tales from the darkside. Its contentsrange in tone from the quiet horror of Shirley Jackson to the bleak stylings ofThomas Ligotti — and everything in between.” I’m proud to be part of such acool publication!

 

https://chthonicmatter.wordpress.com/chthonicmatter/

 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/45sb5b73

 

AllRoads Lead to Hell

 

PIC

 

My story“No One Sings in the City of the Dead” appears in this anthology. (Fulldisclosure: the tale is a reprint.) From the publisher:

 

Thisanthology, composed of 11 tales of terror by the authors of Winding RoadStories, will remind you that it's not where you begin but where you end. Andin the world of horror, all roads lead to hell.

 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/5hap3wyy

 

SCHEDULEDAPPEARANCES

 

San DiegoComic Con. July 24-27. San Diego, California.

 

GenconWriters’ Symposium. July 31st to August 3rd. Indianapolis, Indiana.

 

WHERETO FIND ME ONLINE

 

Want tofollow me on social media? Here’s where you can find me:

 

Website: www.timwaggoner.com

NewsletterSign-Up: https://timwaggoner.com/contact.htm

AmazonPage: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tim-Waggoner/author/B001JP0XFM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/timwaggonerswritinginthedark

Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/133838.Tim_Waggoner

Instagram:tim.waggoner.scribe

Threads:@tim.waggoner.scribe@threads.net

Bluesky: @timwaggoner.bsky.social

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/tim.waggoner.9

 

 

Thirty years ago, I was diagnosedwith testicular cancer, and four days later – Memorial Day – I was on theoperating table. I was thirty-one years old, married to my first wife for sevenyears, and our first daughter was only four months old. I was terrified, ofcourse, but primarily because I didn’t want to leave my daughter without her father,and I didn’t want to miss getting to see her grow up.

 

There were a few minor snags – at first the surgeon couldn’t findone of my kidneys on my CT scan images (which is how I learned I have a pelvickidney on the left side), and the spinal block I’d gotten along with otheranesthesia somehow made it so if I tried to sit up, I felt instantly dizzy andneeded to vomit. I spent six hours lying prone in the recovery ward with a verypatient nurse who sat with me the entire time, until a doctor walked by, sawme, frowned, walked over to my bed, skimmed my chart, then asked the nurse, “What’swrong with him?” She explained, and he told her to give me a drug whose name Idon’t remember. “He’s young, he’s strong, he can take it,” the doctor said.Then he turned to me, said, “We’ll get you out of here,” then walked off. Inever learned his name, and I didn’t know what they were going to put into me,but I didn’t care, so long as I got home. Whatever that medicine was, it worked– until I was within three steps of my couch. Luckily, I managed to lie downbefore I threw up everywhere. When I was discharged, I was told this weirdeffect would wear off by morning, and it did. Otherwise, the surgery was asuccess. And as a bonus, I felt absolutely no pain even though I had a finger-lengthincision on my abdomen the entire time I was healing.

 

I had to have follow-up CT scans for five years, but in general,testicular cancer has a high survival rate, and I was fine. I’d been writingand publishing short stories for several years, and when I got the opportunityto write a story for Marty Greenberg’s anthology Elf Magic, I decided I’duse my experience with cancer as part of the tale. The result was “The LastWarrior.” Elf Magic came out in 1997. My oldest daughter was two at thetime, and I loved every second I got to spend with her, even the hard timeswhen she was sick, or wouldn’t sleep through the night (I was always the onewho got up with her), and when I had to change a particularly messy diaper. AndI was privileged to experience it all over again when my second daughter wasborn in 2000.

 

“The Last Warrior” has never been republished, and I decided tocelebrate the thirtieth anniversary of my surgery by sharing the story with allof you. The sections that take place in our world are all drawn from my reallife. As for the other sections, who knows? Maybe I lived them, too, somewhereand somewhen.

 

If you want to learn more about the signs and treatment oftesticular cancer, you can go here: https://tinyurl.com/4aunh8p7

 

THE LAST WARRIOR

 

TIM WAGGONER

 

Originally published in Elf Magic,DAW Books, 1997

 

"Rise,Alfarnin!"

Thevoice—a woman's, he thought, an old woman's—seemed to come from a greatdistance. Alfarnin tried to open his eyes, but he was tired, so very tired...

"Thereis no time for this, elf! Get up! Skuld commands you!"

Hefelt a pair of age-weakened hands tugging on his arm. He tried to pull away androll over so that he might shrug off the old woman and give himself upcompletely to the darkness she was so determined to drag him away from. But hefound himself able to turn only partway. Something was blocking him.

Heopened a weary eye and found himself staring into the horrid, twisted face of atroll. With a cry, he sat up, right hand instinctively groping for a weapon.

"Don'tbother, elf," said the old woman disdainfully. "It's dead.Everything's dead here. Save you, that is."

Alfarninsaw she spoke the truth. The troll's eyes were wide and staring, its hairychest a ragged ruin. He lifted his gaze from the fell beast to see he sat inthe middle of an endless expanse of corpses, all clad in battle gear. A vastarray of weapons protruded from the bodies—spears, pikes, swords, axes—andblood covered the twisted, still forms like a crimson blanket.

Helooked down at his own simple tunic. Once it had been the plain gray of anelven farmer; now it was a stiff, dark red edging toward brown. He touched hislong silver hair and found it clumped and matted with dried blood. He ran ahand across his chest and stomach, searching for wounds, but those hediscovered were, for the most part, minor, though they hurt like blazes.

"Yourweapon, warrior." The old woman sneered this last word.

Alfarninturned to look at the woman for the first time. She wore a black robe, hooddrawn forth to cover her head, completely obscuring her features. If it hadn'tbeen for her quavering, cracking voice—and for her wrinkled, age-spotted clawwhich held forth his hand scythe—he couldn't have guessed at her age.

Hetook his scythe, noting that the dulled blade was caked with flakingred-brown. "I was working in my fields when I heard Heimdall'shorn," he explained. "I had little time to prepare beforethe battle was joined." The final battle: Ragnarok.

Hecould remember little after Heimdall's signal had echoed throughout theuniverse, summoning all creation to the last great war. To Alfarnin, it hadbeen a blur of images—flashing blades, thundering war horses, razor-sharpclaws—and a cacophony of sound—the battle cries of the gods, the answeringbellow of giants, steel clanging against steel. And above all, the screams ofthe dying. So many screams.

Butit was over now. The warriors, both those who fought for Light and those forDark, were still, their voices silenced forever. And somehow, miraculously,impossibly, Alfarnin, a simple tender of crops, was the lone survivor.

Andthen he remembered what the old woman had named herself. "Skuld, yousaid. You are one of the Norns, the three Fates."

"Iam. She whose province is the future."

Alfarninlooked out across the endless open graveyard that surrounded them. There wereno buzzing flies, no feasting gore crows. The air was motionless, flat anddead.

Hespoke in a weary, hollow voice. "After this day, I would think thereis no future."

Skuldchuckled dryly. "That, my dear elf, is entirely up to you."

GeraldWinnick, all of twenty-four years old, stood at the altar sweating and waitingfor the Wedding March to begin. His rented tux was too loose around the waistand too tight around the throat. He was having trouble breathing, and whatlittle air he did get in lay hot and heavy in his lungs.

Hisgroomsmen stood beside him, three of his best friends from high school, but theway he felt, he might as well have been alone. They weren't the ones gettingmarried today, they weren't the ones gambling their entire future on the nexthalf an hour or so.

Itwasn't that he didn't love Laura—he did—but the idea of being married to her,being her Husband with a capital H, freaked him out more than a little.Intellectually, he knew it was just a ceremony, a few words and an exchange ofrings, a confirmation of a love that already existed, no big deal.

Butemotionally, it felt as if something new was about to happen, something almostmagical. His whole world—and Laura's, too, of course—was about to changeforever.

Thepriest smiled at Gerald kindly, then gave a nod for the organist to startplaying. As soon as the familiar strains of the Wedding March began (thoughGerald had never heard them outside of a movie or TV show before), Lauraappeared in the rear of the church, holding on to her father's arm. They stoodthere a moment, then began slowly walking forward arm in arm. Laura wasbeaming, and her father looked as if this were the proudest, and perhaps in away saddest, day of his life.

Geraldstarted trembling. He loved Laura, but she was a bit self-centered, tended tothink of herself before anyone else, and while she expected him to share everylittle feeling he had, she was reticent about sharing hers. And a dozen otherthings, minor complaints, really, mostly tiny quirks and eccentricities whicheveryone had, Lord knows he had his share, but when you took his weirdness andhers and put them together...

Lauraand her father reached the foot of the altar. Her father kissed her on thecheek, then she kissed him. Then they turned to face the priest.

"Whogives this woman away?" the priest asked in a voice which filled thechurch. It seemed to Gerald as if God himself were talking.

"Hermother and I," Laura's father answered clearly. Then he gave Laura alast kiss and sat in a pew next to her mother while Laura mounted the steps tostand next to Gerald. Her maid of honor stepped down to arrange her train, thentook her place once more.

Thepriest began talking but Gerald wasn't listening. He looked at Laura and shesmiled at him, a smile full of love and hope, with not a hint of nervousness.Gerald felt her love for him, and while it didn't wash away his doubtscompletely, it went a long way toward blunting them.

Heknew then that he had been waiting for something, for some sort of cosmicguarantee that he was doing the right thing. But it was a guarantee that wasn'tforthcoming. He knew now that there were no sure things in life, and that a bigpart of love, real love, was faith. The question was, did he have that kind offaith in Laura? In himself? In them?

Whenthe time came, Gerald said "I do," and, even if his voicequavered a bit, he was sure he meant it.

"Wakeup, elf!"

Alfarninopened his eyes and rubbed the sleep out of them. The sky above was the samedull gray it had been when he'd lain down. Skuld had said there was no timeanymore, so there would be no sunrise, no sunset, just endless gray.

Alfarninrose to his feet. Skuld stood a few feet away, hands on her hips, and while theelf still couldn't see into the shadowed depths of her hood, he had theimpression she was looking at him disapprovingly.

"Youcertainly sleep a good deal," the Norn grumbled.

Alfarninbrushed dirt from his tunic. He had had to move several bodies in order toclear a space to sleep. There was no way he could move a giant, even thoughsome of them were hardly larger than man-sized. Nor could he move one of theAesir, not just because he was loathe to dishonor one of the gods even indeath, but because despite their normal size, they tended to be made of sternerstuff than men and were far heavier than they looked. The dwarves, while lessdense structurally, were still heavy enough, and, being a light elf, Alfarnincouldn't bring himself to touch one of the hated dark elves. So in the end, hehad moved some of his own lithesome people and prayed for forgiveness to thespirit of Frey, who among other things was—or rather, had been—god of elves.

"Itraveled quite a distance yesterday." Alfarnin realized such conceptsas yesterday and tomorrow had no meaning any longer, but he knew no other wayto express himself. "I was weary."

Skuldsnorted. "An illusion, nothing more. Your body felt tired because itexpected to. But without Time, you cannot tire." She gestured towardthe endless expanse of bodies that surrounded them. "Have you notnoticed that the corpses do not rot? That rigor has not claimed them? They areas fresh as the moment life fled them. No time is passing here, elf, becauseTime itself has died."

"IfTime has died, then why do I seem to experience it? Why must I still walk onestep after the other? Why do I still sleep and dream?"

"Itold you, it's an illusion!" Skuld said impatiently. "Youonly think—" She broke off. "Did you say you dreamed?"

Alfarninnodded and told the Norn of his strange dream, of being a young human on theday of joining to his mate.

Skuldsaid nothing at first. Finally, she made a dismissive gesture. "Weexist in an in-between state here, between Life and Death, Existence andNothingness. Odd experiences are to be expected in such a place."

Alfarninshrugged. He was no mage or philosopher, just a simple farmer. Such weightymatters were beyond him. Still, it had been an interesting dream. Alfarninhimself had never been fortunate enough to be allowed to take a wife; the elflord who ruled the lands he farmed had never seen fit to grant his permission.

Alfarninput the dream out of his mind. He had work to do. "Are you going toaccompany me this day, Skuld? Or are you going to remain behind as you didyesterday?"

"Ihave no need to walk with you, elf. When you reach your destination, I shall bethere."

"Verywell." He started walking, picking his way carefully around thebodies of the fallen warriors, stepping over them and, when he had no choice,on them. He walked in no particular direction, for according to Skuld, hedidn't have to bother with that. He simply needed to concentrate on his goaland continue forward.

Itdidn't seem so simple to him. As Skuld had explained to him"yesterday," he was to find the body of Allfather Odin, and tear theheart from His chest. And then the elf was to bear the heart to Yggdrasill anduse it to renew creation itself.

Alfarnin,as did all who lived, knew the prophecy of Ragnarok and what was to occurafterward. The gods and their allies would perish while bravely standingagainst the forces of Darkness. For a time, the world would be as ashes, coldand barren, but then a spark of life would return and creation would beginagain, new and vital.

Butthe tales had never said exactly how the world would be restored. But Skuld hadknown. Being the Future, how could she not?

Heremembered how she had explained it to him.

"Thinkof Existence as a wheel, elf," she had said not long after his firstawakening. "A wheel which is constantly in motion, turning slowlyfrom today to tomorrow, one day following the next in stately progression untilthe end is reached and the wheel grinds to a halt. But the Wheel is circular;it has no true beginning and end. All it needs to resume its turning is a push.A push which you shall give, elf."

"Me?" hehad said, incredulous. "Such a task is for a god, or a great hero!I'm not even a proper warrior!"

"True," Skuldhad agreed, a little too quickly for Alfarnin. "But you are all thatremains. I would do it myself if I could, but I cannot. The Future can makeitself known, but it cannot create itself."

Alfarninhadn't been sure he understood the difference, but Skuld said that was the bestexplanation she could give, and he had no choice but to accept it.

"Whatwill the new world be like?" he asked.

"Muchthe same as the old. The wheel has turned many, many times before this. Therehave been other Ragnaroks; this was merely the latest."

"HaveI always been the only one to survive?" Alfarnin asked.

Skuldlaughed. "Don't flatter yourself, elf! The cycle of Existence has itsvariations. There is always at least one survivor of the final battle,sometimes more, and I always guide them so that they might restart the wheel onits endless journey. This is the first time you have survived the battle. Lasttime it was Loki." She shook her head. "Getting him tostart the wheel again took quite some doing."

Alfarninhadn't particularly wanted this duty, what Skuld called "a greathonor." After the horrors he had witnessed—and committed—during Ragnarok,he would have rather lain down and surrender to the ultimate darkness, so hemight forget.

Butif he truly was the only one left, he had no choice, did he? Besides, Skuld hadassured him that when the wheel began its new cycle, he would eventually bereborn, quite likely in a higher station because of his actions.

"Whoknows?" she had said, "you might even end up a lessergod."

Sonow here Alfarnin was, traipsing through the grisly aftermath of the finalbattle, searching for the corpse of the Allfather, without any more guidanceother than Skuld's assurances that as long as he continued on, the elf wouldeventually stumble across—

Hestopped. There, in the sky. Was that... Yes, it was. Off in the distance,circling in the air, was a large black raven. It seemed Skuld had been right;he had found what he was looking for.

Alfarninhurried forward.

Gerald,all of thirty now, stood next to his wife, arm around her shoulders, and triedto radiate calm and strength, despite the fact he was scared to death.

Laurawore a blue housecoat and ugly green slippers, the latter provided by thehospital. Her hair was limp and mussed, her face pale, eyes red from crying.Gerald felt like crying himself, but he wouldn't allow it, not in front ofLaura. She needed him to be strong.

Makethat they needed him to be strong. Gerald turned away fromLaura and looked through the window at the tiny being who, along with his wife,he’d made. Nurses bustled around the small (so small) infant, a girl, whodidn't have a name yet because she'd come so early. Eight weeks, to be precise.

Thenurses checked various tubes and monitors while Gerald's tiny daughter laymotionless within the sterile warmth of her incubator. It was a poor substitutefor a mother's womb, but it would have to do.

Theirbaby looked so frail, so weak, so tired, as if it exhausted her just to breatheand pump blood through her not-quite-finished body. She needed a name, they hadto think of a name. But right now, Gerald couldn't do anything except hope toGod the tiny thing lived a few more hours.

Tearsbegan to flow down well-traveled paths on Laura's cheeks. Gerald tore his gazefrom his struggling daughter. "It'll be okay, honey," hesaid. He forced a smile. "She's a fighter, just like her mom." Hedidn't quite manage to sound as confident as he'd have liked, but Laura smiledat him gratefully and wrapped her arms around his waist. And they stood likethat, together, and watched, waited, and prayed.

Alfarninstopped, disoriented and dizzy. He stood before the shaggy, blood-matted corpseof a great wolf, many times larger than any ordinary lupine. This was Fenrir,child of Loki, and, according to the prophecy of Ragnarok, the slayer of Odin.And above, circling slowly, was the midnight-black raven.

Alfarnindidn't recall anything from the moment he had first spotted the raven in thesky, didn't remember crossing the intervening distance. No, that wasn't quitetrue. He had had another of those strange dreams. Only this hadn't been adream, had it, for he had been awake. A vision of some kind, then. But a visionof what, exactly, Alfarnin wasn't certain.

"Somethingwrong, elf?"

Skuldstood beside him, as she had promised. Alfarnin started to tell the Norn of hisvision, but then decided against it. It hardly seemed important, not comparedto the task which lay before him. He shook his head and examined the body ofthe huge beast that had been the great wolf Fenrir.

Fromthe tales Alfarnin had heard all his long life, he had expected Fenrir to bequite a terror, but despite the wolf's gigantic size, it made no moreimpression on him than the thousands of other corpses he had seen in thetimeless interval since first awakening. Perhaps the horrors he had witnessedduring Ragnarok and after had numbed him. Or perhaps even the dire wolf Fenrirdidn't seem so fearsome when compared to the sick, helpless terror of a parentdesperately praying for the survival of his ailing child.

"Elf?" theNorn prompted, a measure of concern in her voice.

Alfarninshook his head once more and did his best to cast the vision from his mind. Hewas an elf, not a man of Midgard, and work lay before him.

Fenrir'sjaws had been torn apart by Odin's son Vidar, taking vengeance for his father'sdeath. Or so it must have been if the tales held true.

"Itstrikes me as odd, Skuld."

"Whatdoes, elf?"

"ThatOdin and the other Aesir, knowing how Ragnarok was to turn out, did nothing totry to change it."

Skuld'stone was that of an impatient parent lecturing a slow-witted child. "Itwas predestined; there was nothing they could do but play out their assignedroles. The Wheel turns, and both gods and mortals follow, whether they like itor not."

"Theyhardly seem like gods, then, do they?" the elf mused. "Morelike dancers stepping out their well-rehearsed movements to someone else'stune."

"Suchis the way of existence," Skuld said.

Alfarninsaid nothing. Instead, he pointed his hand scythe at a black form which laypartially buried beneath one of Fenrir's huge front paws. "Anotherraven." He knelt down and prodded it with the blade of his scythe,but it didn't respond. "Dead."

"Huginn," Skuldsaid. "The raven of Thought. When Odin perished so did it likewise,for the Allfather was done with thinking."

Alfarningestured to the other raven still circling above. "And thatone?"

"Muninn,the raven of Memory. Odin may be gone, but as long as we are here to rememberHim, Muninn lives on."

Alfarninnodded, though the Norn's explanation made little sense to him. "Whatdo I do now?"

"Itold you—you need to retrieve the Allfather's heart." She pointed tothe belly of the great wolf, and Alfarnin remembered: Fenrir was supposed todevour Odin.

Heglanced at his scythe's dulled blade. It would hardly do the job. He began tosearch the fallen warriors, looking for a dagger—a very sharp dagger.

Hourslater—or at least what seemed like hours later—Alfarnin stepped back from thewolf's open gut and dragged a gore-smeared forearm across his sweaty brow. Hisgray farmer's tunic was soaked with blood, which refused to dry: anotherfeature of the timelessness of this place, according to Skuld. Alfarnin wishedhe had possessed the foresight to remove his clothing before beginning hisgrisly work.

"Youare close, elf," Skuld said. "I can feel it!"

Alfarnintook a deep breath, ignored the pain from his unhealing wounds, and steppedback into the beast's carcass. After a bit, he reached what he thought was thecreature's stomach, and with a final downward swipe of the elf's borroweddagger, the leathery organ parted. A flood of foul-smelling liquid gushedforth, splashing onto Alfarnin. His gorge rose instantly, and he turned away,fully expecting to empty the contents of his own stomach, but though he retchedviolently, nothing came up. He didn't have to ask Skuld; this was no doubt yetanother result of the strange nature of this place.

Whenthe urge to vomit subsided, Alfarnin turned back to the cavity he had createdin Fenrir and there, mangled and curled into a ball, reposed the body of Odin,Allfather, Lord of the Aesir and all creation.

Alfarninhad never seen Odin before, though he had heard many, many tales of the godover the centuries. And truth to tell, he was rather disappointed. He hadexpected to find an imposing, kingly being. But instead, Odin was a tall, leanold man with a long scraggly gray beard and a black leather patch over one eye,or rather, where an eye had once been. His golden battle armor seemed too largefor the scrawny body, as if its owner were a beggar who had suddenly beenpressed into service instead of being the all-powerful god of gods.

Itwas difficult for Alfarnin to understand why such a mighty being, forewarned ofsuch an ignominious end, would not choose to take steps to avoid it. Unless, asSkuld had said, He had had no choice. Well, Odin had played out His part; so,too, would Alfarnin.

"Forgiveme, Allfather," he whispered, then raised his dagger and returned tohis work. A bit later, he held in his hand a blood-smeared orb of polishedsilver. The Heart of Odin.

Skuldclapped her withered hands in glee. "One more journey, elf, and youare through. You must take the heart to the base of Yggdrasill. As before, keepyour destination strongly in your mind as you walk, and you shall eventuallyreach the World Tree. I shall await you there."

Andthen she was gone.

Alfarninwiped the heart off on the cloak of one of the low-ranking Aesir lying not farfrom Fenrir, tucked his dagger in his belt, and then, even though he really didnot need it any longer, he picked up his scythe. He had started his journey asa farmer, and it seemed only right that he finish it as such.

Hebegan to walk, but stopped when he heard a soft thump behind him. He turned tosee Odin's second raven, Muninn, lying dead on the ground. Now that theAllfather had surrendered His heart, what need was there to remember Himanymore? Alfarnin looked across the field of corpses. What need to remember anyof this?

Reekingof blood and gastric juices, he resumed his journey.

Geraldwas thirty-nine, too young to have to worry about words like tumor and chemotherapy.But his cancer hadn't bothered to ask for his I.D. before inviting itself intohis body and settling in. Now, after three surgeries (one major, two minor) hesat in a waiting room of the outpatient care wing of Holland Memorial Hospital,wracked with nausea from his latest chemo treatment, trying to choke down ahorrid concoction of powdered lemon drink mix and contrast dye that would makehis innards more photogenic for the CT scan.

Hisoncologist said his chances for a cure were good; not great, but good. SoGerald endured the surgeries, the CT scans, the blood tests, the x-rays, thechemo, and worst of all, the soul-gnawing fear that in the end, none of itwould be enough. Because he desperately wanted to live.

Notso much for himself. Given the choice, he wanted to squeeze as many years outof his life as he possibly could, but he'd lived to thirty-nine, and overall,he was satisfied with the time he'd had. And while he wanted to live for Laura,he knew he didn't need to. Their marriage hadn't exactly been storybookperfect, but it had, on balance, been a good one. But Laura was still young, atleast relatively so, and she was a strong woman. If she had to, she'd get bywithout him, maybe even find someone and remarry. Knowing this comforted him.

No,he wanted to live primarily for Caitlin. She'd be ten next month, and eventhough she was getting to be quite a big girl, he couldn't bear the thought ofleaving his daughter without a daddy.

Andso he sat in the uncomfortable waiting room chair, his gut churning angrily,and concentrated on holding the contrast down.

Whenthis latest vision released Alfarnin, he found himself standing at the base ofwhat appeared to be a craggy gray mountain. He looked up to see, beyond theclouds, a vast canopy of green covering the sky. No, which was thesky. He had reached Yggdrasill, and as with Fenrir, he had no memory oftraveling here. Perhaps Skuld had been right and there really was no Time inthis place.

"Ofcourse I was right."

TheNorn stood before him, features still hidden within her hood. Her feet touchedthe edge of one of the World Tree's three gigantic roots.

"Iremember the tales," Alfarnin said. "This is the rootbeneath which the Well of Fate rests."

Skuldnodded. "And where the gods themselves came to hold council each day.As guardian of the Well, I often listened in as they talked." Shechuckled. "Or more often, argued."

Alfarninfrowned. "What of your sisters, Urd and Verdandi? Past andPresent?"

"Weare One." Skuld opened her robe to reveal not the body of a wrinkledold crone as her voice promised, but rather an empty black space in the middleof which hung the motionless shape of an ancient, crude spinning wheel. At thecenter of the wheel was a circular depression, just the right size, Alfarninthought, for the heart of Odin.

"Past,present, future..." Skuld snorted. "Merely names. They areone and the same. See the Wheel. Does it have a beginning or end? No, it is acircle, unbroken. We are One, and that one is the Wheel."

"Itisn't moving."

"TheWheel has completed its cycle. It's up to the last survivor of Ragnarok—toyou—to give it a push and start it turning again."

Alfarnindidn't have to ask what was expected of him. All he had to do to renew creationwas to place the holy heart in the center of the Wheel, and all would beginagain. It was his duty, to his gods, to his fallen elven brothers and sisters,to all who had fought and died in service to the Light. But he hesitated.

"Thevisions I experienced, Norn—what did they signify?"

"Theyare nothing, elf," Skuld snapped. "Now fulfill your purposethis cycle and give me the heart!"

"Whyhere? Why did you not ask for the heart when I first removed it fromOdin?"

"Becauseonly here, at the base of Yggdrasill, am I truly one with the Wheel. But forgetall that; the time for explanations is past. Give me the heart!"

"Whydon't you take it from me?"

"Itold you, the future cannot make itself! You must make it, here and now!"

"Tellme about the visions, Norn." Alfarnin smiled. "After all,if there is no Time any longer, then we have no need to hurry, do we?"

Skuldwas silent for a while before finally sighing. "Very well. I told youthat there is always at least one survivor of Ragnarok, and that it is thissurvivor's task to renew creation. During the journey to salvage Odin's heartand bring it to the World Tree, the survivor has three visions of what his lifein the next cycle will be like, so that he understands why he must restart theWheel and what his reward will be."

"Myvisions were of mortal life as a man of Midgard," Alfarninsaid. "But a Midgard unlike any I have ever heard tell of."

"Beingthe Future, I am quite aware of the visions you experienced." Shepaused. "However, I fear that I cannot explain them."

"Perhapsthe next cycle will be different from the last," Alfarnin suggested.

"Impossible.The Wheel is the Wheel. There may be minute variations in its turning, but thepath remains ever the same. It begins with creation, then comes the rise andflourishing of the gods, and then Ragnarok, turning after turning, cycle aftercycle, without end."

Alfarninthought for a moment. "What if I do not give you the heart? What ofthe Wheel then?"

"Youhave no choice; you must give me the heart. It is the role appointed you bydestiny."

"Ithink you are lying, Norn. You told me before that once the Wheel stopped, Timeceased to be. Before Ragnarok, I was just another of Fate's puppets. But Ithink many things have ceased to be now, Fate among them. For the first momentin my existence, I am truly free to choose."

Skuldsaid nothing.

"Irepeat my question," Alfarnin said. "What happens to theWheel if I do not give you the heart?"

"Withoutthe heart—which is the heart of Creation itself—the Wheel cannot continue toexist. It shall cease to be, as will Existence itself."

"Allexistence?" Alfarnin challenged. "Or just this one?"

Skulddidn't respond.

"YourWheel is a prison, Skuld. Perhaps it's time for creation to be free." Alfarninheld the heart of Odin in his left hand and raised his scythe above it with hisright.

"Hold,elf! You don't know what you're saying! Without the Wheel to give shape andform to existence, all will be Chaos! Events will unfold randomly, and no oneshall ever know what might occur next, for anything might happen, anything atall!"

"Consideringthe senseless carnage of Ragnarok—of Ragnaroks untold—I think not knowing whattomorrow will bring might be better." Alfarnin raised the scythehigher.

"Thinkhard before you act, elf," Skuld warned. "This other,lesser Midgard you would create would be naught but a bastardized world whereuncertainty and ambiguity rule in place of the gods. There would be no fixedroles, no set future, no clear division between Good and Evil. In that world,you would be but a mortal man, weak, frail, doomed to fret over petty anxietiesand frustrations all of your short life. Here, in Asgard, you were—and could beagain—an elven warrior, fighting on the side of Light in the most gloriousbattle creation has ever known!"

"Glorious?" Alfarninthought of the slaughter he had witnessed, and its aftermath. "Meaninglessis more like it." He tightened his grip on the scythe. "Andthe man Gerald will be far more of a warrior in his quiet, unsure way than theelf Alfarnin ever was."

Hebrought the scythe down and plunged its blade into the silver heart of Odin.Skuld screamed, the Wheel cracked apart like thunder, and the world was nomore.

"We'reready for you now, Mr. Winnick," the CT technician, a heavy-setblonde woman, said gently.

Geraldnodded, set down his empty cup, and stood too quickly. His vision went gray andhe swayed dizzily. He thought for a moment he might fall, but then thetechnician came forward to take his elbow. His vision cleared, the dizzinesspassed, and he smiled gratefully at the woman, only a little embarrassed.

Withthe technician's help, Gerald made his way out of the waiting room and walkedslowly down the hall toward the CT room, one unsteady step after another.

 

 

MyStokerCon Schedule

In addition to being on a bunch of panels, giving a reading, and presenting a writing workshop, I’m one of the Guests of Honor this year, I’m up for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection, and I’m co-presenting the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction with Cindy O’Quinn. I am going to be busy!

Ifyou’re at the con, feel free to talk to me anytime.

Here's my official schedule:
Thursday, June 12

·      6:00pm   Public Domain Horror: Panel with FrancesLu-Pai Ippotito, Eric J. Guinard, Cynthia Pelayo, and Patrick Barb

·      8:00pm   Opening Ceremony

Friday,June 13

·      11:00am   Horror University: Into Darkness I Go:The Horror Hero’s Journey

·      1:00pm    What Horror Means to Me: Librarian’s Day panelwith Adam Nevill, Paula Guran, Joyce Carol Oates, Scott Edelman, Gary Triana, andLila Denning.

·      2:00pm    The Tangled Skein of Short Stories:Panel with James Chambers, Ananda Lima, Lisa Morton, Norman Prentiss, andCrystal O’Leary-Davidson (Livestreamed session)

·      4:00pm     Mass Author Signing

Saturday June 14

·      8:00am     Breakfast with the Guests of Honor: With AdamNevill, Paula Guran, De Howison, Scott Edelman, and Gaby Triana

·      11:00am   Reading with Logan Alexander Johnsonand Jessica Drake-Thomas

·      12:00pm   Perspectives on the Writing Life:From Rookie to Veteran: Panel with Adam Nevill, Paula Guran, Joyce Carol Oates,Scott Edelman, John Langan, and Gaby Triana (Livestreamed session)

·      2:00pm     Crafting Original Monsters: Panelwith Cassadra Khaw, Nat Cassidy, C.J. Leede, S.A. Barnes, and Michael Arnzen (Livestreamedsession)

·      3:00pm     Writing Horror Novelizations andMedia Tie-Ins: Panel with V. Castro and Linda D. Addison (Livestreamed Session)

·      6:00pm     Bram Stoker Awards CocktailReception

·      7:00pm     Bram Stoker Awards Banquet

·      8:00pm     Bram Stoker Awards Presentation(Livestreamed)

SundayJune 15

·      12:00pm   Closing Ceremony

I’llhave the following books available from the official con bookseller:

·      OldMonsters Never Die –Finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Fiction thisyear!

·      Lordof the Feast

·    Terrifier2:

·      X:The Official Novelization

·      Pearl:The Official Novelization

·      Maxxxine:The Official Novelization

Youcan also buy Old Monsters Never Die from Winding Roads Stories in the Dealer’sRoom.

You’llbe able to buy Just Add Writer: Writing Media Tie-Ins and IP from RawDog Screaming Press in the Dealer’s Room. They’ll also have copies of Writingin the Dark, Writing in the Dark: The Workbook, and Let Me TellYou a Story.

And the big news...with luck, I'll have an unannounced extreme horror novella that will debut at the con!

For moreinformation about StokerCon, go here: https://www.stokercon2025.com/

 

Today – May 14, 2025 – my latest how-to-writebook, Just Add Writer, is officially unleashed upon an unsuspectingworld! This book focuses on writing media tie-in fiction and nonfiction, and towhet your appetite (and hopefully get you to order a copy), I’ve posted thefirst chapter below.

 

About thebook:

 

Thisone-of-a-kind resource provides everything needed on your journey to become aprofessional author of media tie-ins, including:

 

Sample pitches, outlines, and chapters

Advice on honing your “shared world” writing skills

Real-world examples of IP assignments

Strategies for finding IP work

Tips for completing jobs quickly

 

Plus,there are interviews with industry professionals included throughout the book,so you get different perspectives on the craft and business of writing tie-ins.

 

JUST ADD WRITER

CHAPTER ONE

OVERVIEW OF MEDIA TIE-IN FICTION

 

 

What is Media Tie-In Fiction?

A media tie-in is an work of prose fiction based on characters/settings/scenarioscreated and owned by someone else. And these IP’s – intellectual properties –originally appeared in different forms of media: a movie, a TV show, avideogame, a board game, a comic, etc. A writer is hired specifically by the licenseholder – often via a publisher – to produce this work. The license holder isboss, and the writer is a hired hand. You create what the license holder wantsand the final product must meet the license holder’s approval. Your name willbe on the book, but the license holder owns everything in it – every character,event, and setting, even the ones you’ve created whole cloth. While you haverestrictions regarding what you can and can’t do with the IP, there is room forindividual creativity and style, just not as much as when you write your ownoriginal fiction.

Why would anyone want to write under theseconditions?

Writing tie-in fiction is fun

Like any other writing, it’s work, but it’s funwork. I published my first tie-in story in 1997, and in the decades since,I’ve gotten to write fiction based on Supernatural,The X-Files, Alien, Doctor Who, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Transformers, Halloween and more. My imagination was shaped by popculture as I grew up, and it’s been wonderful to make a contribution, howeversmall, to so many media properties I’ve loved.

It’s challenging

We’ll go over specific techniques for writingtie-in fiction in later chapters, but tie-ins require you to understand themedia property – the milieu, the characters, their voices – and bring it tolife in prose form while adding much more depth. You need to collaborateclosely with the license holder and please them, while also writing a bookyou’re proud of. It’s a complex balancing act, and I find it stretches me indifferent ways than writing my original fiction does.

You may write in different genres, so there’svariety

One time you write a kids’ novel based on aspace adventure property, the next you write a novelization of a fantasy film, afterthat you write a military adventure based on a videogame, and then you write ashort story about an iconic horror villain for an anthology. Sure, some tie-inwriters find a niche – such as writing Star Trek novels – and stick withit throughout their careers, but others enjoy the freedom that comes from notknowing what their next gig will be.

You develop different writing skills

I already mentioned several such skills when Idiscussed challenges above. In addition, you have to learn how to takesomething that’s primarily experienced by the senses and communicate it inwords. Food critics, sports writers, nature writers, travel writers all do thesame thing. With media tie-in fiction, you’re usually taking visual media ofsome sort (often with sound effects and special effects) and translating itinto prose. You also may broaden your research skills because you’ll need tofind information on some specialized topics, like what an elephant smells like,how high satellites orbit the Earth, or how fast Sonic the Hedgehog can run.

You have a knack for it (not every writerdoes)

Some writers can move between genres andstyles easier than others. Same for those writers whose imaginations can slipinside characters and worlds they didn’t create. Some writers can work withinthe collaborative dynamic of tie-in writing, some prefer not to, and some wouldrather die than not have total control over their fiction. If you do have theknack and the right temperament, tie-in writing might be for you.

You get paid

You’re not going to get rich writing tie-ins. Forthat matter, you’re not going to get rich writing any kind of fiction. Yeah,there are authors who are exceptions to this rule, but not many. If you want tomake money writing, write nonfiction or get into ghostwriting. I write fictionbecause I love it, and it’s the truest, deepest expression of who I am. Thetype of fiction I love to write best is horror and dark fantasy, the weirder,the better. Because of this, most of my novels have been published by medium tosmall presses, and the advances range from okay to laughably small (ornonexistent). I tend to get higher advances for tie-in novels than for myoriginal fiction (but not always). I might get ten times the advance from atie-in publisher than I would from a small-press one. I have a day job as acollege English professor, so I don’t have to live off my writing, but my bankaccount always welcomes money from tie-in advances. And there’s been more thanone time when that money has made a big difference during unforeseen disasters,such as suddenly needing to buy a new car or replace the roof on my house. Ifsomeone were able to write several tie-in novels a year and could count on theincome being steady year in and year out (which is a mighty big if),they could conceivably support themselves entirely from their writing.

Types of Tie-In Fiction

Novelizations: a film script turned into a novel.

Novels, Novellas, Short Stories: new fiction using characters or a setting owned by a license holder.

Comics: new stories or a film adaptation featuring characters or a setting owned by a license holder.

Fictional Nonfiction: A nonfiction form such as a journal, memoir, autobiography, or guidebook that is written as if a character owned by a license holder composed it.

Material for Young Readers: Writing for young adult, middle-grade, and child audiences in any of the above categories.

How is Tie-In Fiction Different Than FanFiction?

The key difference appears in the firstsentence of this chapter: officially licensed.

 Justlike a scriptwriter is hired to write an episode of your favorite TV series ora sequel to a movie you love, tie-in writers are professionals hired to writefiction based on a media property that you love. We might be fans of theproperty too, or we might not. (If we aren’t, we might become fans during theprocess of writing about a property.) Fan fiction is written by enthusiasts whowant to interact with a media property they love in a creative way. I’m by nomeans knocking fan fiction. My version of King Kong vs Godzilla was fanfiction, and so were my Bionic Team comics (especially since I wouldsometimes have media characters like Spider-Man, Darth Vader, or Kermit theFrog show up in stories. Did I mention the comics were comedy as much asadventure?).

Fan fiction writers are amateurs, maybe onlyin the sense that they aren’t being paid for their work, but also because theymay be new at the craft of fiction writing and are still learning. Since theyaren’t writing at the direction of a license holder, they can do whatever theywant in their stories with no restrictions. They can even have characters fromone franchise interact with characters from another, something the individual licenseholders might never permit. People read, write, and share fan fiction for fun,and there’s not a damn thing wrong with that. And some people use it as atraining ground before going on to write original fiction of their own.

License holders, including creators oforiginal work, are officially supposed to disapprove of fan fiction because ifthey don’t, they’re giving others tacit permission to use their IP, and theymight end up losing the copyright to it. My guess is that most writers don’tcare if fan fiction based on their characters exists or they’re actuallyflattered by it, but they have to pretend they don’t approve of it inorder to maintain copyright to their work. So don’t use any of my originalcharacters or settings in your fan fiction. I do not approve (wink, wink).

Later in the book, I’ll talk more aboutwriting fan fiction as a way to prepare yourself to write tie-in fiction.

How Tie-In Fiction DOESN’T Work

·      You can’t decide to write a piece of tie-infiction on your own and then publish it. I once received anemail from a gentleman who’d finished an Alien novel and wanted to knowwho at Titan Books he should contact about getting it published. I feltterrible for this guy, but I had to explain to him how the tie-in process works.Book editors obtain a license to publish a certain amount of tie-in novelsabout a specific IP, like Alien, they seek out established authors andcontract them to write the books. The editor and the license holder shape theidea for the book along with the writer, and once they approve a final outlinefor a novel, then the writer can begin writing it. I advised the man to makeenough changes to his book so that it no longer was a strict tie-in to Alienbut a piece of fiction that was clearly inspired by Alien while stillbeing original. Pro writers refer to this as filing off the serial numbers.I don’t know what the guy did, but I hope he started writing original fiction.

·      You can’t begin your writing career by writingtie-in fiction. There are exceptions. For example, if you workfor a game company that wants to start producing tie-in fiction based on theirproperties, and they intend to publish it themselves, they might hire someonefrom within the company to write it. But this is rare. Editors and licenseholders want to hire established writers to produce tie-in fiction.

·      You won’t land a tie-in writing gig justbecause you’re a huge fan of a media property. Editorsand license holders like it if you’re a fan of an IP, but it isn’t necessary. Theywant to know that you’re a professional writer with a good track record ofproducing publishable fiction. They know such writers can learn about the IPquickly enough to get up to speed.

MythsAbout Writing Tie-In Fiction

·      Tie-in fiction is inferior hack work. Backin the 1950s and 1960s, it wasn’t uncommon for some publishers to bring outquickly written tie-in novels that had simplistic plots written in equallysimple prose. But those days were over a long time ago. Tie-in fiction writers todaywork as hard at their craft as any other writer. Since tie-in fiction iswritten to entertain, you’re not going to see experimental narrative techniquesor in-depth character studies more common to literary writers, but you will geta damn good book to read.

·      Tie-in fiction is easier to write thanoriginal fiction. It’s no easier or harder to write thanoriginal fiction. It’s just different, and it’s not even all that different. Allthe same basic skills of writing good fiction apply – characterization, plot,setting, description, dialogue, use of language, pace . . . The collaborativenature of writing tie-in fiction might make it harder for some writers, though,along with adapting their voice and style to that of the IP property.

·      Tie-in writers only care about money. Hell,who doesn’t care about money? Writers have to eat just like everyone else. Butmoney isn’t the sole motivation for writers. If all we wanted was to makemoney, we would’ve become doctors or lawyers. But tie-in fiction writersconsider themselves professionals, so of course they wish to be paid for theirlabor. Beyond this, since the license holder will own all the rights to anywork tie-in writers produce, writers can never make any additional profit offit. If they aren’t paid for writing a book or story, they won’t receive anymoney for their time, effort, and creativity.

·      Writing about public domain characters istie-in fiction, too. Tie-in fiction is officially licensed by alicense holder, remember? Public domain characters and settings are no longer ownedby individual people or companies. They’re owned by the world. That’s whypeople can write books, produce comics, and make films based on Dracula andFrankenstein. Beyond the legal reason, there’s an artistic reason such worksaren’t tie-ins. You have the freedom to do whatever you want with thesecharacters. Want to make Baron Frankenstein into Baroness Frankenstein? Go forit. Want to make King Arthur an android sent from the future to be King ofBritain? Write that story! Want to make Winnie-the-Pooh into a horror movievillain? Too late – someone’s already beat you to it. There’s no one to tellyou what you can and can’t do with these characters, and you can follow yourcreative impulses wherever they take you. Later, we’ll talk about how you canuse writing about public domain characters as preparation for writing officiallylicensed tie-in fiction.

You could make the argument that fictiongenres like science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror, mystery, western, etc. areactually tie-ins, in the sense that they’re based on successful stories thatwere once original and considered Literature with a capital L. These storiesinfluenced publishers and writers to imitate them, and readers loved them andwanted more. Over time, the tropes in these genres became so codified thatwriters could consciously follow them. Writers have lots of freedom whenemploying these tropes, but they have restrictions, too. Murders must be solvedby the end of mystery novels, romance novels need to have a happily ever afterending, etc. Writers of literary fiction tend to view writers of genre fictionas producing formulaic fiction (which is why I think it’s hysterical when somegenre writers look down on tie-in writers.)

OTHER TYPES OF TIE-IN FICTION

Fiction Written Under House Names

A house name is when a publisher creates a bookseries where each volume may be written by different authors, but for marketingpurposes, is credited to a single, shared pseudonym. Sometimes this name is anauthor who started the series, and the publisher buys the right to use theirname as the author on future editions. For example, Don Pendleton, creator ofthe Men’s Adventure hero The Executioner, wrote thirty-seven novelsfeaturing his character. The rest of the books in the series – all 416 of them– bore his name but were written by other writers. When writing under a housename, the true author may or may not be credited in some small way. The Executionerbooks would include a statement inside the book, practically hidden among thepublishing information, which went something like this: “Gold Eagleacknowledges REAL AUTHOR’s contribution to this book.” House names were muchmore common in the past, but they’re still used for children’s book series,with Erin Evans of Warriors fame being a notable example.

Are these books tie-ins? It depends on who youask. A lot of publishing professionals regard tie-ins as works of fiction basedon other media properties, such as movies, video games, etc., but not based on otherpeople’s literary creations. On the other hand, as long as someone else ownsthe IP, some do consider books written under a house name to be tie-ins. They’rebasically the same in terms of both craft and business concerns, so I tend tothink of them as tie-ins. And if they aren’t exactly the same thing, they’reclosely related.

Ghostwriting

Ghostwriting is when an author is hired towrite a book that will be published under someone else’s name (often a famous someone),and that person gets all the credit for the writer’s work. That person willalso see all the profits from the book. Writing under a house name is a form ofghostwriting, except the publisher is the one who gets the lion’s share of themoney. Ghostwriting is far more prevalent in nonfiction than fiction, and oftenthe “author” is kind enough to mention the real writer’s “assistance” in theacknowledgements. (This is called a semi-visible ghost because the author’sname does appear in the book, even if the full extent of their contributionisn’t spelled out.) William Shatner did this with his Tek War series,always making sure to credit Ron Goulart as a co-author.

Some years back, fantasy author Dennis L. McKiernan– my friend and mentor – was offered a gig to write a tie-in based on a fantasycomputer game (I don’t recall which one.) Dennis told the publisher he wasn’tinterested, and they asked if they could use his name as the author and havesomeone else ghostwrite the book (paying Dennis a fee for using his name, ofcourse). Dennis politely declined.

Gothic thriller writer V. C. Andrews wrote sevenbooks before she died. Her family hired Andrew Neiderman to produce more booksunder her name, and they kept his identity a secret for many years beforefinally allowing him to tell the public. Neiderman has been writing as “V. C. Andrews”longer than the actual V. C. Andrews did, and he’s produced almost 200 books underher name.

There are also famous writers who eventuallytire of producing new books on the schedule that readers and publishers demand(or who burn out entirely), and sometimes they or their publisher hireghostwriters to continue producing books under their name. I have no idea howprevalent this practice is, but I’ve been told that it happens a lot more thanyou’d think. So if you read the next novel by one of your favorite authors andit sounds like it wasn’t written by them, maybe it wasn’t.

Is ghostwriting a form of tie-in writing? Itdepends on the type you do. If a business person hires you to write a book forthem so they can put their name on it and bolster their credentials as an“expert,” then it’s not tie-in writing. Neither is penning the autobiographyfor a famous movie star, pop singer, or athlete. But if you ghostwrite a novelbased on an IP someone else owns, then it does count. And, of course, thedemarcation can be fuzzy at times.

There’s a moral question at the heart ofghostwriting. Is it fraud? Publishers sell a book as written by a specificperson, and when readers purchase that book, they expect it to actually bewritten by the credited author. If it isn’t, they’re purchasing a productthat’s been falsely advertised. The V. C. Andrews estate included a note witheach of the novels ghostwritten by Neiderman, saying the family selected awriter to write novels based on notes and outlines left behind after the realV.C. Andrews died. This was true for a few books, but Neiderman soon started writing Andrews books on his own, and the note never changed. So not exactlytotal truth in advertising, but a hell of a lot better than most ghostwrittenbooks. Ghostwriting has been around for ages, and publishers don’t consider itfraud, but I’m not so sure they’re right. I’d rather know who wrote the bookI’m buying.

Why would anyone ghostwrite? Some people loveto write but they don’t care whether they receive credit or not. Plus,ghostwriting can pay well, sometimes really well. But unless you getpermission, as Neiderman eventually did, you can never tell anyone that youghostwrote that wildly popular novel currently sitting atop the bestsellerlists. (Your eternal silence is part of the deal.)

I’ve never ghostwritten a book, but I was asemi-visible ghost for two books written with Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson ofSyFy’s Ghost Hunters fame. It was a good experience, the guys weregreat, and I got my name on the cover (even if my name was smaller than Jasonand Grant’s). I don’t count these books as tie-ins, though, since theycontained original characters and storylines.

CURRENT ATTITUDES TOWARD TIE-IN FICTION

In the past, many people wrote tie-in fictionunder a pseudonym, as if they didn’t want people to know they’d done somethingso shameful. But attitudes toward tie-in fiction have changed dramatically overthe years, especially among younger readers and writers. Writing tie-in fictionis seen as cool and something to aspire to. Maybe these younger folks grew upeven more saturated in popular culture than my generation did. And maybe the mainstreamsuccess of properties like Doctor Who and Marvel superheroes have helpedto change attitudes toward tie-in fiction. It’s not uncommon these days for peopleto ask me about my tie-in novels more than my original ones, and they oftenseem impressed by the fact that I write tie-in fiction. Do I resent people notcaring as much about my original fiction? No. I’m just glad people care aboutmy work at all.

Now that you have a solid foundation in thebasics of writing tie-in fiction, starting in the next chapter, I’m going totell you what it’s really like to be a tie-in author. Buckle up! Butfirst . . .

EXERCISES

1) Are there any tie-in novels that you’veread that you especially enjoyed, even loved? Make a list of them. The gothrough the list and write down the specific qualities each book had that madeit so enjoyable for you. When you’re finished, look over the list and see ifyou can find any common elements that stick out. Did the characters affect youthe most? The setting? The action? Getting a sense of what narrative elementsyou respond to most strongly can give you some insight into how you might writeyour own tie-in fiction. More character-oriented, more setting-oriented, etc.

2) Are there any specific IP’s that you’d loveto write for? Make a list, and for each item write a reason why this IP is soattractive to you as a writer. Doing this can give you insight into what kindof IP’s you might like to write for someday – specific ones, of course, such asStar Wars or The Fast and the Furious, but also different genres,like action-adventure, science fiction, or romance.

3) Do you think you’d prefer to write tie-infiction for adults or for young people? Why does writing for one audienceinterest you more than writing for the other? Do you think you might like to focusyour efforts more toward one audience than another? If so, why?

PurchaseLinks

Raw DogScreaming Press

https://rawdogscreaming.com/books/just-add-writer/

Amazon

Hardcover: https://tinyurl.com/mubb4xt

Paperback: https://tinyurl.com/mrpntydd

Kindle:  https://tinyurl.com/28yxzzer

Barnes& Noble

Hardcover: https://tinyurl.com/bdhn56hn

Paperback: https://tinyurl.com/4tnmh7xm

eBook: https://tinyurl.com/j3psv6h6

DEPARTMENTOF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

Conan:Spawn of the Serpent God

 

Speaking ofmedia tie-in novels, I have aConan the Barbarian novel coming from Titan Booksin October! It was a hell of a lot of fun to write, and I hope fans ofsword-and-sorcery action will enjoy it.

 

You canfind various preorder links (for Titan, Amazon, and B&N) at the Titan Bookssite: https://titanbooks.com/72365-conan-spawn-of-the-serpent-god/

 

Synopsis:

 

InZamora, the city of thieves, Conan meets Valja, a thrill-seeking thief. Sheentices him to join

her on aheist, where they steal a golden statuette of Ishtar, said to contain thegoddess herself.

Afterkilling a dozen guards and failing to escape, the pair are saved by priestessesof Mitra. But

Conanknows that nothing is free.

 

Thepriestesses have need of their skills. They have waged war against Set, god ofchaos and

serpents,who demands constant sacrifice from his subjects and massacred thousands of his

followers.Yet they are no match for Uzzeran, a powerful sorcerer, who has been performing

unspeakableexperiments on humans in the name of Set. To defeat Uzzeran, they will need a

legendarywarrior on their side. They need Conan the Barbarian.

 

A formerstudent of mine interviewed me about writing my Conan novel. You can read theinterview here: https://www.blackgate.com/2025/05/11/a-challenge-worth-smiling-about-tim-waggoner-on-writing-conan/

 

Exalted:A Shadow Over Heaven’s Eye

 

 

 

In 2025, myninth novel came out. It was a tie-in based on White Wolf’s Exaltedgame, a wuxia-inspired fantasy setting. It was out of print for nearly twentyyears, but now Crossroads Press has brought it back in both trade paperback andeBook formats!

 

InDefiance of Destiny

 

Maylea isa young noblewoman in the city of Yane, whose future was mapped out on the dayshe was born—how she would live, what she would do, who she would marry… ButMaylea is not content to blindly consign herself to destiny. And when Swan, afreelance diplomat who is supposed to be dead, arrives at her father’s estate,Maylea begins to realize that her true destiny might be writ larger across thestars than anyone ever suspected.

 

Exalted:A Shadow Over Heaven’s Eyeis the fifth in a series of novels based on the hugely successful Exaltedproperty.

 

Amazon

 

Paperback:https://tinyurl.com/3t2ju4nm

 

Kindle: https://tinyurl.com/3kmy3mu8

 

Barnesand Noble

 

Paperback:https://tinyurl.com/yjy2nwjy

 

eBook:  https://tinyurl.com/w5jp722d

 

ScheduledAppearances

 

StokerCon. June 12th toJune 15th. Stamford, Connecticut. I’m one of the guests of honor!

 

Signingat Vortex Books. June 26th, 5-7pm. Columbia, Pennsylvania.

 

Horror onMain. June 27th to June 29th. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I’m a guest of honorhere, too!

 

GenconWriters’ Symposium. July 31st to August 3rd. Indianapolis, Indiana.

 

SocialMedia

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Threads:@tim.waggoner.scribe@threads.net

Bluesky: @timwaggoner.bsky.social

 

Missme?

It’s beena while since my last blog entry (and newsletter and YouTube video). Aside fromteaching Spring semester classes at my college, I was desperately trying tocatch up on various writing projects. I still have a couple books – onefiction, one nonfiction – and a few short stories I need to finish, but atleast my head’s (slightly) above water again. Plus, the spreading infection of fascismin my country has caused my persistent depressive disorder (also known asdysthymia) to kick into high gear again. So far, I’ve managed to avoid fallinginto a major depression, but I haven’t had the mental energy for anything extra,which meant my blog, newsletter, and video channel went by the wayside. They allfocus on writing, and while I use them as promotional tools for my work, mymain goal is to help writers, just as I’ve been helped by so many over theforty years of my career. I tried to come up with ideas, but none of themappealed to me. Besides, what was the point? In the face of what’s happening inAmerica right now – and how much worse it might get – what good could my essaysand videos about writing do? Once, I was writing while extremelysleep-deprived, and I kept nodding off in front of my computer. During one ofthese times, I heard a voice whisper in my mind. (Don’t worry, this kind ofthing doesn’t happen to me on a regular basis.) It said Your words are tinywords. I was startled awake, and I knew instantly that when the voice said tinyit meant inconsequential and worthless. Words that didn’t have even the mostminimal impact on the world, words which might as well never have been writtenat all.

 

I didn’ttake the voice seriously. As I always say to writing students when talkingabout self-doubt, “Remember, those voices always lie.” And writers that don’tfind some way to keep going despite their doubts aren’t going to last long inthis game. But over the last few months I’ve been feeling that my words really aretiny, at least compared to the march of totalitarianism in the USA – and I knowI’m not the only one.

 

Gettingolder isn’t helping, either. I turned sixty-one a couple weeks ago, and awriter friend of mine, Brady Allen, died unexpectedly on my birthday. He wassix years younger than me, taught composition and creative writing at a localuniversity, and was the father of two daughters. He wrote horror fiction, too,among other genres. So we had writing and teaching career in common, as well asboth of us having two daughters and a love of horror fiction.

 

Here’s alink to Brady’s Amazon page, where you can find out more about him and orderhis short story collection Back Roads and Frontal Lobes: https://tinyurl.com/nhc94hjv

 

In lateDecember, a good friend from college, Brad Marcum, passed away after a longbattle with early onset dementia, and another college friend, Paul Custodio,also died recently. At the first Stokercon in Las Vegas in 2016, I was talkingwith author William F. Nolan at dinner one evening. Bill was in his nineties,and he said, “The hard thing about living so long is everyone I grew up with isgone.” Bill died in 2021. Dennis Etchison (one of my favorite authors of alltime) was with us at that dinner, and he died in 2019.

 

Here's anews article about Brad: https://www.news-expressky.com/sports/remembering-brad-marcum/article_ef0dd644-c93c-11ef-a8f6-ffbc02d5776d.html

 

Here’s alink to Paul Custodio’s LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcustodio/

 

Here are linksto Bill’s and Dennis’ Wikipedia pages:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Nolan

 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Etchison

 

Given allof this, it’s only natural for someone (aka me) to wonder what the point of itall is. And by it, I don’t mean life. My first close relative died whenI was nine, and I almost drowned the same year. I’ve had fifty-two years tocome to terms with the reality that our lives are finite. I mean the point of awriting career. In the face of all the darkness in the world, all of our wordscan seem pretty goddamned tiny. But our words matter, especially during darktimes.

 

So ifyou’re having trouble seeing the point of your writing, consider the following.

 

It’sOkay Not to Write

 

Writersoften feel guilty when they aren’t producing words. If you write to make aliving, there’s very real financial pressure to produce, of course, but most ofus probably have day jobs (I do), and our writing has little to no financialimpact on our overall income. And if it does, we can most likely get by withoutthat money. At this point in my career, I make decent money from my writing,enough to live on if I lived extremely modestly, but writing money ebbsand flows, so it can’t be relied on. Plus, I like teaching (even if I amlooking forward to retiring in a few years). But if I become overburdenedemotionally, I know it’s okay to take a break from writing (or slow down myrate of production), and I’d do my best not to feel guilty or surrender toself-loathing and begin thinking of myself as a failure. One of the things Ilearned when I became a parent was that if I don’t take care of myself, I can’ttake care of others. It’s like what flight attendants tell you about the oxygenmasks. Put yours on before you try to help anyone put on theirs – because ifyou pass out, you can’t help anyone.

 

Your WritingKeeps You Sane

 

I need towrite like I need to breathe. Both my ex-wife and my current wife have told methat if I go several days without writing, I start to get moody, then cranky,then depressed. Writing is as important to my mental and physical health asexercise, good nutrition, and sleep. (Not that I get enough of those latterthree…) There’s an infinite number of things that I can’t control in thisuniverse, but I can control whether I write, and sometimes having even a smallthing in your life that you can control can help you make it through bad times.Creation, however modest it may be, is a positive thing. You’ve broughtsomething new into being and – whether you take this next bit literally or asmetaphor, it still works – you’ve added to the sum total of Light in theuniverse. Plus, just as reading allows people to escape their troubles for atime, so does writing help us escape ours.

 

YourWriting Helps Others Cope

 

Storiesare refuges for both those who make them and those who read them. Forty or soyears ago, my mom was scheduled to undergo surgery, and while my dad wasn’t thekind of man to display much emotion, I knew he was worried about her. The nightbefore mom’s procedure, Dad and I went to a small local bookstore. Theunwritten rule in my family was that anyone who bought a book got to be thefirst to read it. I can’t remember which book Dad bought, but I bought thefourth book in Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, Centaur Aisle. I’d had noidea there was a fourth book, so as a fan of Xanth, I was very excited to findit. As we paid for our books, Dad saw Centaur Aisle, and he asked if hecould read it first. I was shocked, since this Simply Was Not Done in myfamily. Then I realized Dad wanted to read the book because he needed a silly,imaginative adventure to occupy his mind while Mom was undergoing surgery. Ofcourse, I said yes. I understood that day that popular fiction could be muchmore than simple entertainment. It can be a lifeline for people in so manyways. I did something similar several years later when my first wife was in thehospital with complications for several days before our daughter was born. Iread the first few books in Jennifer Roberson’s Tiger and Del series to help mecope then. (I highly recommend those books).

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CJYQLN?binding=hardcover&searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_thcv&qid=1742830080&sr=8-4

 

Yourwriting can do the same for people. A Stephen King or Nora Roberts’ novel mighthelp millions cope, while a short story you publish in a small-press journalmight help only a few people. How many people we reach doesn’t matter. Helpingone is as good as helping many. The point is simply to help on whatever scalewe can, whenever we can.

 

Your WritingShows People They Aren’t Alone

 

Iexperienced a very dramatic example of this at the 2024 Stokercon inPittsburgh. I was scheduled to do a reading with two other authors. The ideabehind readings like this is that a more-experienced writer serves as a draw tobring in a larger audience for newer writers. Having done these kinds ofreadings many times, I know that while the authors should split the hourequally, newer writers almost always take up too much time. For this reason, Ialways go last, and I bring several pieces of flash fiction to read. That way,I can fill up whatever time I have left to me without stopping in the middle ofa story. Before I left for the con, I printed out several pieces of flashfiction, more or less at random, to read. It’s not standard practice, but Ilike to read a piece that I’ve never read in public before whenever I do areading, so one of the stories I chose was called “Faithful Friend andCompanion.” It had appeared in the late lamented Vastarian, and it was ashort, surreal story in which I processed the death of one of my beloveddachshunds. He was only seven years old when we had to put him down, and doingso devastated me.

 

So whenmy time came, I read “Faithful Friend and Companion” to a group of aroundfifteen people.  Like an idiot, it neveroccurred to me that I should preface my reading with a content warning. One ofthe people in the audience had recently put down her dog, and the trauma wasstill very fresh for her. When I was finished, people clapped, and several saidhow impactful they found the story. Then the woman who’d just lost her dog toldus what she’d gone through not long ago, and I was filled with horror atunknowingly re-traumatizing her. She said if I’d given a content warning, shewould’ve left the room, and she didn’t realize where the story was going untilit was almost over (flash fiction, remember?) and she hadn’t felt comfortableleaving at that point. I apologized to her, but she said that while the storywas painful to listen to, it was a good experience. She said she could tellfrom the story that I had gone through the same thing – and I admitted I had –and then she said, “It helps to know that I’m not alone.” Anyone could tellsomeone else about having to put their dog to sleep, but as a writer, you canmake someone feel that you experienced the same emotions as they did.That creates a deep, powerful connection.

 

YourWriting is Your Voice

 

There aregood reasons dictators fear writers and other artists. One is what I talkedabout in the previous paragraph. Using our voice as artists, we can make deepconnections to our audience through our work – connections that are out of adictator’s control. What’s more, our audience can connect to each other throughour work. We can speak directly or in metaphor and symbol. We can engender andstrengthen empathy. We can help people imagine possibilities, conceive of abetter world, believe they can become their best selves. Art is one of the mostpowerful forces humans have ever created, a weapon that ultimately cannot bestopped as long as our species endures. It absolutely terrifies thosewho, as XTC sings in the “Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead,” “would keep us on ourknees.”

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYupSHWEJxA

 

Maybe youdon’t feel your voice is loud enough on its own to do any good. But think aboutDr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who. The Whos were microscopically small, butwhen they combined every last one of their voices – their tiny voices –they were finally able to make themselves heard in the larger world. Horton’sline that he repeats throughout the story, “A person’s a person, no matter howsmall,” could just as easily have been “A voice is a voice, no matter howsmall.”

 

And eachand every one of them is important.

 

DEPARTMENTOF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

 

JustAdd Writer

 

 

 

My latesthow-to book is all about writing media tie-ins. It comes out from Raw DogScreaming Press in May 2025, and it’s available for preorder at the Raw Dogsite – and you get a discount if you preorder! How great is that? And ifyou’re a reviewer, the book is also available to request from NetGalley.

 

https://rawdogscreaming.com/books/just-add-writer/

 

Andspeaking of tie-ins…

 

TheX-Trilogy is Complete

 

 

 

With therelease of MaXXXine in February, all three novelizations of Ti West’sX-Trilogy are out! The best place to buy the books is on the A24 Publishingwebsite, where you can purchase them individually or in a bundle.

 

https://tinyurl.com/2e73zfme

 

Preorder,by Crom!

 

 

 

My novel Conan:Spawn of the Serpent God will be out in October 2025, but you can preorderit now! And you’d best be quick about it if you don’t want to make a certain Cimmerianangry.

 

https://titanbooks.com/72365-conan-spawn-of-the-serpent-god/

 

ScheduledAppearances

 

AuthorconV. March 28th to March 30th. Williamsburg, Virginia.

 

StokerCon.June 12th to June 15th. Stamford, Connecticut. I’m one of the guests of honor!

 

Signingat Vortex Books. June 26th, 5-7pm. Columbia, Pennsylvania.

 

Horror onMain. June 27th to June 29th. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

 

GenconWriters’ Symposium. July 31st to August 3rd. Indianapolis, Indiana.

 

SocialMedia

 

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I’m a member of four writers’organizations: The Horror Writers Association, the Science Fiction and FantasyWriters Association, the International Association of Thriller Writers, and theInternational Association of Media Tie-In Writers. I’ve also been a member ofthe Association of Writers and Writing Programs and the Authors’ Guild,although I’m not currently a member of either.

Ijoined HWA and SFWA back in the early 1990s, and I’ve been a member of themboth ever since (with a short break after my divorce from my first wife whenmoney was beyond tight for a while). And in those thirty-plus years, I ‘ve seenpeople make the same basic arguments for and against writers’ organizationsover and over. So, for writers considering joining a writers’ organization, writerswho’ve never considered it, and writers who are a member of an organization andcontemplating leaving it, here are some points to consider. But before we getstarted…

 

Whetheryou belong to a writers’ org, never belonged, joined one, quit one, or anycombination during the course of your career, you should always do what feels rightfor you at any given time. I’m not here to criticize your choices, whateverthey might be.

 

DoYou Need to Belong to a Writers’ Organization?

 

No.The only thing you need to do to be a professional writer is write a lot, workon improving your writing, and get your writing into readers’ hands, whetheryou’re traditionally published or indie.

 

CanBelonging to a Writers’ Organization Benefit You?

 

Sure.But there isn’t much an organization can do for you that you can’t do foryourself one way or another. You can find information on writing techniques,traditional publishing, self-publishing, submission calls, promotion techniques,professional etiquette, and more via the internet or social media. You can alsofind a writing community and mentors online.

 

Buthere’s the thing. You have to do the work to find this information and connect withthese people. If you belonged to a writers’ organization, it could be yourgateway to this info. One of the principles I teach my students in Essay andResearch classes is Get Someone to Do the Work for You. I don’t mean cheat. Imean research smarter, not harder. For example, if a student is writing aboutthe effects of secondhand smoke, I tell them to hit Wikipedia first. Wikipediausers have done the work of creating a comprehensive, easy-to-read overview onthe subject, and other users, as well as Wikipedia employees, check thatinformation. I tell students not to use Wikipedia itself for research (sincemost people don’t consider it to be a reliable source), but it can get you upto speed on a topic quickly, help you generate a list of key search terms youcan use later, and there will be a bibliography with links at the end of anentry that could lead to possible sources for you. For this topic, I would alsotell students to visit websites for various health organizations, such as theAmerican Lung Association, the American Cancer Society, the Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention, and the World Health Organization. These orgs have donethe work of hiring experts in their fields and gathering reliable up-to-dateinformation. I also tell students to add the words links, resources,and list of sources to their Google searches. So, “secondhand smokelinks,” “secondhand smoke resources,” etc. This way, they’ll hopefully find sitesthat collate links to a number of other sites, saving them valuableresearch time. I also urge them to use the college library’s databases wherecurated articles are available, so they don’t have to waste time sloggingthrough the tons of crap on the internet to find good sources.

 

Writers’organizations can help you build your career in ways that are smarter, notharder. I say can because not all orgs are equal, and they can changefor the better or worse over time. And your needs may change throughout yourcareer, and the advice and resources you needed when you were starting out maynot what you need today.

If you want toknow whether a particular organization might be right for you right now,check three things:

·      Whatthe org says about itself (its mission statement, what services what it offers,etc.)

·      Whatorg proponents have to say about it.

·      Whatorg critics have to say about it. (And make sure the critics actually haveexperience with the org they’re criticizing.)

You’ll need to decide for yourself whichof this info is true, which is kinda-sorta true, and which is bullshit, thendecide whether or not to join. Or you could just join for a year and see whatyou think. But if you do join an organization…

It’s Up to You to Make the Most of YourMembership

This is where you do need to do some workbecause no one can do it for you. Whatever information and services the organizationprovides, you need to know what they are, and you need to take advantage ofthem. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve seen people join awriters’ org for a year, do nothing with the org, then say they’re quittingbecause they got nothing out of their membership. I joined AARP a few years ago(I think I qualified at 55; I’m almost 61 now) because a student told me thatthere are all kinds of great discounts you can get with a membership. Do youknow what I got out of my membership? Nothing because I didn’t do a damn thingwith it. (Maybe I was determined not to use it because I was in denial aboutbeing old enough to qualify.) There was no problem with the organization itself.The problem was entirely with me. Or to put it another way, I wasn’t trulyinterested in the services the organization offered.

I think writers’ orgs (if they don’talready do this) should have a prominent “How to Make the Most of YourMembership” info page on their websites, and maybe a recurring feature of thesame name in their newsletters. And dividing this advice into differentsections for new writers and established writers would probably be helpful,too.

Dues

 

Thedues for writers’ organizations are/are not expensive depending on your currentfinancial situation. (Remember what I said about my post-divorce financesearlier?) If you can’t afford a membership, get together with a few writerfriends, pool your money, have one of you join, then share the information/services/benefitsas much as possible. Not only will it be cheaper, you’ll all get experiencewith an organization to decide if it’s one you want to stick with and eventuallyget individual memberships to. I don’t know if any writing organizations dothis, but I think they could offer a one-time three-month or six-month“try-it-out” period for a cheaper price to allow folks to see if an org is forthem without the expense or time commitment of a full-year membership.

 

Andyou know you can deduct professional organization dues from your taxes, right?

 

I’veheard older writers say writers’ orgs don’t do much for them at the currentstage of their careers. I wonder if reduced dues or even free memberships forseniors might be something that could counteract this feeling, at least alittle. It might be an effective way of keeping the hard-won experience andwisdom of older writers in organizations.

 

AreYou a Community-Seeker or a Go-It-Aloner?

 

Overthe decades, I’ve seen this dynamic play out hundreds of times. Some writersfind personal and professional satisfaction in being part of a group. Othersare inherently reluctant to be part of a group, and if they join one, theyconstantly look for reasons to get the hell out as soon as they can. There’snothing wrong with either of these attitudes, but it can save you a lot ofgrief to know what your inclination is before you join an org – or at leastknow you’re trying out an org even if you think in end it might not be for you.

 

Cliquesin Writers’ Orgs

 

Acriticism I sometime see about writers’ orgs is that there’s a small groupthat’s the in-crowd, and they’re primarily the ones who the organizationserves, the only ones the organization cares about. Often these “cliques” arecomprised of the people – either elected officers and/or volunteers – who worktogether to run the organization. They’re the most visible faces and most heardvoices in the organization, and it’s only natural they would work closelytogether and get to know each other well. They’re not cliques meant to excludeanyone.

 

Dramain Writers’ Orgs

 

Anothercriticism I see often is that writers’ orgs are full of drama, and a lot ofpeople want nothing to do with them because of it. Real and important issuesarise for organizations, but the drama comes from the instant online firestormof emotional reactions to them. It takes time for organizations to investigatea problem, figure out what’s happening, and then come up with an officialposition on it, and choose what action to take – and they may have legalconcerns with all these steps as well. And they have to try their best not topour gasoline on the firestorm and make it worse. Organizations aren’tspeedboats that can move quickly and alter course easily. They’re ocean liners,and they take a while to get moving and even longer to turn around and changecourse.

 

It'svital that members discuss any issues they think writers’ orgs should addressor any problems they see with the orgs themselves. They should contact the orgdirectly with concerns they have before (or at the same time) they post aboutthem on social media. And given how fast we all expect things to move thesedays, it’s hard for us to have patience with an org that doesn’t address anissue immediately and deal with it even faster. I have a policy of waitingforty-eight hours before weighing in on any issues that arise in the writingcommunities I consider myself part of, and then I only weigh in if I feel Ihave something worthwhile to contribute AND I won’t make things worse byweighing in. I think a lot of the online drama that people tire of withwriters’ orgs wouldn’t happen if people waited a bit to get more input and givethemselves more time to sort out their emotional reactions. Hell, even waitinga couple hours after you learn about an issue before posting about it wouldhelp.

 

Writers’Orgs Blame Their Problems on Lack of Volunteers

 

Sometimescritics of writers’ orgs think this is just an excuse to explain away inaction.But a lot of writers’ orgs (maybe most) don’t have the money to hire full-timestaff. (Unlike the Thriller Writers, who have so much money they stoppedcharging dues around fifteen years ago.) Writers’ orgs depend on volunteerlabor almost exclusively, so how responsive they are and how fast they are canvary depending on the amount of volunteers and what’s going on in their lives. Thisis an inescapable aspect of writers’ orgs. Writers in general don’t make a lotof money, and unless you want to pay a shit-ton of dues every year (with allthe money you don’t have), volunteer labor is the best you’re going to get. Andthe people in organizations who complain the most about stuff not happening asfast as they think it should never step up and volunteer to help make thingsmove faster.

 

Writers’Orgs are All About Awards

 

Thisis a very common criticism of writer’s orgs, and it was why I was horrifiedwhen HWA said their yearly convention was going to be called StokerCon. Fordecades, people have complained the org focuses too much on the Bram StokerAwards, and then they go ahead and name the convention after the awards? Awardsserve two purposes for writers’ orgs. One, they promote the genre and raiseawareness of it, and two, they get media attention. And award winners (andfinalists) list their wins and nominations in their bios and on their books, furtherpromoting the organization. Members often complain about how much money is spenton awards, but there is no better advertising and promotion for a genre and anorg than awards. You can make a good case why there should be no awards inartistic fields, and I wouldn’t argue with you. If there are going to be awardsfor art, I prefer a jury process like the Shirley Jackson Awards and WorldFantasy Awards use. But neither of those awards come from writers’organizations. I understand the argument that if an organization is going topresent awards, then members of that organization should vote on them, so theawards are, at least in theory, presented by the organization. But there arewriters’ orgs that use juries, and their memberships seem fine with that.

 

Whatare the benefits of awards promoting writers’ orgs? A higher profile means anorg can be perceived as more professional and prestigious, which allows the orgto make connections with other orgs, programs, and professions in ways that canbenefit members. A higher profile means an org can attract new members, whichis important to keep an organization healthy (and hopefully replenish thesupply of volunteers to take over for the current ones who are burnt out).

 

Awardsprocesses of whatever kind will never be perfect because nothing created by andrun by humans will ever be perfect (including writers’ organizationsthemselves), and when ego and career-enhancement enter the equation, anyprocess can be distorted, even if only a little, and scandals – small or large– do occur sometimes. Do some people win awards solely on name recognition?Sure. Do some win because their friends vote for them? Sure. Do some losebecause a lot of people dislike them? Probably. Are some people never nominateddue to sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia? Yes. Have some people wonbecause they produced good work that an organization wanted to recognize? Ofcourse. Can we ever know for sure why a work was nominated and why itwon? No. Orgs should continue trying to improve their awards processes, and weshould do our best to accept that no matter how many improvements are made, theseprocesses will never be perfect, and get on with our writing.

 

Writers’Orgs are Gatekeepers

 

I’venever really understood this criticism. Editors, agents, and readers don’t givea shit if you belong to a writers’ organization. They do pay some attention toawards you might’ve won (and you don’t need to belong to an org to win awardsthe org presents), but they really only care about the quality – andmarketability – of your work. If orgs were the sole distributor of publishinginfo, I can see how dues might prevent access to that for some people, but allof that info can be found on social media, various websites, and YouTube. And youdon’t need orgs to network with other writers.

 

What’sthe Purpose of a Writers’ Org?

 

Probablythe most common criticism of writers’ orgs, and the reason most often cited fora member quitting/not renewing their membership is that they don’t get anythingfrom their membership. These people view their dues as purchasing a servicethat they do not receive (even if they can’t articulate exactly what theyexpect for their money). They see the org as something that should serve them.They view their career as a business, and they expect to see a return on theirinvestment in an organization that benefits their business. It’s anindividual-focused view.

 

Somewriters view the purpose of writers’ orgs as helping writers at all levels andstrengthening/promoting their genre. They view their dues as funding this work,and they often volunteer in the organization, sometimes in small ways,sometimes in big ones. This is a community-focused view.

 

Andsome writers (maybe the majority?) hold some mixture of these two views, theproportion of which may change over time due to any number of factors.

 

Neitherthe individual-focused view nor the community-focused view is better or worsethan the other. They’re just different. Although I might argue that since anorganization is a group, a community-focused viewpoint might work better formembers. But I absolutely think it’s fair for members to ask what they asindividuals are getting for their yearly dues. I do think that members who holdthese two different viewpoints often have trouble understanding each other, andthat an organization can never fully satisfy either side (which is why servingas an officer or volunteer in a writers’ org is often a damned-if-you-do,damned-if-you-don’t proposition).

 

Writers’Orgs Should Post Yearly Reports

 

Ithink writers’ orgs should provide members with yearly reports that say herewere our goals for the year, here’s the progress we made on them, here are ourgoals for next year, here’s what we spent money on this year, and here’s howfinancially healthy we are going into next year. I think it would be a goodidea to post this report on the org website and on social media each year aswell, so potential members would get a better sense of what the org actuallydoes for both individual members and the genre as a whole. Actual dollarfigures wouldn’t have to be used on the website of social media. You could say“X percent of funds were spent on the annual convention this year” or whatever.Such a report wouldn’t have to be massively long or overly detailed, but Ithink a lot of members feel they have no idea what’s going on in an org andsuch a report would go a long way toward fixing that. It would also be anexcellent tool for orgs to clearly communicate what they accomplish in a givenyear, and listing goals/challenges for the coming year would make orgs seemmore focused and proactive, increasing members’ confidence in them.

 

WhatDo You, Tim Waggoner, Get Out of Writers’ Orgs?

 

Inthe early days of my career, I got a ton out of the writers’ orgs I belongedto. Joining HWA and SFWA as an affiliate member allowed me to enter the orgs’private message boards on GEnie, a service that was a sort of proto-socialmedia site in the early 1990s. Tons of pro writers in SF/F/H posted on theprivate boards, and they talked about stuff they’d never talk about in public.They’d interact with you, answer questions, etc. New writers were able to makeconnections with more established writers and friendships often developed.Submission calls for anthologies were posted on those boards, calls that thegeneral public would never see. In those years, I learned more than I canpossibly explain. Hell, probably more than I’m even aware of. Once websitesdeveloped, writers left GEnie, establishing their own sites and their ownmessage boards as part of those sites. GEnie died, but HWA and SFWA establishedtheir own websites with message boards that had public areas and areas formembers only, and these boards were an effective substitute for GEnie, placeswhere you could network and find submission calls. When I started going tolarge cons like World Fantasy or World Horror, belong to HWA and SFWA helped meconnect with other members in person, and there would be private suites for theorgs you could go to, and parties/events for members as well.

 

OnceI started selling my work regularly, things began to change. I didn’t need thesame kind of mentoring I had when I was starting out, and editors beganinviting me to submit to anthologies. And once I got an agent (on my 30thbirthday!) I received career guidance and education on the current state ofpublishing from him. I didn’t need HWA or SFWA the way I had earlier in mycareer, but there was still no social media yet, and both orgs provided meaccess to a professional and personal community of writers.

 

MySpacearrived, but it didn’t really do much for writers professionally. But onceFacebook appeared, most of us stopped reading and posting on HWA and SFWA’smessage boards and hung out there. Writers who had spent years interacting withtheir fans via their website message boards came to Facebook, and theexperience many of us were lucky to have had with GEnie was reborn on a newservice. Then came Twitter, Instagram, YouTube channels, and all the rest, somethriving, some dying, some surviving, but waxing and waning in popularity andinfluence.

 

Thatwas the point where I ceased getting much personal benefit from belonging towriters’ orgs, but I still got personal and professional satisfaction knowingthat my dues helped fund HWA and SFWA, especially programs like SFWA’semergency medical fund. There was a sense among established pros that writers’orgs were kind of like high school or college, and once you graduated, youdidn’t go back.

 

ButI went back to college to teach there, and I did something similar with HWA andSFWA. I kept paying my dues, and I began volunteering in the small ways I could,and I added my two cents to online discussions regarding issues in HWA and SFWA,and I began mentoring for HWA. My “volunteering” was often just me saying yeswhen someone asked me to help out. I served as the Stoker Awards Administratorone year, which mostly consisted of me mailing letters (actual physical ones,not email) to the nominees, telling them they’d been nominated and letting themknow when and where the awards would be presented. After mailing all theletters, I discovered I’d made a typo. At the very end of the letter Imisspelled administrator as adminstrator. I hoped no one would notice. Then Icame home one day to find a message from Harlan Ellison on my answering machine(no cell phones yet). Harlan was one of the nominees that year, and his messagewas short. “This is Harlan Ellison. Call me.” I thought, Oh shit. Harlanfound the typo and called to tell me how unprofessional it was. He hadn’tleft a number, but I knew his number was listed in the phone book, so I calledinformation in LA, got Harlan’s number, and called him. Harlan’s nominatedstory that year appeared only on a CD containing the H.R. Giger screensaver(which I had), and he wanted to see if there was some way to make his storyavailable to the entire voting membership. “God knows I don’t need anotheraward,” he said, “but I’d like people to read the story if that’s possible.” Ithink HWA emailed members the story, but at any rate, we got the story to them,and Harlan won the Stoker that year.

 

Oneyear, I was asked (at the last minute) to introduce legendary anthology editorMartin H. Greenberg when he received his Lifetime Achievement Award at theStokers one year. When I say last minute, I mean minutes before the Stokerceremony began. I improvised my speech and it seemed to go over well. I’m justglad it seemed to please Marty.

 

Ipresented more Stokers over the years. And for a time, I served as HWA’sofficer of record. HWA was granted its organization status (I forget the actuallegal term) in Ohio, and they needed someone in Ohio to sign the form and bethe officer of record. I did so and paid the $15 registration fee. I didn’tbother asking for reimbursement. I considered it a minor donation to the org,and when the finished form came back, I stuck it in a drawer, where it stayedfor several years. So technically, I was once the reason HWA could continue toexist, at least for a while. I think the org decided to renew its status in adifferent state or something, and my time as officer of record was done.

 

I’veserved on the Stokers’ Lifetime Achievement Committee a couple times, and I’ve contributedsome essays for the website a few times for Halloween Haunts and the like.

 

Forthe IAMTW (the Tie-In Writers) I served as a jury member for their ScribeAwards a couple times, but I haven’t done so in a while because it was a lot ofreading, and it was hard to keep up with. I don’t feel I can do as good a jobas I’d like.

 

Ialso volunteer to present workshops for Horror University at StokerCon andonline. I do get paid for this (HWA and I split the money evenly), but I’d doit for free.

 

KathyPtacek has asked me to write articles for the newsletter several times over theyears, and I’m always happy to do so.

 

Istill make use of promotional opportunities in writers’ orgs. I post promomessages on the HWA Facebook page on Saturdays sometimes, and I submit my bookcovers for the HWA website. I submit announcements of my work to Horror Bitesand the newsletter. As a member, I have access to the email addresses ofmembers who are willing to receive Stoker Award materials, and I use them tosend members works of mine to consider. I place announcements of my work inSFWA’s new releases newsletter and in the Thriller Writers’ magazine The BigThrill. The Tie-In Writers have a robust email/message board discussiongroup, and I can post on that and learn about tie-in opportunities from othermembers.

 

I’venever been tempted to quit the Thriller Writers or Tie-In Writers, but I’vealmost quit HWA and SFWA several times over the decades. Some kind of uproar inone of the orgs occurs, I get pissed off and decide I’ve had enough (sometimesenough of the entire goddamned genre), and I consider quitting. I never do,though. I eventually calm down (and I’m smart enough not to post in anger, sofew people ever find out how pissed off I was), the uproar plays itself out,and I move on.

 

Duringthe GEnie days is when I learned the concept of paying forward, and howimportant it is in the fields of SF/F/H (and I’m sure in other genres andartistic fields as well), and that’s what I get from writers’ orgs today, andhave for a long time – opportunities to pay it forward. And I’m content withthat.

 

Inthe End…

 

AsI said at the beginning of this lengthy post, when it comes to writers’organizations, do what’s right for you. But I would urge you to consider payingforward, even if only by considering your dues as a donation to the cause. Andif you’re an older writer like me, I once read an article about how olderprofessionals in the latter part of their careers often struggle to findpurpose and meaning in their work, and they often do so by mentoring others andvolunteering. Hell, it beats an AARP membership you’ll never use, right?

 

LISTOF WRITERS’ ORGANIZATIONS

Here are some writers’ orgs to check out. Evenif you’re not interested in joining, they often have free resources forwriters. If you know of any other writers’ orgs not on the list, feel free toadd them in the comments section.

The Association of Writers and WritingPrograms: http://www.awpwriter.org/

The American Society for Journalists andAuthors: http://www.asja.org/index9.php

The Authors Guild: http://www.authorsguild.org/

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers ofAmerica: http://www.sfwa.org

The Horror Writers Association: http://www.horror.org

The Romance Writers of America: http://www.rwanational.org/

The Society for Children’s Book Writersand Illustrators:

http://www.scbwi.org/

The Mystery Writers of America: http://www.mysterywriters.org/

The Western Writers of America: http://www.westernwriters.org/

The American Academy of Poets: http://www.poets.org/

The International Thriller Writers, Inc.: http://www.internationalthrillerwriters.com/

The International Association of MediaTie-In Writers: http://www.iamtw.org/

Association of Ghostwriters: https://associationofghostwriters.org/

Editorial Freelancers Association: https://www.the-efa.org/

DEPARTMENTOF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

 

Iposted this image of all the books I had released in 2024, so you may havealready seen it. But I’ll post it here anyway and say if you haven’t read anyof these books, consider doing so in the new year!

 

I’llhave three books out in 2025 – the novelization of MaXXXine from A24Publishing, a Conan novel called Spawn of the Serpent God from TitanBooks, and my next writing book from Raw Dog Screaming Press called Just AddWriter (which is about tie-in writing). There are no order links for any ofthem yet, but keep them on your radar, please. I may have a couple more booksreleased in 2025, but I don’t know for sure yet. As always, I’ll keep youposted!

SCHEDULED APPEARANCES

I was scheduled to attend both the Scarelastic BookFair and Books & Brews events this year. Both were scheduled to be held againat the Scarlet Lane Brewing Company in McCordsville, Indiana, but that venue closed,so organizers are looking for somewhere else to hold their events. I’ll let youknow if/when they do. Here are my remaining appearances for the year. (There’sone more I have scheduled, but the organizers haven’t announced myparticipation yet, so I can’t say what it is. I can tell you it’ll be insummer, though.)

·      AuthorconV. March 28th to March 30th. Williamsburg, Virginia.

·      StokerCon.June 12th to June 15th. Stamford, Connecticut. I’m one of the guests of honor!

·      Signingat Vortex Books. June 26th, 5-7pm. Columbia, Pennsylvania.

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