Cyber Monday IV: The Von Trappening

            If you’ve been following this page for any amount of time, you know I hate pimping my own work, but we’re officially in the Christmas season now.  And in theory this is the big internet shopping day.  And the marketing people—who are seriously wonderful folks—have dropped certain hints.  Sooooooo...

            I have to ask you all to buy stuff.

            I’m so very, very sorry.  I'll try to be quick.

            Here’s a list of my books and also a few anthologies I’ve got stories in.  Put them on your holiday wish list or get them as gifts for friends and family members. I’ll put links to most of them, but you can also scroll down through that sidebar on the right and find links to pretty much every version at every store you could ever want.

            Also, there’s still about a week to place orders with Dark Delicacies in Burbank.  You can order a book through them, leave instructions for an autograph, and I’ll swing by there to scribble in said book.  Again, do it in the next week and you should have said book in your hands in time for the holidays.

            Really, either way, just go to your local bookstore.  They’re cool and they could use the business, and then you’re not one of those conformists falling for that Cyber Monday capitalist nonsense.

            Anyway...

            Many of you are probably here because of the Ex-Heroes series.  Ex-Heroes, Ex-Patriots, Ex-Communication, Ex-Purgatory, and as of this spring Ex-Isle! All of these are available in a number of formats and a number of languages.  Also, Audible's included the first two books in a fantastic sale today soooooo... move quick if audiobooks are your thing.

            The Fold came out in paperback this year, but I think there are still some hardcovers kicking around if you know where to look  Early on someone described it as something like a horror-suspense novel disguised as a sci-fi-mystery, and I’ve been using that ever since.  The audiobook’s narrated by the always-amazing Ray Porter.  It’s also loosely connected to another semi-popular book I wrote...

            At least a third of you have probably found your way here because of –14— my odd little Lovecraftian-sci-fi-urban-horror-mystery novel.  There’s a paperback, an ebook, and another audiobook narrated by the amazing Ray Porter (it's part of that big Audible sale, too).  And, if things progress as planned, Team Downey’s finally shooting the pilot this spring.

            You can pick up all of The Junkie Quatrain as either an ebook or an audiobook (no paper, sorry).  It’s my attemptat a “fast zombies” tale, a series of interconnected stories I’ve sometimes described as Rashomon meets 28 Days Later.  It also features a recurring character of mine, Quilt, who keeps showing up in different stories in one way or another... 

            The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe also got a brand new edition this year, with a damned fantatic new layout. It’s the more-or-less true story of how the legendary castaway ended up on that strange island, some of the things he found there, and some of the things that found him.  I admit it’s a bit of work to read, but I still love it. 

            I also have a ton of short stories out in anthologies right now.  The big one is The X-Files: Trust No One, edited by the wonderful-in-so-many-ways Jonathan Maberry and with stories from Gini Koch, Tim Lebbon, Heather Graham, Brian Keene, and more.  My story here is “The Beast of Little Hill,” a classic Muder and Scully tale about roadside attractions and fake aliens.  Supposedly Chris Carter really enjoyed it, which is... well, cool.

            Naughty or Nice is a collection of fun, twisted holiday stories which run... well, the full gamut.  Don’t get it for your nine year old, let’s say that.  Or your less-than-open-minded mother-in-law...

            Corrupts Absolutely is a collection about superheroes gone wrong.  Mine’s a little standalone called “Bedtime Story,” about a hero called Omnes and some parents trying to explain to their little boy why the way the world is the way it is.

            You can pick up Kaiju Rising, which contains “Banner of the Bent Cross,”my WWII pulp adventure featuring the first team up of mercenary Dar Carter and history professor Ken Kraft  It also has a fantastically funny story by Peter Stenson (author of Fiend).

            There’s also “The Apocrypha of Gamma-202, ” a story about robots and religion, which appeared in Bless Your Mechanical Heart.  You’ll also get some great stories from Seanan McGuire, Ken Scholes, and Lucy Snyder.

            And thus ends my shameless Cyber Monday appeal to capitalism.  Again, so very sorry, but please tell the marketing folks you read it.  I’ll also do another list later this week with some great books I’ve read by other, much better authors.  And please don’t forget my Black Friday offer if you happen to be someone who needs it.

            Please feel free to resume your internet shopping.   Browse responsibly.  Clear your history on a regular basis. 

            No, don’t click on that—that isn’t really from PayPal.

That What Got Done, 2013 Edition

            Well, here we are yet again.  Another year gone by.  Time to look back and see how well we stuck to our resolutions.

            If you bother to stop in here and read these little rants, I’m guessing you’ve thought about being a writer.  Not a weekend dabbler, not an incorruptible artiste, but someone who wants to make some sales and write for a living.  And the only way to do that is to write.  Not to plan, not to research, but to sit down at the keyboard and start typing out my story one word at a time.  There’s no other way to get something done and no other way to get something sold.  If I’m not writing... it’s just not going to happen.

            So, all that being said... what did you get done this year?

            Me?  I started 2013 already waist-deep in Ex-Purgatory, which was due at the end of April.  Of course, before I could finish that my editor at Broadway had some notes for me on Ex-Communication.  Really good notes, for the record.  There were only one or two things we argued over, and even on those we found a solid middle ground that made us both happy.

            But before I did those, I had to go over the copyeditor’s notes on Ex-Patriots.  They were doing a quick run through it before the re-release in April.  So I spent a day or three on that.

            At least, I would’ve, but first I had to go over the new layout proof for Ex-Heroes.  It was coming out in February, after all.  So that got priority.  Then Ex-Patriots, then Ex-Communication notes, and then back to working on Ex-Purgatory.

            Of course, by that point, I now had copyedits on Ex-Communication.  And a layout proof for Ex-Patriots.  And even some very last minute input on the Ex-Heroes cover.  And after all that, I could get back to Ex-Purgatory.

            Until... well, I’m sure you can see the pattern at this point.

            Despite all this, I still managed to get Ex-Purgatory done on time.  It went long, and then I cut it way back, and then my editor suggested a few other cuts and some other additions.  We did a bunch of work on it, and in the end it went from a book I was kind of worried about to one that I’m almost proud of.  And it’ll be in stores in less than three weeks.

            That was the first eight months of 2013.

            Somewhere in there, between rewrites and layouts for Ex-Communication, I started a new book.  Something kind of urban-fantasy-ish, but a lot darker.  I was about 15,000 words into it when I went to Comic Con.  Alas, after talking with my agent and my editor, it’s going on the back burner for a little bit.  Hopefully it won’t end up being my new Dead Moon...

            There was also another idea I worked with for a while.  I pitched this one to my editor as “Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere crossed with Cannonball Run.”  Which, if nothing else, caught his attention.  For the double-handful of you who were at Booktopia this summer, it’s the story I mentioned about the Model T Ford. I was about 19,000 words in when new deals were finalized with Broadway.  This one’s still going to happen, but it’s been pushed a bit further down the line.

            I wrote a handful of short stories, too.  “Flesh Trade,” alas, didn’t make it into Clive Barker’s upcoming Midian Unbound anthology (I only cried a little bit at that).  But the guys at Kaiju Unbound really liked “Banner of the Bent Cross” and the folks at Evil Girlfriend Media said yes to another story (which I can’t talk about quite yet).  I also polished up an old tale, “Contraption,” for an upcoming collection of short stories from Permuted Press.

            And since then I’ve been working on my current book, The Albuquerque Door.  Well, there’s been some concern about the title, but I’m hanging onto it as long as possible.  I’m about 25,000 words into it so far. 

            Plus there were also thirty-eight posts here (to be honest, one of my worst years since I started the ranty blog).  And another thirty posts on other pages I keep.  Plus a dozen or so promo articles for different books (including a handful of titles from Broadway’s new Doctor Who line).
            Thing is... I feel like I slacked off a lot this year.  There were a few times when I was waiting to hear back on deals or between drafts or just feeling burned out by that glut of work at the start of the year... and I took a day off.  In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with it, and I didn’t miss any deadlines, but the truth is I took off a couple of days I really had no business taking off.  Days I should’ve been writing.  I look back at this past year and I think that I really should be further along in that urban fantasy story.  The Model T story should have a lot more to it, too.  I look at this list and think I didn’t write enough this year.

            How about you? How much did you write...?

            Next time—next year, really—I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about what I talk about here.  A mission statement, if you will.

            Until then... Happy New Year.

            And go write.

That What Got Done

            Well, it’s the end of the year.  Time to start thinking about New Year’s resolutions and all the things we really want to make sure we do this coming year.  And to celebrate the fact that 2012 was not, in fact, the end of the world.

            However, it’s also a good time to look back and think about what we did this year.  Did last year’s resolutions get met?  Did we get close?

            Did we even really try?

            I started off the year working for Amazon Studios, the film branch of the well-known online media giant.  I had a meeting and did a treatment for a sci-fi film called Original Soldiers they were trying to develop.  It was pretty clear early on that we had different opinions on it, but they decided to see what I did with it anyway (I saw Liam Neeson in a glorious B-action movie and they thought they could get... I don’t know, Schindler’s Robot).  They still went with someone else (or possible, as my girlfriend supects, just canned the project when they didn’t see a potential Oscar anywhere), but they paid very well for the work I did.

            After that it was diving back into Ex-Communication, which I’d only barely started.  That was a good chunk of the year (I think until late August or early September).  The final, sixth draft came in at a little over 100,000 words. And I’ll be doing some more work on it before the Crown release.

           It’s about time to mention Crown, too.  As some of you may have heard, I was offered a four book deal with Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, for the Ex-series just as I was finishing up Ex-Communication.  While it’s great on one front, it did sort of put me on hold for a while as far as “what to write next.”  If the deal happened, Crown was going to want another Ex-book.  If it didn’t happen, well, I usually wrote something non-superhero-and-zombie related between Ex-books as sort of a palate cleanser.  So there was a period of about two months this fall where I wasn’t really sure what to start working on.

            I ended up going back to a sci-fi horror idea I’d started ages ago (before my Crusoe mash-up) and doing a fair amount of work on that.  But then some things shifted, negotiations hit a certain point, and I shelved it again.  Alas, at this point I think I can honestly say Dead Moon has become my booty call idea.  I should keep that in mind next time it’s late at night and I’m feeling the need to poke at something...

            For a couple of reasons, I shifted over to an idea that had been tickling my mind, a concept for a new series.  After a false start, I ended up scribbling out almost 15,000 words of notes and outlines and huge swaths of action and dialogue.  I stopped because I didn’t want to burn out on it, and also because the Crown deal was finalized.

            So, right around Halloween, I started working on the fourth Ex-book.  Still working on a title for it, but the book itself is about 2/3 done by now.  I think I might actually be on schedule for the April 1st deadline.

            I also had to do a bunch of layout stuff and edits for the new editions of the Ex-books.  It wasn’t tough, but it is time-consuming. And there’s more of it coming in January.

            I also managed to squeeze in about ten reviews for Cinema Blend here and there.  I enjoy writing reviews because when they’re done right they’re a good mix of critical analysis, storytelling, and a bit of snark (when deserved).  Which reminds me, I still owe them a review for this box set...

            And of course, here on the ranty blog I scribbled out forty-four articles about writing.  In all fairness, this is one of the weakest years here since I started this.  Plus thirty-three articles on another page I keep up.  And those H.P. Legocraft pages.

            So that’s what I did.

            What did you do?

            Yeah, I know, I’ve got a bit of an advantage.  I don’t have kids.  This is my day job.  So I get to focus a lot more time on this than most people.

            But y’know what?  I had a full-time journalism job when I wrote Ex-Heroes. Almost all of my fellow authors at Permuted Press—Craig DiLouie, C Dulaney, Tony Faville, Jessica Meigs, Thom Brannan, and more—still have full time jobs.  Michael Crichton started writing when he was in medical school.  You don’t get much more full-time than that.  Edgar Rice Burroughs, Maya Angelou, John Grisham, David Wong, Clive Cussler, Stephen King... all these famous writers and many, many more had full-time jobs when they started their writing careers.  Heck, King had a full-time job and two kids.

            So, with that in mind... I ask you again.  What did you do this year?

            As I’ve mentioned before, it all comes down to priorities.  If I want to spend a few hours each day with my (hypothetical) kids or watching Netflix with my lovely lady, that’s my business and my decision.  It says where my priorities are and there's nothing wrong with that.  Likewise, the fact that my lovely lady and I live together, both work out of the home, and only see each other for a total of four or five hours a day on an average day... well, that says something about our priorities, too.

            A fellow I know got the screenplay rights to a fairly well-known book series.  It was at the same time I was starting a novel, so I jokingly said we should make a contest out of it.  He kind of brushed me off, but loudly announced his upcoming adaptation to the Twitterverse.
            The book I was starting was 14.  To the best of my knowledge, he still doesn’t have a first draft of his adaptation.  Granted, he’s trying to start a business and has two kids.  And there were a lot of movies he had to see.  And some opening night parties.  And a bi-weekly poker game he never misses...
            The only way to get ahead is to write.  There is nothing else. There are no tricks or magic bullets.  The work will not get done if you don’t do it.  It doesn’t matter how you spin it, if you’re not writing, you’re not getting any closer to selling something.  And if you’re not selling anything, it’s really hard to make a living at this.

            Which is why you’re here, yes?  To get some tips on making a living at this.

            A page a day.  That’s it. That’s all you need to do.  If you can write a page a day, you’ll have a solid draft of a novel by next New Year’s Eve.  You could have the first draft of that script done by April Fools Day.

            If you write it.

            But if the latest episode of Dexter or Dancing With The Stars deserves your time more than writing... well...

            Next time—or next year, if you prefer—I’d like to go over what this little collection of rants is trying to accomplish.

            Until then, pour yourself a glass of champagne, kiss someone special, and then go write.

            Just write one page.

A Pullet Between The Eyes

            Don’t worry, that title will get explained soon enough...

            First things first, though.  I was doing some clean-up here and realized there were a few old drafts that had been saved.  Stuff no one ever saw where I was testing how things worked here.
            Long and short of it... this is post #200 on the ranty blog!  I can't believe any of you have hung around this long.  Heck, I can't believe I've hung around this long...
            Many thanks to all of you.
            Anyway, to celebrate, let's talk about one of my favorite topics.  Spelling.
            As I’ve mentioned here once or thrice or twenty times, in order to be  a writer I have to have a solid vocabulary and I need to know how to spell those words.   Absolutely nothing will shoot down my chances faster than an editor finding a half dozen misspelled or misused words.  People can argue all they want about literary brilliance and arbitrary rules, but at the end of the day spelling mistakes are always going to be the first thing an editor or reader judges my manuscript on.  That’s why I need to know these things and get them right.

            And when I say “I” in this case, I mean “me.”  I need to know these things.  One of the absolute worst mistakes a writer can make is to become reliant on their computer’s spell-checker.  A computer doesn’t understand context or nuance, it just understands if a word is spelled correctly or not.  To the logical processes of a spell-checker, there’s no difference between oozy and Uzi, rain and reign, or shear and sheer.  They’re all spelled correctly.  So if I’ve got a mercenary waiving his oozy as he tries to climb a shear cliff in the reign... well, the spell checker’s going to tell me that’s fine.

            Case in point—the title of this week’s little rant.  That golden gem was found in the manuscript for Ex-Communication by one of my readers.  That’s how one of my zombie killers made sure his friend wouldn’t rise to become one of the undead.

            With a chicken.  And the spell-checker saw no problem with that.

            If you don’t understand the comedy there, work on your vocabulary.

            Y’see, I use a spell-checker, but I don’t depend on it to do all the work for me.  I get a second set of eyes on the manuscript (and a third, fourth, and fifth) and I go over it myself line by line, usually in two different formats.  And I own a dictionary.  A real-world, three-inch-thick copy of Webster’s with a bright red cover that I can turn to if I need to check spellings or definitions.  So when I send something out to a publisher or an editor, they’re not going to see someone take a chicken in the head.

            And that brings us to the new list of misspelled and misused words.  One of these appeared on a major retailer’s website.  Another one showed up on a fairly big pop culture website.  And a couple of them are, alas, examples of  people who trust the spellchecker a lot more than their own common sense (I’ve got a few friends who are professional readers who love to share typos with me). 

            So, a vocabulary test.  As always, feel free to keep score...

overseas and oversees – only one of these is a place

hoard and horde – one of these is a mob, one is a collection

bus and buss – one’s a playful kiss, one’s an electrical conductor

flout and flaunt – one means show off, one means to mock

monolith and monogram – one of these would be your initials

whole and hole –one of these you fall into

hurdle and hurtle – one is a verb, one is a noun

pair and pare – one of these means to whittle down

racket and racquet – one is sports equipment, one is noise

pane and pain – one is a shape for glass

discus and discuss – one is an Olympic event

breaks and brakes—one is for wheels, the other is for windshields

tactical and tactile—only of these pairs with logistics.

reek and wreak – one of these stinks

heroine and heroin – one of these is a bad addiction

plaintive and plaintiff – one is sad, one is accusing someone

least and leased—one of these refers to rental contracts

corral and coral—you’ll only find one of these underwater (hopefully)

drier and dryer –one of these is a machine

site and sight –one of these is found on a firearm

            Did you get them all?  Remember, you only get points when you knew what both words meant.  Which one of the above words relates to touch?  Which one’s a large stone?  Which one’s an attraction?

            For some folks, it doesn’t matter.  They’ve become so dependent on the spell-checker they can’t even grasp the idea that the machine doesn’t know what word they were intending to use. All they see is that the spell-checker said it was right, therefore their hovel is flawless! 

            You’ll find a lot of these same people in forums bitching about how all the big editors have unrealistic expectations and don’t know good stuff when it’s right in front of them.

            Y’see, Timmy, spelling and vocabulary are not mechanical because language is not mechanical.  That’s why I can’t trust a machine to know these things for me.  If I can’t be bothered to learn them, I’m going to fail again and again and again.

            So buy a dictionary.  Learn to spell.  Learn what words mean.

            Next time, one last quick cut I forgot about.

            Until then, go write.

Cut to the Quick

            Two cutting references in two weeks.  Hmmmm...

            Bonus points and a vocabulary star if any of you actually know what that title phrase refers to.  No, don’t cheat and look it up.  Be honest about what you know and what you don’t.

            So, since I was away editing for a bit I though this would be a good time to toss up some thoughts on editing.  I’ve been doing this professionally for almost a decade now--full time for close to six years--and I still need to do lots of editing.  It’s just one of those unavoidable truths--99.9999% of us don’t write usable first drafts.

            For the record, that .0001% is Paul Haggis, so don’t think you’re the exception.  He is.  And it took him thirty years to become the exception.

            Cutting is painful, though, because it means losing lots of stuff.  I poured my heart into the first draft of 14, but in the end I still needed to cut over 20,000 words from it.  That’s a hundred pages, gone.  And it’s a leaner, tighter, stronger book because of it.

            Well, because of most of it.

            Knowing that my writing needs work is a strength.  It’s not admitting failure.  It’s admitting I can improve, and if someone can’t admit that they’re never going to improve.

            The thing is, so many folks think making cuts means lopping off entire subplots or removing well-developed characters or cutting out that three page monologue from a random guy on the street explaining how tax cuts for the rich are really good for the middle class.  Editing doesn’t mean cutting all that (although you probably could lose that monologue and not a lot of folks will complain).  It can mean just a general tightening and trimming of all the little things. 

            Think of those Olympic swimmers, runners, and bicyclists.  They know that shaving their exposed hair and wearing tight clothes reduces drag.  Not by much, but the little things pile up and can make the difference between a gold medal and a silver one. 

            So here’s a couple very easy, straightforward ways you can make cuts and maybe trim a few thousand words from your writing...

            That— Whenever I start editing, I always start with a “that” pass.  It’s a word we all drop into our writing in an attempt to be grammatically perfect, but four out of five times the writing would be just as clear (and more concise) without it.

--------------------------------------

            Phoebe thought that Wakko would love her new dress.

            He chose the same weapon that his predecessor had used.

vs

            Phoebe thought Wakko would love her new dress.

            He chose the same weapon his predecessor had used.

--------------------------------------

            On my first pass through 14 I removed over 600 uses of that.  That’s over two pages.  In Ex-Communication, I cut over 200 of them.  Use the Find feature in Word (it’s up there under Edit) and search for it in your writing.  See how often it shows up.  Check how many of them are necessary.  Odds are you’ll find at least half of them aren’t.

            Adverbs--  This is usually my second pass through the editing draft.  This time I use Find to locate all the places “ly” shows up.  I can admit it—as I get caught up in the flow of words a lot of adverbs sneak into my writing.  And they’re pretty useless...

--------------------------------------

          They all screamed loudly at the approaching psychopath.
          “Shut your damn mouth, bitch,” snapped Phoebe angrily.

          He eagerly grabbed the statue he'd spent weeks searching for.

-------------------------------------

            Do those adverbs add anything to their sentences?  Would a reader figure out that Phoebe was angry, or that the scream was loud?  I’d guess three out of five times I find an adverb in my writing I don’t need it.  The fourth time I’ve chosen the wrong verb, and once I’ve got the right one... well, I don’t need the adverb.  If I’m using my vocabulary well, there aren’t many times I’ll need one.  I cut over 500 adverbs and adverbial phrases out of 14 and 330 out of Ex-Communication.

            I heard a great rule of thumb from writer/ editor Pat LaBrutto that I've mentioned a few times.  One adverb per page, four adjectives per page.  It’s just a guideline, granted, but if you’re averaging six or seven adverbs per paragraph maybe you should give them all a second look.  And then a third look.

            Useless Modifiers -- I've also called this Somewhat Syndrome a few times.  This is one I struggle with a lot, but I’m getting much more aware of it.  It's when I pepper my sentences with  somewhat, almost, a bit, slightly, and other such modifiers.  They show up in dialogue a lot, and sometimes in prose when I’m trying not to sound awkward with a bunch of specifics.

            Nine times out of ten they're not doing anything, though, except adding to my word count and slowing my story down.  Use the Find feature again, see how many of them are doing anything, and look how much tighter and stronger your writing is without them.  I cut almost 450 of these out of 14 and over 200 from Ex-Communication.

            ...Of... --The word of can be a flag that something could be cut.  A fair amount of the time, of is being used to tack on an extra bit of description.  More often than not that description’s unnecessary and something the reader already knows.  Which means it’s dragging my prose down and slowing the pace.  There’s a reason we all tend to say United States far more often than United States of America.

            Check out these examples...

--------------------------------------

Captain Lancaster of the Defiant is here to see you, sir.

The razor-sharp edge of the sword flew through the beast’s neck without hesitation.

vs.

Captain Lancaster is here to see you, sir.

The razor sharp edge flew through the beast’s neck without hesitation.

--------------------------------------

            It’s not a sure-fire thing, but once I went looking I found three or four of these in Ex-Communication that could go away.

            Appeared to be...   --This is one of those phrases some people latch onto and use all the time.  It slips into my writing, too.  It tends to be used as an introduction of sorts, leading the reader into some purple-prose description.  This phrase sometimes disguises itself as looked like or seemed to be or some variation thereof.

            The thing is, though, appeared to be doesn’t get used alone.  It’s part of a literary construction where the second half of that structure is either an implied or actual contradiction to the appearance.  So when you’re saying...

            --Phoebe appeared to stand six feet tall.

            ...what you’re really saying is...

            --Phoebe appeared to stand six feet tall, but she was actually closer to five foot five without her stiletto heels.

            And what you meant to be saying all along was just...

            --Phoebe stood six feet tall.

            If you aren't trying to establish a contradiction, using appeared to be and its bastard stepchildren isn't just wasted words-- it's wrong.  I cut thirteen of these that had slipped into Ex-Communication at one point or another.

            "As you know..." –I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  If you take nothing else from this little rant, take this one lesson.

            “As you know...” is probably the clumsiest form of exposition there is.  Really.  Think about it.  Just by saying "as you know," I'm stating that you--the person I'm speaking to--already know the facts I'm about to share.  As a writer, why would I have two characters engage in such a useless bit of dialogue?

            When a writer uses "as you know" or one of its half-breed cousins (“you may recall” or “if you remember” or many others), it's a weak attempt to put out some exposition through dialogue.  My lovely lady pointed out that a lot of these sentences tend to start with “Look...”.  If I’m using any of them, almost across the board there's either (A) a better way to get the information to the reader or (B) no need for this information because it ‘s already covered somewhere else. 

            If I've got a really solid manuscript--I mean rock-solid-- I might be able to get away with doing this once.  Just once.  As long as I don't do it your first ten pages.

            In Ex-Heroes it’s on page 98.

            Anyway, there's half a dozen quick, easy, and relatively painless cuts.  Try them out and see if you can drop a thousand words or more.

            Next time, I think we’re long overdue for a talk about spelling.  And I’ve got a great list for you this time.

            Until then, go write.