But I’ve never just come right out and stated it plainly.

I used to be a bad man.

I don’t mean I was a badass. I don’t mean I was a cool guy. I don’t mean I was dark and brooding and Batman without the gadgets. I don’t mean this as part of a persona to sell books and gather unto me Twitter followers.

I mean I was a truly shitty human being. I really was. I was a bad person. I was selfish, angry, arrogant, cruel, and dealt with most feelings by finding someone suitable to punch in the head at three o’clock in the morning.

And while I never preyed physically on those weaker than myself… I was also a raging misogynist.

This is hard for me to write about. A lot of the people in my life now are women. I respect them. I care about them. Their opinion of me matters. They are fellow writers. They are scientists and teachers. They all put up with male pattern stupidity aimed like a gun at who and what they are. My girlfriend is an attorney who has had to deal with institutionalized sexism her entire career. She’s successful and a good, kind person in spite of it.

It’s hard to know and love these people and admit to this.

But I was. I was a bad person and I was part of the problem for more years than I care to claim.

Before I was a writer I was a pro-wrestler. Becoming one was like running away to join the circus to me. I wasn’t a popular kid. I was one of the loners, one of the untouchables. It made me sad and it made me hurt and it made me hate. Eventually it made me flee. I snapped, I checked out, I became what I became to deal with life. Pro-wrestling is where I came of age, where I really grew up and learned how to be a man.

I took a lot of good things away from the pro-wrestling business and its culture that I still use today.

Its attitude towards women is not one of them.

Pro-wrestling is one of the most misogynistic environments one can experience in their lifetime. That doesn’t mean there aren’t strong, independent women in it doing their thing. There always are. But anyone who tells you it isn’t the ultimate boys’ club is lying and/or deluding themselves.

We excelled at belittling and excluding the women who wanted to be part of the business and using the women who simply loved it. Whether they were trying to break into the business, or whether they were just women we encountered on the road, they were always less than we were. We were smarter, we were more capable, we were the chosen ones. They were there strictly to service our egos or bodies or simply our boredom. Their humiliation was funny to us, often a source of entertainment.

Female pro-wrestling groupies are called “rats,” by the way.

You thought rock stars and rappers knew how to exploit and objectify the female gender?

They ain’t got shit on us, son.

In intervening years I worked with the military. The United States military takes misogyny to an entirely different level. Again, there are good men and strong women there. But to classify the United States military as anything other than a place where women are widely regarded as something less than human is a lie. “Rape culture” is a literal term there. Sexual assault is a plague in our military. The only place… literally, the only place… I can think of where pack mentality is more dominant, more severe, and more twisted in its view and treatment of women would be a prison.

These are all men with mothers. They have sisters, wives, and daughters. Most of them would never in a million years dream of physically or even emotionally or psychology abusing the women in their lives.

Yet in a uniform surrounded by other men and with generations of alpha male breeding, history, and hardwiring permeating their ranks… they become borderline psychopaths.

I have never physically abused a woman. I have never actively allowed a woman to be physically abused.

But I did absolutely nothing to correct the behavior, mentality, or environment around me in any of these places I’ve been.

Here’s the worst part: I didn’t have sexist viewpoints. I really didn’t. At all. I was raised by a single mother I respected deeply and still do for the person she was and is. I never thought of women as less than men, or any woman less than me. I didn’t think women shouldn’t be in the wrestling business, or in the military, or in any other facet of life they chose.

But I went with the pack, because I desperately wanted to run with it.

You do it because it’s expected. You do it because it’s easy. You do it because to not do it would be to risk.

Eventually you even get to like it.

You really get to like it.

For that reason and many, many others I woke up one afternoon and realized I didn’t much care for who I was.

I began the very long, arduous, painful process of change.

It is possible. It does happen.

By the time I started attending cons as an author I was a vastly different person. Sexism and harassment at conventions was a bizarre concept to me. That group seemed so ridiculously tame and staid compared to the environments I’d come from it never even occurred to me the “men” there would have the sack to talk to a strange woman, let alone objectify and torment her.

Only it doesn’t take sack. It’s the opposite of sack. It’s a large group and/or group mentality replacing individual courage, individual action, individual thought.

Replacing the individual, period.

I wish I had seen it going on around me. The truth, however, is that while I was no longer an active misogynist I was very good at being a passive one. I was no longer loud and abrasive and callous. I treated the women I met with courtesy. If I saw someone openly harass a woman at a convention right in front of me I would’ve taken the gentleman aside and given him a stern talking to.

But I hadn’t tweaked that part of my perception fully. I still viewed women I didn’t know largely as potential sexual conquests, and I certainly didn’t have my eyes or my ears on when it came to their comfort level or the way other men interacted with them or the general tone of the environment towards them.

I didn’t see them. I chose not to.

Inaction, omission, ignorance… these are always, always choices.

I don’t attend cons anymore. I haven’t for several years.

It is bad out there, folks.

No, “bad” is too broad and too vague and gives you too much of an excuse.

It’s unacceptable out there.

I started reading about gaming culture first, I think. Video games, in particular. I started seeing it. The hatred is rampant and palpable in gaming. It’s bald-faced and unapologetic. It’s widely accepted as both ideology and behavior. It’s institutionalized on many levels. Gaming executives have little to no interest in women. Game developers have no understanding, ability, or inclination to include women in their process or products.

And male gamers fucking hate women. The pathology and expressions of it are frightening.

Then I started seeing the posts from women at and about conventions. That was a revelation. I can’t count the number of cons I’ve attended in the past. Now, as I look back… yes, it was absolutely there, in many forms at many cons.

I didn’t see it then. So I didn’t do anything to correct it.

Then there’s truly stupid, wholly unnecessary bullshit like this thing with Mike Resnick, Barry Malzberg, and the SFWA.

It’s a huge problem both in fiction writing culture and in fiction itself.

It has continued. Including and right up to yesterday when I read this post on Feminist Frequency detailing the responses to Anita Sarkeesian accurately pointing to the fact before the largest gaming industry convention in the country Microsoft announced no new games featuring female protagonists.

The hate she received is a parody of itself. It would be funny if it weren’t so immensely sincere.

No… man… should… behave… like… this.

Ever.

I understand where a lot of it comes from, especially in geek culture. It’s not even about rejection so much as exclusion, feeling ignored and always on the outside of something for an important chunk of your life. Women are a big part of that something. Suddenly, after years of that, you find yourself empowered by a culture. It’s male dominant, even if alpha males don’t populate it. You can exist as a part of this, an integral part. You can be a leader. You can be a man of action. You can be the thing you’ve always wanted to be.

The interjection into that of a woman is like someone dropping a volcanic rock in your pond of awesome.

Even if you don’t want revenge, even if it’s not malicious, you are unwilling to give up the power you’ve acquired through entrance into that culture. This is mine. I have finally found a place of importance and relevance and authority. I will have this. No cooler, smarter, better-looking, better-liked guy can take this away from me.

And no uppity cunt will, either.

You chant this, silently, over and over again in psychic unison with an entire world of like-minded guys until the thought becomes legion and the legion is ready to war with any interloper. It develops as an instinct. After a time you no longer even think about it. You simply react to the presence of an assertive woman like waking up to find a burglar in your house.

The empowerment. The possession. The adrenaline. The acceptance. The pack.

It’s a strong, heady brew.

I understand.

You boys need to nut up and get the fuck over it.

You need to be men.

It’s not the only motivation out there and far from it, but it’s the one I understand the most.

How do we fix all of this?

I think the work has to change. That’s a big part of it. Fiction, games, movies… all of these things influence, inform, and really just form the next generation and the next iteration of the cultures we’re talking about. Anita Sarkeesian is absolutely right about the lack of female protagonists in games. It matters, on so many levels and in so many ways.

It matters.

If you raise your daughters on Disney, and all Disney gives them is ineffectual, empty-headed, male-dependent princesses and you offer them no alternative or contrary viewpoint then that’s what they’ll become. That’s what they’ll create.

If you raise your sons on the same diet then that’s how they’ll view women. That’s how they’ll treat women. That’s how they’ll write and portray women.

That creates the next generation, and the cycle begins anew.

For my part I’m actively trying to get out of my own personal experience and headspace and perspective and tropes and work with more female protagonists in my own fiction. I’m guilty of that, too. Again, it’s not malice. It’s complacency. I know what it’s like to be a man, even a particular kind of man, so I’ve always written that.

That’s over. I’m trying to create worlds that are real, and to do that women have to be integral to the proceedings. Because they just fucking are. And I’m trying to write the women I know and respect and just really dig. There are droves of them from which to draw.

It’s not marching or protesting or taking an abuser out back and beating him ‘til his eyes bleed. Writing a story or a novel or a screenplay isn’t going to change the world. I know that.

But I’m a writer.

This is what I do. This is what I have.

That should become the question.

What do you do? What do you have?

Beyond the work, the workers have to stand up. Writing this is part of it for me. Active rather than passive is the key. Don’t read along and nod silently and then go on about your business as usual.

You have to stop, at least every once and while, and take some action that ripples. Affect another person. Add your voice, correct a behavior, or simply let someone know you will not accept their behavior.

You can’t change people, but you can force them to the shape the fuck up.

A large portion of our population would still be slaves, otherwise.

The whole thing is absurd. Fundamentally. Female authors shouldn’t be thought of as a group separate from male authors. There shouldn’t be “gamer girls,” just gamers. Any job a person is capable of doing shouldn’t come with a stigma attached to it because that person is a woman.

You should respect their space and their privacy and their innate human rights.

It seems perfectly obvious.

To me. To you.

It isn’t to Them. It isn’t even a thought. It’s not the barest blip on Their cerebral radar.

Those ideas do not exist to Them.

What do you do? What do you have?

I am deeply sorry to every woman I’ve ever used. I am deeply sorry to every woman to whom I did not offer help or support. I am deeply sorry to every woman I made or helped to make feel less.

I will do better every day I interact with the world around me. I will stand up. I will correct. I will contribute. I will raise my sons and daughters to do the same. I will not perpetuate, tolerate, or assent, silently or otherwise.

I require the same from every person reading these words.

You should require the same from them, and from yourself.

I encourage you to spread this image far and wide via every social networking tool and animal courier service at your disposal.

It deserves it.

The cover of your book just ran and hid under its bed, where it’s currently soiling your carpet from every orifice.

And I don’t blame it one bit.

As an added bonus, I’ve also posted a very cool breakdown of how the cover came together over on my Tumblr.

BEDTIME STORIES FOR BADASSES is my first new volume of fiction since 2008 and will feature a slew of previously unreleased and grown-up, thoroughly badass takes on the gods, monsters, heroes, and symbols of all of our favorite childhood tales.

It drops in July.

My thanks to Natalie for her talent and hard work creating this eye-and-ass-kicking piece of art.

I wanted to go out on a high and utterly brutal note, so for our last weekend of workshops I put my kids to the task of writing a 5k-word short story from scratch, beginning to end, based on ideas they came up with on the day.

We worked on their stories in four sections. With each section I tried to focus them on the elements and tradecraft I’ve covered/preached in previous workshops over the last two years. The whole class reviewed/critiqued their comrades’ work after completing each fevered writing blitz, and I then helped them form a plan of attack for the next section based on those notes.

I’m proud to report they rose to the occasion. They completed their mission. They came up with some very original ideas and equally original writing in stories that ran the complete gamut of genre from sci-fi to horror to Victorian fantasy to contemporary literature. If they didn’t compose a solid first draft, everyone left with a rough draft or the complete bones of a good short story.

And a homework assignment to make it better, then make it good, and then do it again three more times.

They did credit to themselves as writers, and to me as their humble teacher.

I was so impressed with how they cowboy/girled up, in fact, that I’ve decided you need to read these stories, too.

I’m pleased to announce that in August I will be releasing LOOSE CANNONS: AN ANTHOLOGY—collecting the works of the baddest wordslingers ever to come through TLC and survive my sadistically manic ministrations.

The bulk of the anthology will be composed of the stories from the final weekend of TLC. I’ve also reached out to several workshop alumni whose work I respect and whom I believe to be worthy authors. Their stories will round out the book.

I’ll be serving as editor of the antho, and I may even drop one of my own offerings in there just to close it out right.

I’ll be releasing LOOSE CANNONS digitally in all formats. There may be a print version, but nothing is set as of now. It will have a greatly reduced cover price, and any proceeds will be divided evenly among the authors involved; I’m not taking a dime on this one.

My goal with this anthology is simple and threefold…

1) I want to create some tangible record of TLC and the work I’ve done with the core group of writers who’ve stuck with it and me over the last two years and change.

2) I want to expose those same authors as much as I’m able. They’ve worked hard, they’ve gotten good at what they do, and they deserve the chance to show you their work and have their stories read by as many people as I can bring to them.

3) I want to create a sick anthology filled with sick stories.

I’ll firm up the release date and the Table of Contents as we get closer to August. Until then I’m going to be hammering the authors involved with an intense, prolonged editorial process aimed at refining their stories into the absolute best and most professional expression of each.

I don’t do vanity projects for vanity’s sake. If they’re not good, if they don’t shake me down to my bone scars, they will not be included in LOOSE CANNONS.

And if I thought the authors involved were anything less than professional and talented folks with quality stories to offer, I wouldn’t be doing this book in the first place.

I hope you’ll give them a chance to entertain you and maybe even break your hearts. They’ve labored long and journeyed far to acquire the skills for the task.

The same is true, albeit in a far less physical sense, about creative writing as a profession.

Like professional wrestling, freelance writing is a truly god-awful profession at virtually all but the highest level. The money sucks. No one respects or values the craft. Everyone and their retarded aunt think they’re a writer. The business is treacherous and corrupt. You swallow pride, ego, bullshit, rejection, and criticism on a daily basis. You’re forced to associate or be associated with the loathsome, neurotic, pandering creatures that are or at least call themselves writers. A sliver of a molecule of a fraction of those who aspire to the trade actually ever earn a living or any substantial form of recognition doing it.

I say this with no malice, bitterness, or even judgment: writing as a profession sucks.

Most jobs suck, to be sure, but most jobs you might do to make a living are largely interchangeable and vastly easier to come by. Making as much money as a freelance writer as you do as an office temp requires fifty times the effort, time, patience, and energy you’ll put into the latter gig. There’s also no stability, no security. You live on a tightrope, if you’re lucky enough to be able to live on it at all, ever.

For those reasons, you have to love it or it will kill you.

I know one thing about every truly terrible, ungodly successful novel I’ve ever read or tried to read. With little exception, the author who wrote that novel, however inept I may find them, truly believed in that story when they wrote it. They loved it. That love carried them through. Others recognized and connected with their passion, allowing them to transcend the limits of their writing ability and become very successful.

It really makes all the difference in this line of work.

Tomorrow my novel THE FAILED CITIES will be available from British publisher The House of Murky Depths. It’s not really a big deal. It’s a very small, limited run. It’s not going to be distributed in chain stores. There’s not going to be a mass-market paperback. The ebook version I released myself is still available, but in terms of its printed lift, THE FAILED CITIES is basically a very shiny gnat.

A few fans who’ve been with me since the beginning asked for this book, and I felt that was reason enough to do it. That’s all. Terry Martin and The House of Murky Depths saw enough demand to make it worth their while to buy it and work on the hardcover with me. It’s been fun. We’ll make a little money (very little). We’ll all have a cool hardcover book we’re very proud of. The couple of folks who care will get to read it the way they’ve always wanted. 99.9999999-unto-infinity% of the world will never know or care.

It’s not a big deal.

Except it means just about everything to me.

There are so many threads to this I’m scrambling to organize them into something cogent that doesn’t go on for thousands of words. I suppose it boils down to three or four things. I’ll try to be as brief as possible. You’ve got other things to do. Real things that actually matter to other people.

I never worked harder on a piece of fiction than I did on THE FAILED CITIES, at least at the time I wrote it. Those eight characters, their individual voices (especially that), their huge-ass sprawling world… it all took chunks out of me which have yet to grow back and probably never will. I am still proud of the results. I still believe in and love the novel. It was my first.

It did all right as a podcast. No one of a scale with which I was comfortable wanted the book. Agents didn’t like it. Big publishers didn’t like it as it read. Other authors told me it would never be a big seller for me. I’d written a story without giving a single thought and/or shit about its marketability or place in a bookstore, and upon concluding my weird, beloved experiment didn’t fit into a sellable box.

To be clear and fair: there were as many people who just plain hated it and thought it sucked. There always are. I don’t mind that.

Everyone else, however, were unwilling to take the ride for the wrong reasons, and so I gave up on the idea of the story and the characters I loved ever becoming a book.

More than that…. eventually I just plain gave up on the rest of this shit, too.

I truly despised the business of publishing. I despised the fact that five or six companies seemed to control everything. I despised the torturously slow pace at which the industry moved. The idea of a five-thousand-dollar advance for a novel disgusted me and still does. Royalties seemed like a Ponzi scheme to me. I hated the glut of broke-ass small presses and horrible anthologies and magazines and the crippling stigma of genre labels. I hated the pretense and the poseurs and every facet of every culture and subculture connected to the industry and the craft.

It was professional wrestling all over again, and I’d already seen the end of that story.

Creatively I began to feel like fiction writing was a massive sinkhole, as well. When you step through the wall separating reader from writer you can begin to view fiction, not as a wealth of worlds to explore, but as a sea of white noise, of sameness and repetition in which to drown. There is so, so much out there. So much of it sounds and reads the same. You might as well be shedding solitary tears into a fucking ocean for all the impact you might have.

What’s the point?

I gave up on the very notion being a career novelist or a fiction writer was something worth pursuing. I’d rather buy a fucking lottery ticket, and if my work was going to be irrelevant no matter what I’d rather write for a market that at least had a decent paycheck to offer me.

What can I say? I was young(er). I was pissed off and entitled and indignant and self-righteous and thought I knew everything. That’s what your twenties are for, right?

So I stopped. I stopped writing my next novel, I stopped submitting, I stopped arguing, I stopped caring. I spent several years writing scripts and trying to get movies made. I burned a couple of years on a truly toxic relationship during which I didn’t produce much commercially. I wrote for a shitty cartoon based on a shittier line of toys. I kept writing short stories, mostly just for me and only to keep my sanity. I came out to LA with my copy of Final Draft looking to bump my tax bracket. I put some words in Liam Neeson’s mouth and that was pretty cool.

You know. Life. And now I’m not in my twenties anymore.

Last year, on a lark and because I was broke, I started publishing and selling my old fiction myself, digitally. People bought enough of it to make doing it again worth my time and effort. So I did. I also started writing more specifically for that purpose.

Over the last six months something substantial has changed in me. I enjoy reading more than I used to, for a long time. I’ve bought more books so far this year than I have in the last three. I’m consuming short stories like I did when I was eighteen. Reading a good story taps my adrenaline and uncorks my endorphins and gets me excited about storytelling.

I get that old feeling of, “Man, that was amazing. I can beat it.”

I love it again. I love telling my stories. I want to tell bigger stories on bigger canvases. I want to turn those stories into the coolest books and digital products I can create.

The last six months and whatever the hell that internal epoch means have led to the release of THE FAILED CITIES tomorrow. It’s the next step, a small step, to be sure, but a wholly necessary step.

It’s also shown me a new way to do business, a model I’m very excited about. I released the ebook first, on my own. Its success led to my deal with Terry to do the print version. The digital rights remain with me, and I’m going to keep selling the ebook. Considering the sickening gap in ever-expanding digital royalties for authors is one of the things that has kept me off publishing for the past few years, this arrangement is a whole new and bold world for me.

Now I just have to convince a publisher to do the same thing on a bigger scale.

So, yeah, the book I’m releasing tomorrow isn’t a big deal.

Except it absolutely fucking is.

I’m proud of this book. I’m still proud of the story, and I think the book itself is a work of art. I never thought I’d hold a hardcover version of this novel in my hands, let alone one printed in Great Britain to such beautiful and professional standards. I never thought people would still want to read it, let alone buy it.

I’m just proud it exists.

Ultimately, however, THE FAILED CITIES is the opening salvo of a war, and one in which I intend to declare total victory. It’s me firing the first shot at publishing. I had to do this one to know it could be done. I had to see this created from nothing, carved from the bedrock, to know I could make it happen. Now it’s simply a matter of scale. If I can hold the book I always wanted to see printed and never thought would or could be in my hands, then there’s nothing on any scale I can’t do.

The next novel I release, the next book I put out into the world, is going to be huge. The story is going to be better crafted and more well told than anything I’ve written. The book is going to break wider and go farther than I ever thought possible. And it’s going to happen on the terms I set.

There have been many times in my life when I had to pick my head up off a concrete floor and stare down at a widening puddle of my own blood. Some nights the sight of that made me question every choice I’d made up to that point. Some nights it made me hate my life and myself. And some nights I smiled, spit, and went looking for more.

It’s still a bloody business, this whole “writing things.”

But right now I’m smiling.

What doesn’t kill you, right?

DELVE is the story of a small satellite circling the moon of Ganymede and its inhabitants. It’s been approximately fifty years since Earth and its population was decimated by a psychically driven virus that transforms men and women into literal versions of the darker angels of our nature. Now a handful of people begin the process of repopulating the ranks of humanity by cloning batches of newborns to be dispatched to our new home.

Stenz is a “screener,” an enhanced human who is tasked with entering the consciousness of the cloned newborns—a process known as the Delve—and erasing the virus’ triggering mechanism. It is his job to scrub human nature clean of any potential for even the slightest dark or violent impulse.

Things go wrong.

DELVE has had an interesting lifespan. Like a lot of my stuff, it first appeared on the Variant Frequencies podcast. It was included in my first short story collection THE NEXT FIX (Apex, 2008). It was my second short story optioned for film. It was the second story of mine I adapted into a feature-length screenplay. It was the first screenplay I wrote that was actually good.

Of all the projects I’ve been involved with over the last five or six years based on my own original material, DELVE came the closest to becoming a movie. We had a solid script I’d worked and reworked over a very long, arduous, but ultimately fruitful process. We had a promising first-time director in Ian Brown, a talented and experienced visual effects artist. We had Hugo Weaving attached in a prominent role (it was an Australian production). I had three percent of the shooting budget on the day cameras rolled.

We entered previz—I still have some of the amazing conceptual art and storyboards that were generated. We barreled into preproduction looking like a well-oiled killing machine of cybernetic mayhem. I started looking at cheap houses in the Tennessee valley.

Then Hugo Weaving disappeared. With him went the financing, the movie, and my three points.

DELVE taught me one of the most valuable lessons a professional writer must learn: never count on the money until the check clears.

I still love the story. I still love the screenplay. Please enjoy the former. Perhaps one day you’ll finally be able to enjoy the latter.

More to the point, it belongs to this storyteller.

This summer I’m turning up the heat with three new full-length books that I have designed and engineered specifically to scorch your retinas and cause your brain’s reactor to meltdown. I’ve taken speculative fiction as far past the red line as my meager talents and novice skills will allow. I’ve recruited artists. I’ve teamed with publishers and gone guerilla. I’ve stormed both the printed page and the digital. I’ve written until my battle-worn hands and my life-weary mind could withstand no more.

The rest is up to you, kids.

This is my summer 2013 release schedule. Mark your calendars, create a new coin jar, and join a support group to help curb your Kickstarter donations.

My stuff you can just buy and enjoy.

It’s up to you what happens in the fall.

THE FAILED CITIES (MAY 17th)

On May 17th The House of Murky Depths—Britain’s premiere specialty publisher of fiction and comics—is bringing my Parsec Award nominated novel THE FAILED CITIES to print for the first time ever in a gorgeous limited edition hardcover.

Told through the revolving voices of eight characters – a street preacher, a back alley negotiator, a hot-rodding master of edged weapons, brother and sister assassins, a pit fighting pulp writer, a reluctant detective, and a Machiavellian femme fatale – THE FAILED CITIES is the story of a divided dystopian metropolis, the humanistic struggles of its citizens, and how their lives intersect over several weeks of intrigue, greed, struggle, revenge, and love that threaten to unravel both halves of a flawed and beautiful whole.

“[The Failed Cities] is an examination of the human spirit, a darkened mirror that reflects the true nature of the struggle, not only for survival, but for civilization. ” – Scott Sigler, New York Times best-selling author of INFECTED and CONTAGIOUS

Pre-order today to reserve your personally signed and numbered copy and receive the exclusive 8-page Illustrated Companion featuring artwork of The Failed Cities by artists Neil Roberts, Kev Level, Huy Truong, Neil Struthers, Donna Evans, Jason Flowers, and Macaruba.

DECK GIBSON: FAR REACH COMMANDER – THE COMPLETE SCRIPTS (JUNE 5th)

Lieutenant Deck Gibson was once the most feared pilot in the Quasar Corps, the military arm of the most xenophobic, genocidal, and totalitarian empire in the cosmos: Earth.

Blown far past the Solar System’s closed and heavily guarded borders, Deck was saved from the wreckage of his damaged starfighter by Control—a mysterious being heard only as a feminine voice over an interstellar comm. link. Recruited by Control to be the first Earthling commander in the altruistic Far Reach Fleet, Deck’s new mission is to explore, to discover, to defend.

For years the Decoder Ring Theatre podcast has been home to all-new audio adventures in the tradition of the classic programs of Radio’s Golden Age. In 2007 they introduced two original episodes of Deck Gibson: Far Reach Commander, their first rocket ships and ray guns science fiction offering created and written by Matt Wallace. Premiering as part of their Summer Showcase, Deck proved so popular that he was brought back in 2008 for his own series.

Although Deck only last for one season, his legacy has lived on, with fans new and old clamoring for more. On June 5th, for the first time, every single original Deck Gibson script is being collected into a new full-length ebook.

Deck Gibson brings the adventure and excitement of old-time space opera into a modern universe of astronomical and biological wonders never imagined by early 20th century writers. It merges the sensibilities of old school pulp sci-fi with the hard-edged voice of new speculative fiction.

For fans of the series, this is a must-have addition to your library. For speculative fiction fans that have never embraced audio drama, this is a chance to read and enjoy these remarkable adventures on the page for the first time.

The Complete Scripts collects all eight, unabridged, half-hour season one episdes. It will also feature a brand new adventure in the form of the unproduced, never-before-released season two episode, “Deck Gibson and the Carnival of Champions,” as well as a foreword by Decoder Ring executive producer Gregg Taylor and a new introduction by the author.

BEDTIME STORIES FOR BADASSES (JULY 17th)

A battle-scarred teddy bear that has crusaded against the shapes of childhood fear given form for over a century. A ragged and starving army of unwanted canines who may be the unknowing city of Moskow’s only hope for the survival. A dedicated young woman no one wants to see win the ultimate first-person video game played by the fiercest warriors of the future. A one-night-only battle royale between the gods we all know, or at least thought we did, with humankind caught in the middle.

These aren’t your little brother’s bedtime stories.

No, these are for big boys and big girls who know the real world of heroes, gods, monsters, high-adventure and romance is often an ugly place requiring more than a pure heart and a shiny sword. These roads aren’t paved with yellow bricks. They demand brass balls and iron ovaries and the willingness to blow shit up with a bazooka that fires Viking souls.

Matt Wallace’s first new collection of short fiction since 2008’s award-winning The Next Fix—BEDTIME FOR BADASSES contains 14 brand new stories, many of them previously unreleased.

These are all of your childhood hopes, dreams, and nightmares grown up and ready for a fight.

These are what teddy bears, puppy dogs, and cardboard spaceships look like after the veil of innocence is lifted.

Only the badass need apply.

It was very emotional for you. Trust me.

The final regular sessions are in May. Those will consist of a grueling two-day writing and review marathon in which you will create and complete an original short story from scratch. My goal is to traumatize, with my last breath, as many aspiring authors as I can into quitting and becoming teachers instead in an effort to cull any potential competition.

Also, we need more teachers. We’re tits-up with writers.

So, that’s the end of the workshops.

But TLC as we know it ends in June.

On Saturday, June 22nd I will be hosting a live on-line event entitled “Matt Wallace’s Last Annual Literary Apocalypse Tour: A Symposium on Sucking Less” in which I will (attempt) to sum up everything I know as a writer, everything I’ve learned over the last two years of running the workshop, and everything I urge you to carry forward in your own writing.

It will be useful. It will be funny. There may be special guest stars, live music, fireworks, and/or a hand-to-hand fight to the death with large, flaming axes.

There will be no clowns.

I give you a “No Clown” guarantee.

There will also be a workshop portion in which you will write the most important and meaningful thing I’ve ever instructed my students to write.

After which you will rewrite it.

Because it will suck the first time.

That’s The Loose Cannon.

I wanted to go out on some kind of definitive note, and end with a summary of whatever the hell it is I have to offer you in the arena of writing fiction and trying to make a living as a writer.

That’s what this symposium will be.

The cost for non-TLC members to attend the symposium is $100.00 USD. E-mail me at matt AT matt-wallace.com for details.

I dubbed it The Loose Cannon. Writers put their money down and signed in from all over the world. They kept coming back, month after month. Thousands upon thousands of words have been written. Lessons have been learned. I’ve yelled a lot. I’ve told a lot of truth. The only lies I’ve told were ones I made clear were lies at the outset.

We all suck a little less than we did two years ago.

It’s been worthwhile.

And now… it’s now time for The Loose Cannon to retire.

I’m both pleased and saddened to announce that June will be the last month I host a TLC event.

There are reasons. This year saw a lot of my regular students move on (which is the whole point), and not enough new students signing up to take their place. My own time is more and more at a premium these days (which is also the point).

Mostly, however, it’s just time. TLC has run its course.

All good things…

This thing has lasted longer and I’ve enjoyed it more than I ever thought possible, particularly the latter part. I’m proud of my students. I’m proud of Christine Steendam, whose first novel was recently released by 5 Princes. I’m proud of Colin F. Barnes, who apparently runs his own imprint now. I’m proud of KP Hornsby, who received an honorable mention in the prestigious L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future competition last year.

There are others; dozens of them. I’m proud of them just for showing up and really trying to cut through all the bullshit (there’s a lot of it in this medium) and write something good.

In May—specifically Saturday, May 25th, and Sunday, May 26th—I will be hosting the last weekend of regular TLC workshops. I wanted to go out with a howitzer bang, so that final weekend will be my Ultimate TLC Thunderdome Challenge. Over those two days, attendees will write a new, complete, original short story (no less than 5k words) from scratch, beginning to end. In-between sections we’ll discuss the work, why it sucks, how to make it better, and where to go next and why.

But no one is leaving until either your mind is gray pudding being served out of your ears or you turn in something that is both done and good.

The cost for non-TLC members is $200.00 USD. You must attend both days of the workshop to participate.

I’m toying with the idea of collecting the stories from that weekend into a TLC anthology so that there will be some tangible record of what we’ve all tried to do with this thing over the last two years.

Nothing is set. We’ll see who shows up, and what kind of work they do.

I’m not putting my name behind anything that sucks.

If you’re interested in participating in this final weekend of TLC workshops, e-mail me at matt AT matt-wallace.com for details.

I want to sincerely thank everyone who gave money, time, and effort to TLC over the past two years. If nothing else, I hope you left sucking a little less as a writer than you did when you showed up.

The ultimate, final, doomsday TLC event will be held in June, but that’s another story.

Of an evening not too far past I was sitting at my dining room table scribbling in a Composition notebook bent and mangled from being stuffed in my back pocket twelve thousand times and which, according to the filled-out label on the cover, belongs to one “Doghouse O’Reilly” who attends the school of “Hard Knocks.” I was trying to figure out which stories were worth collecting, which stories worked in conjunction with which other stories, and what the title and concept that would tie them all together should be.

Realizing I had a wealth of material that dealt with each idea, I came up with the notion to divide stories into three sections: Heroes, Gods, and Monsters. This despite the fact there are approximately eight million texts on Greek and other assorted mythologies with that title.

It was solid, but not wholly distinct; not wholly mine. I consulted my good friend and oft-producing partner Earl Newton, who was at that moment practicing chi kung with a pair of Cambodian twin post-doctoral particle physics fellows/models he’s hosting at our shared estate for the summer. We talked about the stories I had on the docket. We talked about the themes that tend to reoccur in my stuff. We talked about my predilection for old-world warriors, both historic and mythical, whose code doesn’t jive with the world around them.

Then he floated this: “Badass Bedtime Stories?”

It sounded ridiculous and throwaway at first. Then I realized that it in fact encapsulates a lot of my stories, and a lot of my style and focus, kind of perfectly. I do tend towards the mythic and fantastic. I’m not a hard science fiction guy. Most of the time I write speculative fables with elements of science fiction and horror. And my stories often take on the non-idealized form of the heroic. They live in a violent, dark, not at all unfucked world.

I’m going with it.

On July 10th, 2013 I will be releasing BEDTIME STORIES FOR BADASSES, a compilation of my best new and unreleased short stories. It will be my first full-length short fiction collection since 2008’s THE NEXT FIX.

The collection will feature 14 stories, most of them totally new and unpublished works, as well as a couple of old friends I’m bringing back because they fit the motif and because I like them and want new people to read them. I’m also working a couple of new ones just because I’m digging the concept so damn much and want to turn up the volume on it even more.

Artist Natalie Metzger will be illustrating, designing, and creating the cover. We’re already talking about the old school, hand-drawn, Disney-on-acid-informed tableau this project calls for, and it’s going to be amazing.

BEDTIME STORIES FOR BADASSES is about storytelling in its purest and most early and iconic forms filtered through the veil of the modern and the visceral. It’s about some of our oldest friends and favorite dreams—teddy bears, puppy dogs, superheroes, monsters, rocket ships, Samurai swords, etc.—maturing, as we have, to remain as relevant and vital as we continue to be. It’s my own vision of myths, fairy tales, folklore, high-adventure and romance. It’s about the stories we loved as kids told for grown-ups who know that the real world of heroes, gods, and monsters is often an ugly place, and you need more than a pure heart and a shiny sword to battle that kind of darkness.

Sometimes you need a bazooka.

Being a “badass” isn’t about being a boy, either, and least of all about being a man. To me “badass” is the idea of the extreme, the intense, and the fantastic turned up to their maximum level and then doused in insanity. It’s about the willingness to take a journey whose bumps in the road are peppered with razor-sharp spikes and spit hot fire, where everything is not guaranteed to work out in the end and you may very well live the opposite of happily ever after.

That journey is non-gender-specific. These stories are for every fan of the speculative that is willing to peel a few more layers and go a bit deeper. More than that, I’ve wanted to explore in my fiction and promote the idea that the girls are just as badass as the boys, and in many cases much more so. This includes “The Beta Testers,” a story I’m dedicating to women gamers and women in gaming everywhere.

So, yeah. Whoever you are, whatever you are, wherever you are, this summer I invite you—nay, I double-dog dare you—to erect a sheets-and-pillow fort with .50-caliber machine gun and flame thrower turrets, arm your stuffed animals to the teeth, weaponize your favorite blankie (as if it isn’t weaponized already), and steel yourself under your covers…

… because I’m going to tell you a story.

You’ll have to do the voices yourself, however.

(dictated, not read)
The Management]

My writing has the privilege of being associated with some truly immense artists and illustrators. Most recently, for my novel THE FAILED CITIES (available May 17th from The House of Murky Depths. Reserve your copy today. Supplies are limited), I’ve been able to work with Scott Pond on a phantasmagorical 180° wraparound tableau for the front and back cover, as well as an entire slew of professional and sickly talented British artists who art illustrating all of the major characters and scenes from the book.

It’s a hell of a thing, seeing your stories and ideas realized visually by folks who know what they’re doing. It never gets old, and it’s never anything but amazing.

One of the best artists I’ve ever worked with is Natalie Metzger. Unfortunately I’ve never been able to showcase her brilliant work as I have with those other illustrators. Metz has consistently been involved with all of my hard luck projects that for one reason or twelve others never saw the finish line.

I’ve collected a mini-portfolio of Natalie’s work—gorgeous, finished products that deserve to be utilized and featured—over the past several years, and rifling through it the other day I realized I owe it to her and you to put it out into the world for our collectively enjoyment.

These are pieces of what might have been. These are pieces unto themselves. These are the brain children of Natalie Metzger.

WITCH/HUNTER

In 2009 I wrote an original web series called witch/hunter. It was set in an alternate world in which the accused women of Salem were not only guilty, they used their power to overthrow their accusers, all existing authority, and seize control of the colonies. Witches subsequently controlled/guided American history and influenced world history to modern day, where the actual story took place.

I shot half of it in Nashville with Earl Newton as my DP and the immensely talented Nate Panning in the lead role. We got some really great stuff, and my plan was to shoot the second half with a lead actress a couple months later. Instead I took what little money I had for the budget and moved to Los Angeles.

I don’t regret the decision, but I still love the story and I particularly love what everyone, including Metz, contributed to the project.

SALEM WITCH REVOLT

I envisioned an opening credit montage composed or newspaper articles detailing the history of my alternate America from 1695 to present day. This is the image that would’ve begun the montage; a depiction of the Salem Witch Revolt itself, with the witches burning their accusers at the stake. I wanted a crude, cartoonish feel to the art that could’ve come straight out of the 17th century. Metz delivered, and not only did she capture the style and feel I wanted, she took it to a level of art that both amuses and oddly repulses me when I look at this. Once we’d digitally altered and aged this piece you would’ve thought you were looking at 350-year-old parchment. I love this illustration.

SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX

This is an utterly beautiful take on pioneering political cartoonist Thomas Nast’s famous Peace In Union depicting the surrender of Robert E. Lee to Grant at Appomattox. I had the notion to insert a High Priestess presiding over/brokering the end of the Civil War. Metz did the rest.

One of the things that impresses me the most about Metz is her uncanny ability to change and match artistic styles. This is completely different in every way from the first piece. You wouldn’t know the same illustrator created both. More than that, Metz pretty much flawlessly nails Thomas Nast’s own style and aesthetic here. And Nast, ladies and gentlemen, was no ham-and-egger. He is considered the Father of the American Cartoon.

That’s real shit.

SAVAGE ANGEL

My first year in Los Angeles was tenuous to say the least. I had no writing job waiting for me. I had no real contacts. I had royalties from a book that was barely selling anymore and a quarterly column in a magazine. Any money from my last paid screenwriting job was spent on the move.

Utilizing my only other marketable skill, I had the notion to offer in-home self-defense lessons and private combat instruction as a sideline just to eat and make rent while I attempted to break in to the mainstream out here. I tapped Metz to design and create a logo for my start-up business, which I dubbed Savage Angels Combat.

Metz did a ton of rough sketches of our angel, created and refined the typography, and the result is this beautiful and deadly young lady with jagged wings. I loved it. I couldn’t wait to slap her on business cards, t-shirts, and the side of a van.

Sadly (not really), two things inevitably crippled the business before it launched: I hate teaching and always have, and even if I didn’t, my experiences with the military and police have soured my view of instruction pretty much for life. Also, I eventually landed my first big freelance screenwriting gig out here and did not starve to death.

I will use this logo on day, however. It may have to be for a production company or maybe I will finally open a private combat club filled with ancient weapons and lovers of the hand-to-hand arts who aren’t sociopaths.

CAPTAIN JAFAR AND THE TINY KNIVES

Despite the artistry, technique, intense time and effort, and thought poured into the above creations, I think this one may be my favorite.

I recently spent the weekend in a castle in Ohio (they have them there, apparently) with Metz and her husband and about thirty hardcore gamers. Metz has the tendency to sketch wherever she is, all the time. And she’ll illustrate things for you if you ask her nicely. I instructed Metz to draw me a knife. That’s all I said. I wanted to see her interpretation of my preferred instrument.

We happened to be playing Kittens in a Blender at the time (that’s a real thing), and that may be what inspired her.

The conceptual brilliance here staggers me: it’s a knife made of kittens… who are themselves holding four tiny knives.

That’s genius in a way I’m almost at a loss to describe. Don’t be surprised if Captain Jafar and the Tiny Knives turn up in one of my stories someday soon.

I also may have to stop drinking altogether as I know I will saturate my brain with enough rum one evening to get this tattooed on my chest.

One day I will actually complete a project that brings the art of Metz to the public eye in the grand fashion it deserves. In the meantime I cannot recommend highly enough that you further explore her great works. If she has the time and you can afford her services, I also urge you to solicit her mad talents for your own projects. There is quite literally nothing she cannot design, illustrate, and create for you.

UPDATE! Since the original posting of this article, I tapped Metz to design and create this original cover for my novella THE END OF FLESH which is now available as a stand-alone ebook exclusively in the Amazon Kindle Store. Once again, Metz takes a totally different approach and creates something kick-ass in a totally different style. This time around I wanted a cover that was graffiti-like and evoked both cyberpunk and the gothic and macabre to represent the aesthetic of the world in the story. I’m proud I was finally able to go live with something that included her eye-gouging work.

Metz will (hopefully) be doing more and even more epic cover work for me in the months to come.

You can find Metz, her work, and her contact information at The Fuzzy Slug. You can also follow her on Twitter @minitotoro.