Unabashed

Recently (a corporation) decided to hire (a departmental manager) and sent out three questions to prospective hires. One of the questionaires fell into my hands, so I filled it out and returned it using the name Vlad Kahn. Would you hire me?

Please list your top 3-5 strengths that will make you a strong candidate for this position.

1. I am a merciless director. I lead by example. My example is rage.
2. I demand the utmost discipline from my employees (henceforth referred to as “subjects” or “minions”) and will tolerate no insolence. Insolence is a sure way to cause my rage to be unleashed.
3. I am prone to fits of rage. For example, if I am not invited to interview for this position, my rage will be unleashed. Likewise, if I am not chosen for this position, my rage will be unleashed (I am prone to “get medieval”). I have chosen this company because I see potential for advancement, and I like the neighborhood. The coffee shop near the escalator is a nice touch. They should sell muffins.
4. BAH! (–I have unleashed my rage)
5. Satisfying my appetite for blood (henceforth referred to as “bloodlust”) each day when I arrive at work is a practice that should NOT be interfered with. Any interference will be met with a severe penalty. I.E.: My rage will be unleashed.
6. Do not expect me before dusk, as the sun can be somewhat damaging to my pale complexion, and do not expect me past sunrise. I generally begin moaning in pain about two hours before dawn. (This is my “happy time” and should NOT be interfered with. Any interference will be met with swift punishment. I.E.: My rage will be unleashed.)
7. Lastly, do not touch my axe or my crown, or my rage will be mighty, indeed (and unleashed).

If you obtain this position, what do you think needs to be accomplished in the first twelve months to make this new organization a success?

My department will run at peak efficiency on very little rest and little or no food. Whippings will be applied to anyone dawdling, with punishment growing more severe with each transgression. So long as an ample supply of replacement minions (for those I have slain) is provided, my department will complete any mission we accept. I give my personal guarantee that within twelve months, this operation will be forced into submission with no patience for slackers and extreme malice for those who interfere with our operations.

Tell us why you want to obtain this position?

I am bored with my kingdom and am looking to expand. Would like to have a house in a nice neighborhood, with lots of sidewalks. And a playground. This will be provided by my employer, along with plenty of ale and grub. In time, I may bore of this position and take over the company, if I do, I may slay anyone in my immediate path (it is therefore recommended that the company provide steady and rapid advancement in order that there may be few people between me and the top). Keep in mind that I may decide to implement this “hostile takeover” at any time, so anyone around me should be ever wary of that coming moment.

Lastly: My wrath is about to be unleashed. It is much worse than my rage.

BAH!

This turned out to be a story bone for me. I ended up writing a novella based on the guy I created for this application. It will, of course, never sell, because aside from being novella-length, it’s humorous fantasy, another hard sell. But I like it. Maybe I should just publish it here…Hmmm. Maybe I will.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: bone, fantasy, Fiction, hostile, humorous, Kahn, novella, rage, story, takeover, Vlad, wrath

There are lessons to be learned over at Whatever. John Scalzi announced the winning entrants (two runners up and one grand prize) for his Zoe’s Tale ARC contest this morning and it occurred to me, as I read the entries (many of which were really good), that it might be better to be published on the Whatever than in a publication dedicated to the exact same type of material. There are a lot of creative types who read Scalzi regularly, so it just makes sense that they’ll write some really good material in response to his request. And this is where it gets kind of interesting: When the contest started out it seemed like it was just a fun little thing; you might even go so far as to call it gimicky. Someone send in something funny, entertain me, and I’ll give you this book. But then I started reading the entries. I saw mostly what I expected to see: nothing you could really call a submission, just little anecdotes and humorous quips people were writing on the fly. But a few of them are good, very good, as you can see by the winners. I began to realize that these weren’t just little humorous quips, these are stories.

As it is, they are published–on Whatever, which is one of the most-read personal blogs on the internet. Not a venue where you’d expect to find good fiction unless the author published something himself, which he rarely does.  What’s interesting to me is that, even though it was a very informal forum, we got to see the whole process unfold right there in the comments section. Every entry (or submission, as it were) is readable by anyone. The three best, as judged by the site owner, got their very own dedicated post right on the front page of the site. There is a curious lack of linkage to their websites, at least for those who provided websites to be linked to. I would have thought a winning entry would get a link on the front page too, but you have to dig back through the comments of the ARC contest post to find out where their websites are (JS must be greedy with his Technorati ratings handouts). (JS advises me this was just an oversight and has been corrected). But even without the link, that’s a lot of great exposure for a writer or blogger.

These entries may not be a fit for SF&F or Strange Horizons, but they’re no less entertaining, and I would come back and read more if I thought more would follow. This is a serious feat that I’m wondering if anyone else will pick up on. It would be interesting to see more contests like this one, basically asking for fiction (I know there have been some of these before, I just haven’t seen many done so well). Most of the time if someone asks for fiction, even if they provide the theme, they’ll get a lot of 3k-word stories that are basically just more of the same. This time, the stories responding to the theme “The evening of August 19, 1994. What can you tell me about it?” were actually interesting (for the most part). And I generally don’t like to read short fiction.

I didn’t write an entry myself, but I did keep checking back to see what was being written. Maybe next time I’ll give it a try. And yes, I’ll go ahead and say that it would be nice to see Whatever do this as a regular feature. I’d do it here if I had half his readership and, you know, some stuff to give away. The results could be looked back upon one day as visionary.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blog, blogger, Contest, Fiction, John Scalzi, markets, stories, Zoe's ARC

Queries suck. At least writing them does. The entire novel-writing process has never made me feel so futile as penning these two vexing paragraphs. I could fill this page with links to query-writing suggestions and formats and information I’ve read from various outlets all over the web, all of it very helpful in its own context, but essentially worthless in applying to my own book. Why am I re-confronting my greatest fear? Because la Gringa wants to know where all the adult fiction subs are. And I have one. And I want to send it to her. I fear her rejection, yes, but this is more than some short story that I’ve labored over for a week and a half. This manuscript represents five years of my collective creative output. It represents potential success in publishing. It represents the hopes and dreams of a writer who wants to be. It represents potential for disposable income. I’ve been well aware of la Gringa’s advent into the agenting business, and I’ve had my manuscript ready for a good while now, I just don’t have the query letter right yet. If my book represents five years of creative output, this query letter represents another six months at least. No, it’s not all I’ve been working on, but I return to it regularly, and I suffer for its potential. I tweak it, and then I scrap it and start over, and then I agonize for a little while before I toil some more. But to dedicate so much time to something that can be the realization of all the dreams of a lifetime of writing is so daunting to me that I convince myself that the query must be better than the story itself, that my story depends on this little 100-word document to be successful, that if the story doesn’t get published it will be because I didn’t write the query letter well enough. And the worst of it is that great bit of advice I keep pinned to the wall by my desk:

…the writer never gets any better than the writing you see in the pitch letter.

Ack! Such pressure! To prove I’m worthy, that my story doesn’t suck, that I’m…well, you know how it is, don’t you, Mr. Query Letter. And I’ll bet you’re the most successful and wonderful story pitch there ever was–You. Sick. Bastard. You’re enjoying my pain, aren’t you? You see this blog and you look at me and think, “Heh, he’s in the gutter now!” Well, I’m done eating your scraps, Mr. Query. I’m jumping off this bus and catching a…a train. Or a hang glider.

Or a noose.

Oh, well. On to ver. 15.9…

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: author, book, Fiction, query, story, synopsis, writer, writing

What makes science fiction great? Yes, the story, and yes, the characters, but don’t forget all those nifty gadgets! Equipped with this list of goodies, you could go anywhere, create anything, know everything, have a faithful, useful friend, and look really cool the whole time. These are the items that represent SciFi’s greatest imaginings: 

Lightsaber
Star Wars, by George Lucas

It’s a weapon at heart, but so versatile that it is infused with gadgety cool–use it as a flashlight, to melt through metal doors, to slice open large meat carcasses, and it’ll probably slice fresh bread into instant toast (as seen in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, using a much smaller version of the tool). With an extremely rare Adegan crystal in its core, and being crafted in a month-long rite by a Jedi Knight, the lightsaber is the ultimate tool of the ultimate philosopher/warrior society. Nostalgia is one reason this futuristic gadget is so cool: the idea was obviously borrowed from feudal Japan’s Shogun warriors and their attachment to their carefully crafted artisan swords.

See also: Crysknife from Dune; Ultimate Nullifier from Marvel Comics

Stillsuit
Dune, by Frank Herbert

Quoting the book from Wikipedia:

It’s basically a micro-sandwich — a high-efficiency filter and heat-exchange system. The skin-contact layer’s porous. Perspiration passes through it, having cooled the body … near-normal evaporation process. The next two layers . . . include heat exchange filaments and salt precipitators. Salt’s reclaimed. Motions of the body, especially breathing and some osmotic action provide the pumping force. Reclaimed water circulates to catchpockets from which you draw it through this tube in the clip at your neck… Urine and feces are processed in the thigh pads. In the open desert, you wear this filter across your face, this tube in the nostrils with these plugs to ensure a tight fit. Breathe in through the mouth filter, out through the nose tube. With a Fremen suit in good working order, you won’t lose more than a thimbleful of moisture a day…

R2-D2
Star Wars, by George Lucas

You can have Threepio, you can even take HAL; I’ll take Artoo. This little robot can do almost anything from underway spaceship repair to serving drinks. He takes the AI concept to a whole new level, with built-in courage, humor, fear and devotion.

See also: HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Holtzman Shield
Dune, by Frank Herbert

The Holtzman Shield is a potent literary device: it makes directed-energy weaponry impossible against any worthwhile opponent, and also proves traditional projectile-based firearms and missiles ineffective, adding to the feudal atmosphere, and enforces the usage of mêlée weaponry despite other more advanced technology.

Cornucopia Machine
Singularity Sky/Iron Sunrise, by Charlie Stross

The Cornucopia can be programmed with the atomic structure of virtually any item (including another Cornucopia Machine) and, so long as it has fuel, material and time, fabricate it. (I would ask it to make everything on this list.) This is the only item on the list that hasn’t been adapted (yet) into a movie or television program; if you haven’t read these two books yet, I highly recommend them.

See also: Nutrimatic Dispenser from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Food Replicator from Star Trek

Transporter
Star Trek, by Gene Roddenberry

The Transporter was so powerful you could almost call it the deus ex machina of Star Trek, but you can’t, because it wasn’t spontaneous; it was there from the beginning. Still, though; how many times have Trek characters escaped imminent doom by uttering the phrase: “Beam us up”? There are many incarnations of teleportation devices, but none done so well as Star Trek’s Transporter. It was in almost constant use in every movie and throughout every television series, making it one of the most useful gadgets on this list.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

Complete with it’s Don’t Panic! mantra, this wholly remarkable “book” can tell you anything you want to know about anything in the universe. The Guide was an electronic guidebook which was connected to the galaxy-wide Sub-Etha network for updates. The book was published in 1978, making the Sub-Etha one of the first imaginings of what the Internet could be. 

Iron Man’s Armor
Marvel Comics, by Stan Lee

Super strength, supersonic flight, repulsors, missiles, and pimped out with a red and gold titanium alloy…Nothing is cooler.

See also: KITT, from the 80s TV show Knight Rider

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: , cool, coolest, Fiction, gadgetry, greatest, sci-fi, Science, scifi, sf, tool, Tools

**Spoiler Alert** 

Something I’ve been thinking about lately: SciFi movies, more of them, please? Oh, and try and make them better, k? Here’s an idea: Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi, a book that is utterly primed for adaptation, and I don’t even see much of a way for them to ruin it. Look at the Hollywood history of putting the wrong actors in roles; the list is as long as the list of movies themselves. I’ve commented before that Rachael Taylor was an utter flop as IT genius Maggie Madsen, as well as a host of others. I’ll add to the list Halle Berry; she’s just too damned pretty to be Storm. Rebecca Romijn, she of the amazing body, who was perfect as Mystique in the X-Men series, but was a total bust (no pun intended) in The Punisher. The problem is that often Hollywood casts people that are too pretty for roles in which obviously less-pretty people belong. Such is the case with Maggie Madsen, and the same is true for Romijn’s Joan in The Punisher. But the reason she was perfect for Mystique is also the reason she–or any overly-pretty actor–would be an ideal fit for OMW the Movie. In OMW Scalzi has already craftily eliminated the problem of the exceedingly-pretty, not-believable-as-a-person actor, because everyone recruited into the Colonial Military is given a new and improved, genetically enhanced body that, while it retains the donor’s DNA and general appearance, is made much more physically appealing. The point being, you could cast the hottest people in Hollywood for the roles in OMW, ugly them down for the first thirty minutes of the film, and then just paint them green and give them cat’s eyes.

I’ll add that, like most people, I’ve read OMW’s one-star reviews and, frankly, I don’t understand it. It’s a testament to the fact that people just don’t like the same material, no matter what. In my opinion, OMW is easily the best SF book of the past ten years (at least of the ones I’ve read. And that includes all of Charlie Stross’s books, which I love also, but which aren’t quite as good as OMW). I just don’t get it.

Anyway, here’s my suggestion for the casting of OMW: the Movie:

• John Perry - Brad Pitt
• Jane Sagan - Rebecca Romijn
• Somebody else - Will Smith
• Somebody else - Orlando Bloom
• Somebody else - Charlize Theron
• Somebody else - Clive Owen
• Somebody else - Ken Watanabe

There, that ought to get them started.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Fiction, John Scalzi, movie, Old Man's War, OMW, Rebecca, Romijn, Science, scifi

I am really loving io9. If you don’t read it, get on over there because they are consistently putting out great content. Today, for instance, they’ve posted a little space porn, some comics industry opinion, and this bit of writing advice, on “how to bring the weird” in your near-future SciFi stories. This is another one of those posts I want to print and paste to the wall by my desk, one of those I wish I’d written. Apologies for posting this word for word, but it is really all excellent and I want it filed away in my little internet brain for future reference:

Extrapolate from current trends…

Certain things happening now will probably carry on, and even accelerate, over the next two decades. The icecaps will keep melting, natural disasters will probably come more often, and droughts may affect more regions. Rich countries will become fortresses of the elderly, with fewer young people who aren’t immigrants. Corporations will probably keep becoming more powerful and diversified, unless the next economic meltdown actually weakens their power somehow. There will be less oil, and more fighting over oil. Food prices will keep going up for third-world countries. China and India will be economically resurgent, unless they fuck up. Some forms of social deviance will be marginally more accepted, within wealthy societies at least.

…but don’t be their bitch.

Don’t assume that every current trend will continue in a straight line — it’s never worked that way in the past, and it’s unlikely to start now. New technologies will help stem some of the negative trends we’re dealing with right now. And unimaginable disasters will spark new cycles of misery that will sweep us all down. Nobody in 1988 could have predicted 9/11 or the girl who hanged herself because her MySpace friends turned out to be mean grownups. (How would you even explain the “MySpace hoax” to someone in 1988?)

The technologies of tomorrow already exist.

Nanotechnology is already turning up in socks and medical devices, and everyone’s predicting it’ll replace basic circuitry and lead to miracle cures within a few years. People are already chuffed about home robotics, and robots are already helping us fight our wars. There’s a lot of talk about amazing replacement limbs that will use nanotech, and even be able to interpret signals from your brain. And there’s a lot of reason to be optimistic about gene therapy.

Don’t just pick one technology to update.

One of my pet peeves is the near-ish future story where everything’s more or less the same, except that there’s one miraculous new technology that is transforming the world. It’s way more likely that there’ll be half a dozen semi-miraculous technologies that will be nudging the world in different directions. (And we can’t discount the possibility that things will go to shit so badly that none of those amazing new technologies will come to fruition.)

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Fiction, Future, sci-fi, scifi, writing

Kevin Kelly is a long-time internet mainstay, one of the original founders of Wired Magazine, and a week or so ago he posted this bit concerning his “1000 True Fans” theory (P.S.–if you haven’t read The Technium, I highly recommend it):

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

This based on the presumption that the creator in question can produce quality material over a long period of time, and that the True Fan will shell out around $100 a year for those creative works. Voilà: $100,000 per year makes for a decent living. It sounds good, yes; but I’m not so sure this model will work for writers the way it can for creators in other mediums. At least not unless the person doing the writing is already notable for something other than writing. Reason being: In every other medium creators’ works can have an immediate impact on a potential fan (call it the Wham! factor). Whether it’s a song, a painting, a photograph, or even a shirt–when it’s good, and you like it, you’ll know it almost immediately. You might not know why, other than Wham!–you just love it as soon as you lay eyes on it, or listen to the first ten seconds of the opening riff. But with a writer it doesn’t work that way.

Musicians can build a fan base using this principle and do very well for themselves. Rappers do it every day. I think even artists, who can paint their pictures and sell them at trade fairs and such can use this theory. But for writers I don’t think it will work. I’m jealous sometimes of musicians and the power their music can hold over an audience. I can listen to a song from the ’80s (when I was a teenager) now and all at once the power of the music can pull me back in time almost, remind me of sensations and feelings that I hadn’t even thought of since I’d last heard that song. That’s an awesome power to wield, and, as I say, I’m a little jealous of those who wield it. If I’m curled up reading a good book or even a short story, I can fall in love with the characters and I can connect with the story at different levels, but fiction can’t own you like music can. It can’t reel you in and make you its slave. (Or maybe it does for others; maybe it’s just me who can’t connect to it on that level.)

It might take a hundred pages of a novel before someone finds out if they like it or not. I recently picked up a copy of China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station and, after the first page, utterly hated it. I pressed on though, and found the rest of the book fantastic. But if I’d based my opinion of China as a writer on the first page or two of his book, which took me maybe ten minutes to read, I’d never have read another story by him (the passage in question can be read here. Just start at the beginning and read down about eight or ten paragraphs. To me, this is an awful way to start a book, with the first three or four paragraphs dedicated to the (boring) arc of a basket flying through the air. But the rest of the book is grand). Most books that I like I’ll know within the first chapter or two, but rarely earlier, because in a book the writer must establish things: character, setting, all those good bits that add depth to the story, that pull the reader in.

So what about short stories? Sure, shorts are great, but very few writers are going to cultivate a fan base using shorts alone. Let’s face it: short stories are primarily the entry-level gig most writers hire on for just to get their foot in the door of the big company. Writers want to write books; they don’t generally tend to set out wanting to write their fantastic stories in 3,000 words or less. They want the story to tell itself, and most stories–in my experience–want to be in excess of 25k words. They’re stubborn that way. And a reader has to invest something to know whether they’ll like it or not. That’s not the case with most other creative mediums in which someone can hear a song in passing (Wham!) and immediately fall in love with it. Movies…maybe. But movies still require no effort. They may take a little more investment of time than other mediums, but there’s still no effort required. You just stare blankly and determine if you want to stare blankly some more. With reading, people must invest time and effort.

So how does a writer overcome this obstacle? Well, blogging for one. I know I just posted an article about blog fiction, commenting that I don’t believe people want to read fiction on blogs, but I’m not talking about posting fiction. I’m talking about building an audience with your writing using slice-of-life vignettes, informational stubs, a few essays and some news. Developing that audience with as near to Wham! factor as a writer can produce, and then, once you’re published somewhere, hoping they’ll cross over from your blog to your fiction. It goes back to what I said earlier in this article–being notable for something else first. John Scalzi has a great article about creating a blogging niche:

I think it’s far less useful to put your fiction online than it is to spend some time creating an interesting blog and cultivating an audience for it. This is not an “either/or” situation, of course, as I have done both. But I will say that one of these you should do first, and that’s to work on your blog. 

It would be great if writers could use this “1000 True Fans” concept, go to Fundable and score a few thousand dollars for their next opus, but the medium is just too demanding of its fans for that–at least initially, until they’ve built their fan base beforehand. Maybe I’m wrong. I’d actually like to think that I am.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: artist, blog, creator, fan, fan base, Fiction, journal, writing

In maintaining this journal through the years, along with its many and varied predecessors, I’ve made one small observation about what people want from writers and their blogs. On a blog people generally don’t want fiction. They do want things that are interesting, but for fiction they read books, not blogs. On occasion I think people will read fiction if it comes in a dedicated package built just for carrying the fiction–such as Down in the Cellar, or Southern Fried Weirdness (two sites that just happen to host stories written by yours truly), websites that are built just to entertain people with their fiction. But for blogs, readers seem to want slice-of-life vignettes, informational stubs, a few essays and some news.

One reason I say this is because through the years I’ve posted numerous stories on my blogs, but for some reason, while people will read my work on another site or in a book, they don’t want to read it here. It’s not necessarily that they don’t like it, they never even give it a try. It makes me wonder if building a site just for fiction alone would be worthwhile, if people want it that way.

If you are posting fiction on your blog, I’m not telling you to stop, I’m just saying that in my opinion, that’s not where people want to read it. Maybe I’m wrong; what do you think?

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blog, blogosphere, Fiction, story, writing

The Ghost of Tom Johns is now available for reading at Down in the Cellar.

This is a horror/humor bit that I’m rather proud of, and I’m glad the Cellar picked it up. Hope you enjoy it. Feedback is welcome.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Fiction, horror, publication, story

There are a couple of posts I’ve read lately about the writing of queries that I think are just brilliant. First, from Kameron Hurley:

If you’re working on writing up queries or synposes, I’ve found it sorta fun and helpful to write up one of those “back cover” blurbs that you see on the back of books as practice.

This is actually a tactic I’ve been straining to employ myself. The big pitch, you know, that reels in readers who, once they’ve read it, have no choice but to read on. Sounds good on paper, don’t it? The best-case scenario would be to write such a great pitch that they actually do use it on the dust jacket.

And then from Colleen Lindsay, literary agent-at-large of the FinePrint Literary Management Agency:

A well-respected agent I know who has been in the business for more than twenty years recently said to me “Colleen, remember this: the writer never gets any better than the writing you see in the pitch letter.”

This statement should be framed in gold and hung on a wall beside every writer’s favorite place to write. When I read this, it made perfect sense to me and kind of terrified me at the same moment. It also occurred to me that a really good pitch writer might sell a crappy book a long time before a poor pitch writer might sell a really good one.

And finally, this bit:

I’m also impressed by the number of really excellent query letters I’m seeing! Short, succinct and compelling. Particularly from those folks who identify as former Clarion and/or Odyssey students.

Some of the worst query letters I’m seeing are, surprisingly, from MFAs. They’re long and tedious and a little wind-baggy, telling me more about the writer’s background and education than they do about the book they’re hoping to get me to read. I wonder: do most MFA programs only focus on the craft and not the business of writing? Anyone?

Now I’m not biased against MFAs. I’m sure there are a lot of really great folks who also happen to have their MFA. But I’m quite certain a good portion of them are biased against me and writers of my ilk, kind of in the same way that actors are biased against reality TV stars. So forgive me this moment of unabashed mirth as I nyah you MFAs a little bit. I know you are all extremely edumacated, and that I’m just a lil ol’ genre-fiction nerd, but every now and then it’s good to hear that the little guys are doing well.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: clarion, Fiction, genre, MFA, odyssey, query, synopsis, writing

Whatever happened to the novella as a form of prose? Many of the greatest stories of all time were written in the 20k - 50k word range. Stories like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and A River Runs Through It. There are countless others, but it seems the publishing world in general is intent on not publishing any novelettes or novellas. And this is particularly frustrating to me because all of my best work seems to be in novella word-count range.

I know: there’s no money in novellas for the publishing houses. If they can’t get 90k words or more they don’t want it. And short fiction had best not be written any longer than 5k if you want any decent shot at getting it out there. But there’s something about a thin book that I can carry comfortably in my back pocket and read in a couple of days that’s immensely appealing to me. But then the whole publishing industry seems to have veered starkly away from the middle class: there are the haves, of course, and the have nots, but there are rarely any have a littles or comfortably just getting bys. And of course this goes right back to the root of the publishing problem today: fewer and fewer people read any more. More and more it seems the only folks who read are those who are also either writers or who want to be. It seems to me a grand idea to put a wire rack back in the quick stop and stock it with pulp novellas, but then, I guess those would just sit there until the one or two of us who actually like to read them would buy them. Same goes for comic books. More and more, if you want a book, you have to visit Amazon or one of the huge booksellers, because the little bookstores are out of business now, and the selection at the drugstores and grocers are simply awful if you’re into anything other than romance.

I wish the novella format would make a return; just put them out there in pulp paperbacks and see if people won’t give them a try. I would, and that’s not just because I write them. Some of the best reads I’ve ever had were in novella format.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Fiction, novella, novellette, stories, writers, writing

Generally, I like to refer to things that I write as “Speculative” fiction, because I often utilize rules of SciFi and fantasy in the same piece, that is, I write fiction with fantastic elements but I expound on the details as if it were SciFi. Is that a bad thing? There was a time when it would be looked down upon, maybe even be considered heretical, as Michael Crichton pointed out a long, long time ago:

“As a category, the borders of science fiction have always been poorly defined, and they are getting worse. The old distinction between science fiction and fantasy - that science fiction went from the known to the probable, and fantasy dealt with the impossible - is now wholly ignored. The new writing is heavily and unabashedly fantastical.”

“The breakdown is also seen in the authors themselves, who now cross the border, back and forth, with impunity. At one time this was dangerous and heretical; the only person who could consistently get away with it was Ray Bradbury. Science fiction addicts politely looked the other way when he did books such as Dandelion Wine and the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick. It was assumed he needed the money.”

Consider a movie like Jurassic Park, where the concept of bringing back dinosaurs is perfectly believable. You believe it, don’t you? We believe it because we want to believe fantastic things are possible, and this is especially the case with readers of SciFi. One advantage SciFi has over fantasy, however, is that SciFi generally resounds with possibility. Even though its ideas may be impossible now, one who has the foresight to dream of tomorrow can see the inherent potential in virtually any work of SciFic.

There are two basic ways to write fantasy, and neither of them have to be believable in the least:

1. Real world, whether it be historical or modern-day.
2. Other world, in which another universe is created specifically for the story.

Sure, fantasy can take place in the future, but generally if it does, it’s called science fiction, and it’d better stick to the laws of physics as we understand them. On that same note, present-day fantasy is often called horror, therefore it should really be classified as a sub-genre of fantasy. It’s difficult to make a sweeping epic of orcs and dragons set in our present day, unless you create an alternate reality, which is generally how it’s handled. The teen is swept into a book, goes down a rabbit hole, whirled away in a tornado, or opens a door that allows them to enter a fantastic realm. Rarely do we get an insight as to how the portal works. We just get a stock line of explanation stating that the door or book was magical, if we get any explanation at all. In SciFi, this would hardly ever do. Readers of SciFi want the exposition of how things work:

• Why did the wormhole appear?
• How does it work?
• To where does it lead?
• How long is the travel time through it?
• What happens when you travel through it? Do you get sick?

This, to me, is one of the great dividing differences between the genres.

When the science of something is explained plausibly, within the laws of physics it is SciFi.
When the science of something is not explained, it is fantasy.

For SciFi, you can’t simply talk about a world of orcs and dragons, you have to give the planet a name, talk a bit about the history of it, how it evolved, and it wouldn’t hurt to have them flying a spaceship. But with fantasy, if it’s a good enough story the hows and the whys aren’t really all that important.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: fantasy, Fiction, sci-fi, Science, scifi

Okay. I admit it. I read Entertainment Weekly. It’s my wife’s subscription, but I do read it. And. Well. I like it. Sometimes pop culture is fun to watch. They do have book reviews and music and stuff, right? I mean: right. So…Here’s one little contribution to popular culture from me, but first let me get a disclaimer or two out of the way.

First: This bit is-at worst-rated PG. Secondly, and for the record: I like everyone in this story. I do not think Angelina Jolie is actually a witch (although she is a little creepy. Remember that vial of Billy Bob Thornton’s blood she wore around her neck? Remember the way she snuggled and kissed her brother at that awards show? She may not be a witch but she’s definitely got issues). And I definitely do not believe Shiloh Jolie-Pitt is a little devil monster. This is just a fictional story I wrote when all the tabloids were all over the Angelina Jolie vs. Jennifer Aniston non-story. It seems Jen’s been doing fine, doesn’t it? Well, not for lack of trying, as they say, because the popular media wanted nothing more than an all-out cat fight between the two of them. So here’s my little story, “Brad Pitt and the Witch.” Please to enjoy.

When he first saw her, he couldn’t believe his eyes. She was so beautiful it made his eyes water–made his temperature rise, his heartbeat flounder. He shook his head and swallowed. She had burning blue eyes, exotically slanted, full lips and thick, long brown hair. She had long legs and large breasts and his breath burned in his chest when she looked his way and smiled.

“Brad,” she breathed, and he was baptized by her gaze, her smile, her attentions.

“Angelina,” he managed. He swallowed, made uncomfortable by being uncomfortable. He did the cute thing with his mouth–open, close, open.

She laughed, and she had eyes only for him. She crossed her fingers and put them next to her heart, then pulled her hand away and pointed at him. She’d done it once before, he thought, but couldn’t be sure. His heart swelled with desire.

That night she bedded him. He never thought of Jen. Now, his eyes saw only Angelina, his angel, his True Love. She fed him fruit for breakfast. Once again, she crossed her fingers and pointed at him.

“What’s that?” he asked, seeming to remember she’d done it a few times.

“It’s a love charm,” she replied.

“What, like, to make me love you?”

She nodded, laughing.

“Whatever,” he said.

“It’s true. I’m a witch.”

“Ah,” he said, waving his hand at her and looking away, smiling.

“Look,” she said, pulling up the sleeve of her silk pajama top, revealing a tattoo. “This is a mark of a witch. See the unicorn?”

He shrugged. “You can get those anywhere.”

She showed him the sixth toe on her left foot, and he scratched his head. “I guess it’s true: nobody’s perfect.”

She showed him her third nipple. “This is for suckling the beast.”

He didn’t know quite what to say to that, but somewhere in the cloudy depths of his brain he could feel that this was an issue that he wasn’t totally okay with. But every time he almost locked in on it his emotions swelled and he swooned with love for her. She crossed her fingers, pointed at him.

“That’s just a gesture,” he said, confident that she wasn’t a witch.

“Sure it is; but there’s power in it.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true,” she said, laughing. “There’s power in every gesture, to some degree. I saw a woman cry yesterday on the street when a little boy waved goodbye to her.”

“Yeah,” Brad said, “but that power isn’t in the gesture, it’s in the emotion the gesture brings up.”

“Isn’t it the same? One, and the other? My gestures call up emotions as well. They just happen to be able to call up other things, as well.”

“Like love. Right!” he said, shaking his head. “Give me a strawberry.”

She fed him a strawberry. “It’s okay, lover, you don’t have to believe me. Just go to Africa with me. I want you to meet someone.”

“Africa? Whatever. I’m not real interested in culture. I’d rather hang out, drink some beer, go fishing on the yacht. What’s George doing this weekend?”

“I need you to meet a woman named Ootu. She’s the one who taught me how to capture you. Now I need a potion, to make it permanent. That way I won’t have to keep doing the gesture that seems to be bothering you.”

He shrugged, ate an apple wedge.

***

In Africa, they made love every moment they could. They met Ootu, and she blessed them and married them in her fashion, at the same time dissolving his previous marriage. They adopted several children while they were there, as payment for magics rendered.

In nine months they bore their baby and named her Shiloh, and Angelina frequently suckled the baby with her third nipple.

“People think our baby’s better than Tom and Katie’s,” Brad said one day.

“Of course they do,” Angelina replied.

Brad seemed to be thinking, something that was dangerous in Angelina’s opinion. “But what if theirs doesn’t have that birthmark?” he asked, pulling a crisp linen shirt over his head.

“What birthmark?” Angelina replied, honestly not knowing what he was referring to.

“On her head. You haven’t noticed?”

Angelina looked down and poked through Shiloh’s hair, discovering the mark there and recognizing it at once.

“Funky, ain’t it?” Brad asked. “Looks like a symbol or something.”

“She’s got six fingers, too,” Angelina said proudly.

“Well, maybe Tomkat’s baby has something.”

End.

That’s it! Hope you enjoyed this brief foray of Unabashed into the realm of popular culture. Please deposit all snark in the appropriate comments section and have a good night!

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Fiction, George Clooney, katie holmes, story, tom cruise, Witch

Suspension of disbelief is a useful tool for writers, especially to writers of speculative fiction. But how much artistic license are readers willing to allow a writer? Like most authors, I read quite a bit about the craft of writing, and I read an article sometime last year concerning the suspension of disbelief. I don’t remember where the article was from, one of the writer’s magazines, I’m sure, but in it the author stated specifically that it would be ludicrous to imagine people accepting a piece of fiction that involved humans and dinosaurs cohabitating the planet. Now, the novel I was writing at that time, Modern-Day Mythica, does not take place in the past, but some of the principles that are described in the book, things that make the amazing part feasible, depend a little bit upon the reader’s willingness to accept that humans and dinosaurs might have cohabitated the planet. So it should come as no surprise that since I read that article I’ve basically worried myself sick over it. Will the reader be able to forgive me this transgression? Ah, but there is a caveat, one which I hope will explain the how in a way that will be completely believable.

One thing to keep in mind here is the difference between fantasy and science fiction. For fantasy, especially when written in the Real World, the one in which we live, there’s usually a doorway into Another World, and that doorway is magical, it doesn’t require any exposition as to how it works, it simply is what it is, whether it just appeared, or it was created by a magician, whatever. The difference (to me) is that in SciFi, we want to know how the door works, explained as scientifically as possible.

For Mythica, as with most of my writing, my writing borrows from both genres: I like the fantasy to be explained by science, that’s why I prefer the tag “Speculative” when referring to my work. Also: when I’m writing something I want it to ring true, or possible, much as SciFi might read. For that reason I like to use modern-day (or near future) Earth for most of my settings. There are some more successful authors than me of fantasy who use modern-day settings. Authors like Stephen King, who, along with Peter Straub, wrote The Talisman, a story about a boy who travels to the “Territories,” a reality connected with ours somehow, but separate enough to be invisible unless you are among the duly initiated. But the vast majority of fantasy fiction writers write more like Tolkien, who shucked it all and created his own world to set his fantastic epic in. Nothing wrong with that, I’m just saying. Of course, those are just two examples from the many, but they are two of the most notable works of fantasy in the world. Either method, obviously, works well enough to sell piles of books. But at what point is the suspension of disbelief overpowered by the impossibility of an idea? And is it harder to write fantasy fiction based in the real world than in a fictional world? Well, uh, yeah, probably, that is, if you want it to ring true or even possible.

In my story Mythica I utilize a similar concept as King/Straub used for the Territories in The Talisman. But in Mythica, the reason for the alternate reality–the science of it–is explained. But it’s the exposition of that theme that’s got me concerned.

As science has given, modern humanity evolved into its current state about 200k years ago and didn’t populate North America until about 10k to 20k years ago. Dinosaurs, of course, were long gone by millions of years by then (unless you count the turtle and the alligator and the shark and the many other holdovers who lived through the supposed meteor strike that spelled doom for dino-nation). But me, I grew up a fan of Conan of Cimmeria and Hyboria and one of the elements I loved most was that, if you looked at the map of Hyboria that Robert E. Howard drew up for the character’s homeland, it bears a striking resemblance to our own world before the continents drifted apart, when the world’s oceans framed a single super continent we now call Pangaea:

“between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas” ~Robert E. Howard, “The Phoenix on the Sword,” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (2003)

That little map made the stories ring true for me, even though science tells me it was impossible, that humans didn’t arrive for millions of years after Pangaea split into separate land masses. It made me see possibility that civilization was older than we believe, and filled with magic and monsters and even swords and steel.

One of my challenges while writing Mythica was to make its unbelievable part somewhat believable, much the same as Howard did with Hyboria. I wanted you to be able to read it and believe that it might have been possible, and I believe I have, except for that one small point: dinosaurs. People can’t live alongside something that died out 65 million years ago. Can they? Can intelligent people–and people who read speculative fiction are, generally–suspend their disbelief long enough to accept that it’s possible?

My only defense for this is to say that, in my story, real-world science is inexact because of a number influential events that science doesn’t account for. For instance, the storyline in Mythica involves a once and second moon orbiting Earth. The second moon is smaller than the first moon, but it’s half as distant, so it appears to be larger in the sky. This single entity justifies so many things in the story:

1. There is no scientific proof that the moon ever existed, since it disappeared over 200,000 years ago.
2. While the second moon was in orbit, Earth was not a very happy place to live. Two satellites tugging at the Earth’s surface would have caused Earth’s plates to shift much faster than is currently believed. Mountains would have formed much more quickly, continental drift would have happened much more quickly. Volcanoes, earthquakes, storms, tidal waves, etc, would have ravaged the planet’s surface. Not to mention the fact that the planet might have been slower in its own orbit; days might have been longer, years, longer.

It is conceivable, in my mind, to believe that the second moon could have accounted for a sort of speeding up of time, even though its orbit was slower. If a geologist looks at the rate of continental drift today, she might say that it took millions of years for Pangaea to split apart. But if there was a second moon, it could have happened in thousands. Hundreds? I’m no geologist, but in my very basic understanding of geology, a second moon would have had a monumental impact on Earth’s surface. So, if our history involves an unaccounted-for outside influence, isn’t it conceivable that the dates we’ve assigned to certain events are erroneous? That billions of years of history, based on one single missing moon, could now be thought of as millions instead? It might not affect how we view the 15 billion-year history of the universe, but it might change the history of planet Earth considerably.

Furthermore, by allowing for this shortening of time (periods, epochs, eras), it would mean that that the age of dinosaurs and the age of man were a lot closer than we now believe. And it would allow that those ages might even overlap. We have no proof that a giant meteor struck the Earth to end the age of dinosaurs, all we have are theories and hypotheses. And I (of course) have no proof that a second moon ever orbited Earth. But, in theory, is that any less possible? As for the disappearance of the dinosaurs, my hypothesis on this is forthcoming…

So what happened to the second moon? Well, for my story, which is a work of fantasy, a magician banished the moon because he believed it to be the source of a specific scourge upon the planet. But there are other, scientific, explanations that we could consider. Perhaps the would-be meteor that supposedly hit the Earth struck the second moon instead and sent it hurtling out of orbit. There are other theories of a second moon, one with a distant, 770-year orbit, perhaps this moon was once in a much closer orbit. But while science has accepted the possibility, if not the probability or downright fact, of the presence of a second moon, as far as I can tell no one has investigated any possible ramifications it.

So, for my story, the ramifications (and the science world can feel free to adopt this theory :-) of the disappearance of the second moon is this: Time sped up. Yes, time, real time. Without two moons dragging it down, Earth’s orbit sped up allowing it to encircle the sun in the 24-hour timeframe we’re used to. At the same time, Earth’s tectonic plates slowed their constant grinding, causing the planet’s surface to change much more slowly. While the moon was in orbit it’s possible that a person could watch the formation of a mountain range in their lifetime.

1. Time sped up.
2. Planetary changes slowed down.

With those two factors in mind, it is conceivable that our comprehension of the passing of ages prior to the disappearance of the second moon might be very, very wrong, and that the ages of dinosaurs and people may have overlapped.

Now, have the history books been rewritten yet? Can you suspend your disbelief long enough to swallow that load of garbage? I’d be interested to know.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Earth, Fiction, moon, second, Slate, story, suspension of disbelief, writing

My book is written. Well, it’s actually my third book, but the first one is not good and neither is the second, although with the second I believe its a good story, it just needs major rewrites. So, anyway, the book is done. It’s called Modern-Day Mythica, it’s around 120k words, and the premise is this:

200,000 years ago, Earth’s second moon disappeared. The rest of the story is about the effects of that missing satellite on one Joe Copeland, modern-day regular guy. Oh, and the moon that disappeared was an enormous, black, magical energy-generating rock that was inhabited by dragons.

Once every blue moon (heh, it was actually a black moon) dragons could travel to Earth (the details on how they did this are worked out, but I won’t get into here right now) and basically terrorize everything that lived–including humans. But then this really old guy shows up and makes the black moon disappear. Of course, since the black moon was the magic generator and this old guy had been using magic to keep himself alive far beyond a normal life span, he died. And the dragons, who depended on magic for flight, fire-breathing, communication–basically everything that separated them from big, crawling lizards–were all killed off. At least the ones on Earth were. The ones still on the moon–now banished to a different reality altogether–were mighty pissed, and began working on a way to get the moon back into orbit.

They never figured it out, but they did find a way to open a portal, a rift, between the realities, and they sent one dragon back to see if they could figure out a way to get the moon back into orbit from here. Joe, of course, is the guy who’s supposed to stop this from happening.

The story, which I’ve tentatively entitled Modern-Day Mythica, incorporates a good deal more than just dragons in its mythos: there are werewolves, ghosts, magicians, an alligator that turns into a motorcycle, etc.

Now, as you may know, I’ve been populating a wiki over at Wetpaint.com with details of the mythos involved. It’s not complete yet, but there is a lot of detail already there. Whether this book ever sees the light of day or not I have no idea, but I’m hoping that if this blog can build a little following, gain a few more readers (this is Unabashed honesty for ya, folks–yes, I’m using you, but I sincerely love you, too), that, coupled with the already-built companion wiki might make an editor give me at least a second glance before he/she shoves me into the trash can and sends me the dreadful form letter rejection.

Here’s an excerpt, if you’re interested (disclaimer: This is gory).

Edgar Billies had owned the Duck ‘n’ Dolphin for twelve years when the stranger came through the door. The fellow looked ordinary enough, about six two, brownish blond hair, dark green eyes. He was dressed kind of funny, his clothes didn’t seem to fit, and he was barefoot, wet, and dirty. He was wearing a fag bag that actually said “FAG BAG” on the front of it. That didn’t speak well for folks in Ed’s mind. But then Ed thought the guy might be homeless. He almost threw him out on the spot but decided against it if the guy didn’t have any money, then he’d throw him out. But the guy just didn’t seem like a homeless person; he carried himself upright and proud, like a damn king or something. And he was smiling, like he was just coming in to shake everyone’s hand and get a vote. The rest of the guys, Dan, Bull, Todd, and Legs, all turned to look at him, but they didn’t pay him any mind. Edgar poured up a beer for Legs and asked the stranger what he could get for him.

“How about some whiskey,” the guy said, sitting down at one of the front tables.

The guy kicked his dirty feet up on the table. Before Edgar took him the whiskey he hollered, “Fellah, you wanna get your feet off the table?”

The men at the bar looked at the stranger, and the stranger complied with a wink. He was still smiling.

Edgar set the drink on the table and said, “That’ll be six fifty.” He’d jacked the price up special for this joker.

The stranger reached out to take the drink and Edgar, in his classic way, grabbed at the stranger’s wrist to tell him to pay up first. Only the stranger caught Edgar’s wrist instead, and the next thing Edgar knew his arm was twisted up behind his back painfully and the stranger downed the shot. The four men at the bar hopped to their feet.

The stranger threw the shot glass and hit Bull in the forehead, which just served to piss Bull off, and all four of them were an inch away from charging straight in and kicking the shit out of the monkey that was holding Ed’s arm. They backed off a step when they heard Ed’s arm crack, though. Then, through his grin that never wavered, the stranger jerked Ed’s arm straight up over his head, then kicked him toward the others. The arm was broken and out of socket and it flopped around like an empty shirt sleeve when he fell forward and cracked his head on the bar. Todd tried to catch him, but Edgar was too fat and went into the bar anyway, then he hit the floor like a rotten log.

Dan and Bull charged with a loud, human growl coming from each of them. But the stranger picked up the chair he’d been sitting on and right before their eyes it changed into a two-handed ax. The handle and head were both deep, dark green, metal or stone, they couldn’t tell, the color and texture were otherworldly, precious, like a rare, gigantic gem, something you’d actually want your head cut off with if it came to that, like something an archeologist would pull from a horde of treasure in a tomb in China that was as old as mankind itself. The head of the ax was inlaid with delicate lines of engraving, as fine as spider’s silk, which curled and swept like waves back from the sharpened edge. Near that edge, the head of the ax, the color of dark, luxurious jade, became paler and paler until it was almost white at the sharpened edge. It looked like it would be hot to the touch. Amazed though they were, they were already committed, and men like Dan and Bull commit to things only as a final option. The final option had been crossed when this faggot had come in here and broke Ed’s arm, as far as they were concerned. But the stranger brought the ax back with both hands and swung it hard and full, right through Bull’s left knee and into Dan’s right shin. Both big men fell in opposite directions, screaming. The stranger never stopped smiling, though; he drew up the ax like he was splitting wood and began making kindling out of Bull’s left arm. Then he turned on Dan, who was trying to get to his feet, and planted that ax right on his collar, between his neck and his shoulder. It sheered clean through the collarbone and into his breast, and Dan looked down at it with wonder as a stream of crimson blood shot up into his nostrils from his own chest wound.

Todd ran around to the other side of the bar and ran along the bar bent over, trying to find Ed’s shotgun. When he saw it he laid his hands on it, but then he felt an odd pain in his lower back and from that moment on, all he knew was that he was on his back, conscious, but unable to move anything but his eyes. He couldn’t talk, lick his lips, wiggle his toes or anything. He figured that when he bent over to get the shotgun the stranger whacked him with that ax right at the base of his spine and he was right. Gregg had sheared his lower spinal column cleanly in two, and then he left Todd to lay and think about what was coming next, as he set about chopping Dead Ed into edible-sized bites.

Todd heard every plunge of the ax; he heard Ed moan when the ax went into him, sounding like a softball hitting a catcher’s mitt in fast-pitch, or like a sack of flour when dropped onto a wooden floor. Todd heard every blow, and with mounting terror, knew his time was soon to come. Maybe he’ll forget about me, he thought, or maybe he’ll just not worry about me any more, seeing as how I’m incapacitated any way. He began to wonder if doctors could reattach a severed spine, or if he would have to spend the rest of his life unable to move, flinch or even blink his eyes. But then the stranger looked over the bar and Todd knew that he wasn’t going to be left alive. Tears began to flow from his eyes.

The stranger’s head was covered with bright red gore. Thick droplets were spattering down onto the bar Todd could see them almost as if in slow motion. The stranger spit and bloody spittle spattered the wall beside Todd. He walked slowly down to the end of the bar and then walked up to Todd, the ax up on his shoulder. He was standing over Todd’s feet, a bloody, gory mess from head to toe. And he was smiling; grinning like a maniac. He set the ax head on the floor and spit in both his hands, rubbed them together, and then hoisted the ax with both hands, bringing it back over his shoulder big smile still in place and then he brought it down in a swift, singing arc. Todd heard his thigh crunch and the ax struck the hardwood floor beneath it, pinning the leg down. The stranger had to pry the ax free, shifting the handle up and down to wrench it out of the wood floor and Todd’s leg. There was a sucking sound as the ax head finally came free of the leg. Todd’s eyes were running with tears he wasn’t feeling the pain of the blows, not exactly; he could feel each blow like a thud like when a dentist pulls a tooth when the jaw is full of novacane but there was no sharp pain as there should have been, only the bone-jarring thud that caused his vision to blur for a second and his head to rock from side to side slightly. All the worse, because without the pain to tell his mind to shut down he had to endure every swing of that ax, every sucking sound as it pulled free of every wound it inflicted, and he had to watch every time the stranger wrenched the ax free of the floor, with each thunderous blow. When the stranger cut off his left arm at the shoulder, Todd could hear the ax whistle by his ear, and he began to grow cold. When the stranger cut off his right arm at the elbow, and his stump flew up in front of his eyes, spattering blood across his face, his hearing went out and he could no longer hear the meaty thwacks of his dismemberment. When the stranger finally struck him in the belly, Todd saw a jet of blood spray up into the stranger’s face, right before his eyesight faded slowly to gray, and then he was blind. All he had left at that point was the feeling of each blow rocking his body, as if he was underwater and someone was swatting the surface above his head with a boat paddle. He could feel the reverberations, he could feel the thud, and in his mind he could hear the dull thump, but it was distant, echoing, and then he was gone.

As Gregg walked out of the Duck ‘n’ Dolphin Saloon, there was a chair extending from the chest cavity of the owner, Edgar Billies, as if it had just sprouted and grown there.

End exerpt.

So what do ya think? Do you like it (and are you willing to spread the good word about Unabashed so I can gain fame and fortune :-)? Or do you hate it and think my plan will fail and I’ll suffer the pain of self-publishing?

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: book, excerpt, Fiction, Matt Mitchell, sample, story, writing