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It’s the frantic end-of-the-year season. I hope you are having a lovely holiday season. Here’s a Bubble & Squeek for you. This time with some recommendations!
eBay and Signed Books: If you would like signed books from me for yourself or as gifts, we have a bunch of my books up on eBay. This will remain on eBay until all of my books are gone. All money goes to me.
Recommendation: Reminder. BBC has a beautiful radio drama of THE DARK IS RISING by Susan Cooper. You can enjoy it now with (found) family and friends. If you start on Dec 20, and listen to one a day, it will follow along with the book.
Recommendation: New to me version of my favorite holiday song, Carol of the Bells by Safri Duo.
Release: Augment 4 has been released. It’s the Winter 2083 issue and it’s all about city life and the vehicles we use to get around in the Sixth World.
Release: Marie Bilodeau and I have a new Aigmar and Ozan story in the latest Valdemar anthology, Smoke and Mirrors, number 19! I love this bardic duo and you can bet your bottom dollar there will be more from these two in the future.
Release: Skull X Bones anthology, with my story, “More than Blood in the Water” has been released!
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
Tis the season! Whamageddon is upon us.
And should you fall…
We shall die and dine together…
Remember, this is all in good fun. Don’t be a jerk, and don’t yuck on someone else’s yum.
Most of my writing career has been spent in long form novels set in the grim and perilous worlds of Warhammer, but I often like to venture beyond that into other forms of writing, genres, and tones for variety and texture. What I mean by that is I need to feel like I’m exercising different writerly muscles when I embark on different projects, whether it’s a novel, a comic, a short story, a screenplay, or whatever. I feel this is good for me and the reader, as it helps keep things new and exciting. It means that when I return to each different genre or project type, I’m enthused to explore it again and not likely to get pigeonholed into one corner. Likewise, as a reader, I like to vary my diet of books between SF, Fantasy, Horror, Crime, Non-Fiction, etc., so I don’t ever get tired of one genre or writer.
The reason I do this with my writing is that each project employs different sensibilities and creative choices, whether it’s the discipline of the word count in a short story, where you want to get in and out of Dodge with speed and clarity, or a novel where you can afford multiple sub-plots and be (a little) more self-indulgent. Then you have screenplays, which have a very definitive structure and format, where all the emphasis is on the dialogue and providing a ‘blueprint’ for the folk who have to shoot what you’ve written. When it comes to comics, I love working with an artist to bring the words on the page to life and leaning on their talents for how to lay out the page. With comics, you also have the fun challenge of pacing the story in such a way that the big reveals, splash pages, and so on all come at the right time on the reader’s page turns.
It’s the same with genre and mythologies, I love to mix and match or slam together wildly different origins to see what comes out. So, you’ll get books like Dead Sky, Black Sun, that fuse a grimdark SF tale with Barker-esque body horror, or A Thousand Sons, that’s a story of space wizards in a gothic tragedy of hubris.
That variety is what I had in mind when I first started developing the ideas for Wolves of Winter. I wanted to write an epic story of Viking warriors that ventured into magical and supernatural territory, which combined my love of various mythologies. As much as I love Roman, Greek, and Egyptian mythologies, I didn’t feel they were the right fit, and given that as a kid in Scotland, I’d grown up on stories of Celtic mythology, with its Kelpies, Selkies, and the Tuath Dé Danann, that seemed entirely appropriate a mash-up. Bringing the grand mythologies of the Norse and the Celts together allowed me to delve into both cultures in a way that felt real and authentic (and, most importantly, exciting!).
It’s my hope that, so long as I stay enthused for my craft by allowing for that blending of story types and genres I can keep entertaining my readers in exciting and unexpected ways for many years to come.
—
Graham McNeill is a Scottish, LA-based, award-winning, New York Times best-selling author, screenwriter, and games developer. Over the years, Graham has written for numerous global franchises, working on Riot’s League of Legends and on their Emmy-Award-winning Netflix show, Arcane; Games Workshop’s Warhammer and Horus Heresy settings; Blizzard Entertainment’s Starcraft universe, and the Dark Waters trilogy for Fantasy Flight Games Arkham Horror range. To date, Graham has penned forty-five novels, ninety-plus short stories, audio dramas, and comics. His novel, Empire, won the David Gemmell Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2010, and four of his novels in the Horus Heresy series have gone on to become New York Times best-sellers.
Augment is Shadowrun’s official magazine. This is a fully in-universe magazine, and can be used in Shadowrun games as well as enjoyed by the casual reader.
Augment, Winter 2083. In this issue about city life and vehicles, Leach tours around his hometown of Seattle to sample its delights. Marques Reille gets caught shopping in one of his favorite stores by none other than Gabrielle Spinrad! Yuta Nakata has a feisty interview with our cover artist, PR4NK-r, about art and life. Louise Sashey, new columnist of The Cutting Edge, spends time in Montreal and Kyoto, finding ways to experience city life in style. Enjoy these articles, reviews of new products, clothing, tech, and so much more!
Augment your life with Augment magazine!
Even the back cover is gorgeous!
I had such a good time editing this magazine. It’s a ton of work but worth it. I hope you check it out. I’ll put pictures up of all four issues together when I get my hot little hands on them.
You’ve all heard it said: Two great tastes that taste great together. Peanut butter and chocolate. Yum. I tend to look upon writing fiction in the same way I look at my snack options. I love mixing genres. Blending genres into something unique thrills the creator in me and I think my characters enjoy it too.
I write thrillers often. The beauty of this is that thrillers pair well with almost anything. Action/thriller. Check. Crime/Thriller. Yep. SciFi/Thriller. Uh huh. You get the idea. If you look at any of my thrillers, there is definitely a blending of multiple genres. It even boils down to the way I pitch titles to potential readers. For example, the pitch for Evil Ways, my first novel that was released in 2005, is “Imagine if Die Hard’s John MacClane found himself in an 80’s slasher movie.” It also works outside of thrillers. Horror also pairs well with others. I write a horror/western series, for example. In my Dante series, it’s “Imagine if Deadwood also had monsters.”
This blending of two different, but recognizable, ideas let readers know what they are in store for before they open to the first page.
How do writers know when blending genres works? That’s a tough question to answer because all writers are different and our unique voice helps us determine how scenarios play out. If I am writing a mystery, for example, there are different types. A cozy mystery has no, or very little, elements of danger. The odds of your main character getting hurt, killed, or even severely startled is infinitesimal. Mixing in a thriller component changes the dynamic because thrillers inherently come with an element of danger, of thrills. It’s right there in the description. Characters aren’t always safe in a thriller.
Even if a cozy mystery and mystery/thriller use the same plot, you will get two different stories because of the thriller element added. Thriller adds a sense of danger to stories and, as a writer and reader, that appeals to me. I recently co-wrote a cozy mystery with a friend and it was a bit of a struggle to not add in thriller elements as I normally would when writing a novel. I use thriller elements to enhance the story. A lighthearted story gets a bit of bad news that gives the characters a problem to overcome. In a mystery, thriller elements can knock a character down and then help them grow by how they rally and get back up. Thriller elements are usually impediments to the status quo. How your characters respond to these elements adds weight to the story and the characters themselves. Do they learn something from this element? Do they grow? Do they buckle under the pressure? Thriller elements allow me, as a writer, to test my characters. The best of them come away from these stories stronger thanks to the adversity they faced.
For me, writing always starts with character. Not every character is the right fit for every story. Certain characters are perfect fits for a thriller while others are not. Also, thrillers can be funny, romantic, and even heartfelt, each with an element of danger. That’s one of the reasons I like using the genre as a mixer. I encourage everyone to experiment with blending genres. You might discover something interesting in the process.
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Bobby Nash is an award-winning author, artist, and occasional actor. He writes novels, comic books & graphic novels, novellas, short stories, audio scripts, screenplays, and more. Bobby is a member of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, International Thriller Writers, Southeastern Writers Association, and Atlanta Writers Club. From time to time, he appears in movies and TV shows, usually standing behind your favorite actor. Sometimes they let him speak. Scary, we know. For more information, please visit Bobby at www.bobbynash.com, www.ben-books.com, and across social media.
All four Dante ebooks are currently $0.99 for a limited time.
I’m doing a lot of project management, editing, and novel writing. Have a Bubble & Squeek!
eBay and Signed Books: The holiday season is coming! If you would like signed books from me for yourself or as gifts for the holiday season, we have a bunch of my books up on eBay. This will remain on eBay until all of my books are gone. All money goes to me.
Kickstarter: Forthcoming anthology, Waterborne. I’m sharing a ToC with people like Seanan McGuire, Jonathan Maberry, Nancy Holder, Yvonne Navarro, and many other stellar authors. You’ll want this one for sure.
Kickstarter: Skull X Bones anthology. There’s still time to do late pledges for this SF&F themed anthology about pirates from the small press Zombies Need Brains! Warning: Contains me, too.
Panel: Gen Con 2025, Recorded Fiction Panel Gen Con on Sunday, with John Helfers, Jordan Weisman, Jennifer Brozek, Jason Hardy, and Bryan C.P. Steele… Catalyst authors and editors discuss fiction. YT link.
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
I’m at that point in my life where friends turn to me for advice on things. What things? Anything. Everything. If I don’t have an answer, I probably know who does. To be fair, I’ve been at this point for years. Decades even. I’m famous (infamous?) amongst my friends for creating systems to keep things working.
In my defense, it’s all in my defense. My memory and attention are often scattered. (Example: I came upstairs to add something to the Amazon cart to consider, but forgot because when I sat down I saw that I’d left this blog post open for me to do today and started working on it before the Husband walked by and I remembered I was supposed to add the thing to the cart.) I have a stack of one, baby. If I don’t write it down or come up with systems, things don’t get done.
One of the most recent questions/requests for help was about decluttering for a move. I’ve been public about doing a series of decluttering rounds throughout the years, and how I’ve learned something new on each one. I’ve tried different methods. In the end, I’ve chosen the bits and pieces that work for me and come up with my own series of questions to winnow down my household.
Also, I find asking myself these different questions in the different ways gets to the heart of why I have something, want to keep something, or don’t. Now that I’m older, I don’t look for reasons to get rid of something, I look for reasons to keep something. It’s a subtle but important difference in mindset. Number 3 is very telling for me. I want to want/love everything I have. If I can’t do that, at least make it a necessary evil.
I hope this is useful to anyone who just wants to make sense of their belongings.
Last week, while the Husband and I walked around the neighborhood, a flash of red against black and white caught my eye. It was so unusual that I had to stop and get a better look at the bird. It turned out to be a woodpecker. Not just any woodpecke
r… It was a “Woody the Woodpecker” kind of woodpecker.
I had never seen this type of bird in the wild before and I was thrilled. It’s been a while since I’ve encountered new-to-me wildlife. This was so unexpected. Of course, I could not remember what kind of woodpecker it was. Thus, when I got home, I googled it.
Normally, I use udm14.com. I don’t like AI in my searches. I find UDM14 to be a lot cleaner and more correct. I forgot this time. What popped up for me when I asked Google?
A northern flicker (See below).
Once again, AI reared its ugly head and was wrong. Now, I know what a northern flicker looks like, and it does not look like Woody the Woodpecker. But, if I hadn’t already known, I could’ve walked away with incorrect information and been none the wiser.
Look, in certain circumstances, the pattern recognition of a LLMs is amazing. Especially in medical fields, and I imagine, in programming. However, you need to have a good foundation of knowledge before you can trust whatever AI comes up with.
As it stands now, in everyday life, AI is a travesty. Too many times, it is wrong—as in it guessed wrong. There’s no hallucinating going on. It would not get a passing grade in school. Yet, people trust its answers all the time. I wish to goodness AI was actually trustworthy. It’s not.
BTW, the correct answer is: Woody the Woodpecker is based on the Pileated Woodpecker.
I guess this is your old woman yells at clouds moment for the day.
I love writing short story horror because the swing of ideas can be boundless even within a single book. You can be transported from modern settings to my favorite: Gothic backdrops. There is something spectacularly spooky about old weather-worn, eerie mansions, houses, and the time period itself. The creak of floorboards, the chill in the air, the distant tolling of a bell—those are the sounds echoing in your mind long after the last page is turned. These decaying structures hold secrets in every shadowed corner, and it’s easy to imagine their walls remembering every scream, whisper, or tragedy that’s ever unfolded within.
What fascinates me most is the way horror allows you to explore deep-rooted fears through different lenses. One moment, you are in a suburban neighborhood where things seem normal, until they go wrong. The next, you are wandering through fog-choked moors toward a crumbling estate that feels alive. The flexibility of short horror fiction means you do not need hundreds of pages to unsettle someone; a single well-placed sentence, a twist of imagery, or the slow reveal of something deeply wrong can do the trick. That brevity forces you to be sharp, precise, and atmospheric—every word counts, and every detail needs to serve the chill.
To me, the Gothic setting in particular is ripe with symbolism. The decay of the building often mirrors the decay of the soul or mind. Rain lashes the windows like ghostly fingers trying to get in. Candles flicker in halls where no wind should reach. These are the environments where shadows do not behave quite right, where time feels slowed or twisted. I love tapping into the classic themes of madness, isolation, fear of the dark, haunted objects, etc.—but presenting them in new ways that still honor the roots of the genre.
Writing these stories also feels like being in conversation with the greats—Poe, Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson. (I take great pride in mimicking the Gothic period language for many of my stories.)
Each one of the greats brought their own flavor to horror, and I strive to do the same. Whether it is a haunted diary, a malevolent mirror, or something unspeakable lurking beneath the floorboards, I want to leave readers with that lingering feeling of unease. The kind that stays with you in the quiet moments. The kind that makes you hesitate before turning off the light.
Ultimately, I think short form horror reminds us, in a snapshot version, of the unknown all around us. It plays with our sense of safety and dares us to look closer. And I cannot get enough of it.
—
Mark K. McClain is a multi-award-winning author who discovered his love of writing as a pre-teen, inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, David Eddings, Isaac Asimov, Robert Jordan, Agatha Christie, Stephen King, and many others. His 20-year military career carried him around the globe, experiences that enriched his worldbuilding and grounded his stories in realism.
Beyond fiction, he has published a wide range of outdoor-themed and human-interest articles, from local history features and parenting columns to international pieces written in China and Uganda. He writes fantasy, science fiction, and Gothic horror—and sharing the magic of storytelling remains one of his greatest joys.
Mark makes his home on an island off the coast of Washington State with his life partner, Rochelle, and their beloved furry companions.
The world is a scary place right now for a lot of people. Me included. I fear for friends, family, and other loved ones. Hell, I fear for myself, my gender, and the erosion of my rights, not to mention the loss of my bodily autonomy. Every single time I look up from my work—focused writing or editing—to look at social media or the news, I regret it.
So, I have a couple of words for you to noodle over. I collect new-to-me, interesting words. I’ve been saving these since the beginning of the year for the right time to trot them out. I think now is as good of a time as any.
The first is: Weltschmerz (translated as something like world-sadness). It is a German word that means the feeling of melancholy and pessimism that comes from being aware of the contrast between the way things are and the way you wish they were.
The second is: Sisu. It is a Finnish word that means a special strength and determination to continue on in moments of adversity; having grit, bravery, and resilience; refusing to give up.
These days, I live between these two words. The world feels like a trash fire right now—and my state is actually on fire, literally—and, sometimes, I wonder how we are going to survive as a people, much less a nation.
The only saving grace I have is the fact that every single generation believes they are in the end times, that men aren’t masculine enough, women aren’t feminine enough, and no one wants to work…along with a litany of other societal woes, as seen in letters to the editor, essays, journal entries, and the like for over 2500 years, and we’re still here.
We all feel weltschmerz at some point in our lives. Then, we feel sisu. And life goes on. We hope. I hope.
There. A couple of words for you to ponder in the coming days.
Jennifer Brozek is a multi-talented, award-winning author, editor, and media tie-in writer. She is the author of Never Let Me Sleep and The Last Days of Salton Academy, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Her YA tie-in novels, BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident and Shadowrun: Auditions, have both won Scribe Awards. Her editing work has earned her nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and multiple Hugo Awards. She won the Australian Shadows Award for the Grants Pass anthology, co-edited with Amanda Pillar. Jennifer’s short form work has appeared in Apex Publications, Uncanny Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and in anthologies set in the worlds of Valdemar, Shadowrun, V-Wars, Masters of Orion, Well World, and Predator.
Jennifer has been a full-time freelance author and editor for over seventeen years, and she has never been happier. She keeps a tight schedule on her writing and editing projects and somehow manages to find time to teach writing classes and volunteer for several professional writing organizations such as SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. She shares her husband, Jeff, with several cats and often uses him as a sounding board for her story ideas. Visit Jennifer’s worlds at jenniferbrozek.com or her social media accounts on LinkTree.
