Are you a fan of the sword Oni-Goroshi? -- 01/10/24: wow, a Blackloak-inspired essay!

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kolyaboo wrote:

I surprisingly made it further than you in WoT; not sure why. Bored maybe? Don't remember. I was very young.

I'm lucky to have a free editor that's very good at it. Spouse. Merciless. And we've had arguments about problems. :)

She can't write dialogue for shit (her words, not mine) but a damned good editor. She took years of English and writing, including creative. Just not good at dialogue. Can you learn? Probably. If I learned to play bagpipes, probably anyone can learn to do anything.

Dialogue is what makes an eminently readable writer. Maybe not the best writer, but readable. Robert Parker (RIP) was THE greatest at it (that I know of). Writers and aspiring writers, even if they detest the crime genre, could do worse than study his dialogue.

Noted and I will look into that.

Dialogue is where I do all my work. Love it. Love it love it love it. Removing every single dialogue tag from Gildenhammer was a revelation.

...You have writing out there for me to buy?

No I don't. That's why I was asking about the difficulties of publishing. It's kind of on my bucket list. :)

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kolyaboo wrote:

No I don't. That's why I was asking about the difficulties of publishing. It's kind of on my bucket list. :)

Ah, I see. Happy to help if you ever put something together. Digitally it's really easy. Too easy. Results in a lot of spam. Physical production takes some formatting skills and effort. But it's totally worth it if you HAVE written a book to get yourself onto shelves, where randos can pick it up and go, huh. Then they might take it home and forget about it, but their spouse might notice it one day, and think it's terrible, and throw it out, but before the garbage truck can arrive, someone sees 'FREE BOOK!' (and isn't this just ironic) and reads it and goes, wow, that was amazing for free, I should tell my friends...and bam, you got yourself another reader.

Anyone can write a book. The hard part is convincing others that's what you've done and that it's worth paying for.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Anyone can write a book.

Yes, but will it be good? That's the difficult part

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Anyone can write a book. The hard part is convincing others that's what you've done and that it's worth paying for.

IMHO the hard part is to get someone to READ it.

Hi Charan, nice to see You. Glad You decided to share that history with us. Good therad.

Wrote some, mainly for paper RPGs, published also in some magazines (about paper RPGs off cozz), tried to write a book but... It never ended. However i have some ppl i know that wrote books, mainly SF. And reading it was... hard. Unfortunatelly.

THX for sharing. Take care.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Anyone can write a book.

Yes, but will it be good? That's the difficult part

Pretty sure the part you snipped off handled that, although plenty of 'not good' books have convinced others that they're worth paying for. Depends on one's definition of good, I suppose.

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de99ial: I get that; a lot of people take a stab at writing a book and for whatever reason it doesn't stick. But my book has been out for almost a decade now, and has yet to be received poorly. It is 100% a known quantity, although even now as I start to promote it in anticipation of book 2, I do wonder if it's up to the task. If I didn't somehow fuck something up in there. This is a horribly useless thought for a book that has been published and 'locked in' for years.

I did fix some typos and reupload but that aside, it's been unchanged all this time. And will remain so.

As for whether or not mine is 'hard' to read, there's a free sample on Amazon for people to judge that. I did put some of the hardest stuff at the beginning, but I feel it's just intriguing enough to pull readers over the line and into the story proper. Might be wrong there. WAY too late now either way. Can only do better next time, and I strongly believe I have/will. ;)

I must say i listen more books than read right now. Ive got myself Surfans F20 player and i listen all the time i can - during walks, house chores, prepping food, etc.). Currently im in the middle of Horus Heresy but the number wainting in line is just big.

I still read but way less than in the past. I some books can only be read, cannot be listen.

Its just my thought.

Take Care man and May The Fate Care For You.
:)

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de99ial wrote:

I must say i listen more books than read right now. Ive got myself Surfans F20 player and i listen all the time i can - during walks, house chores, prepping food, etc.). Currently im in the middle of Horus Heresy but the number wainting in line is just big.

I still read but way less than in the past. I some books can only be read, cannot be listen.

Its just my thought.

Take Care man and May The Fate Care For You.
:)

I completely get that. Audiobooks are all the rage right now. We live in what I like to think of as a post-literary age where even novelists are writing with the screen in mind. You want to make it big as an author? Think TV. Think movies. And you aren't going to achieve that writing something that is hard to adapt or difficult to realise on a 'budget'.

But the problem with that is that we now have authors afraid to really push what the written word on the page can do. And from my perspective, I see no point in being an author, someone who has chosen the written word as their medium, if you're not going to do that. Be a scriptwriter instead, if that's where it's going.

I realise this really limits my audience reach. I also choose not to pretend I'm an influencer or social media butterfly, so where most indie authors are all about farming for engagement, I'm going old school: I post updates, occasional thoughts about writing, and ads for my work/other things I've read I really like and want to promote. Because, when all's said and done, I want old school readers. That's my niche and I'm not going to find it writing for audiobooks or adaptation to other media.

You could try and reach to some YT reviewers that specyfie in this genre. Something like that.

Actually i love audiobooks far from the past, there werent many then but there were centers for ppl without sight and they had tapes recorded with books (im not blind). Not many but still. Also i loves as kid to listed thouse radio audio dramas (i guess - its an interpretation with more than one voice actor, with sounds in bckground, etc.) that were aired in my country.

So to me todays boom is list dream come true ;)

eInk is a very good thing i must say. I hate reading on LCD screen so reading? Paper or epaper. That is one of the milestones of progression of Humanity. IMHO ;)

Fictional podcasts sort of grew out of radio plays and I love some of them as well! It's a whole other artform to simply narrating a book though.

I did consider influencer reach but eh, I'm really old school. I'm happy to pick up a reader here and there who really wants to read what I've written. I'll leave the influencers to promoting less hefty fare.