jfreedan

I've decided that I'm going to start using my Blogger account from now on. The reason is because Livejournal likes to fight with me whenever I want to post a video into this thing, and Blogger has more support for apps.

You can find the blog at,
http://cmartell.blogspot.com/

My film company's first release, Cosplayers: The Movie is available for order on Amazon.com, but soon it will also be available for free viewing on Crunchyroll.com (you'll have to watch some ads though). In the meantime you can watch a trailer for the film on my Youtube account.

On Authonomy, my YA fantasy Twilight Chronicles: DAWN is now in the top 200 rankings! Based on feedback I've received about the prologue, I have re-written it, but I'm unsure if it is better or worse. Given the number of people who have said "I never read prologues", I've decided to stop submitting the prologue to agents.

I cannot possibly fathom why people hate prologues; to me, saying you don't read the prologue is as rational as saying, "I never read Chapter Two". Why would you not read the story? Sheesh!

As for the publishing industry, the following picture illustrates how successful my attempt to get an agent / publisher has been going:

Posted by a frustrated writer in a writer's forum:

"The irony is that agents and publishers wander around telling everyone that they are looking for unique voices, then panning anything that deviates from the accepted commercial wisdom. "

Another one:

"The BBC reported that 300 new vampire titles were published this year, 300 for Christs sake
50 new vampire books are in the pipeline for next year already."

I have often came across literary theories that state an author should never use punctuation marks (such as exclamation and question marks), because they build "artificial tension" and somehow make your writing look comical.

I strongly disagree and can say confidently there is nothing wrong with using exclamation points. I can prove it logically by exploring the use of these marks in the English language.

Using one does not build "artificial tension". It tells the reader what tone to read the sentence in. This is important when reading text out loud. Someone that really understand sentence structure does not read a question ending with a period the same way they do with a question or exclamation mark.

It is because any sentence can be read numerous ways that we have punctuation marks to make the intention of a sentence clear to the reader.

This is especially true for dialogue. People do not notice 'shouted/ asked Bob' until after they have read the dialogue because letters are so common they blend together. However, they do notice ! and ? marks because they are much rarer occurrences compared to letters.

Reading is the act of interpreting symbols into meaning. Use the symbols!

Lastly, unlike many writers I do not subscribe to the idea a reader should carefully study the intention behind a sentence. Punctuation marks exist so that readers do not have to worry about that, instead they can focus on the actual story.

If you disagree with me, have a non-writer read aloud your book that lacks exclamation and question marks. See for yourself how dull your story sounds when every piece of text is read as a level-voiced statement, lacking any degree of emotional expression.

Or sit in a grade school classroom and listen to young children (many do not yet understand the purpose of punctuation marks) read all text as a statement. The connotation in every word is lacking; every question sounds like a statement and every shout sounds like a whisper.

If you do not use punctuation marks in your writing you are not writing for readers. You are instead writing for those who hang on every word until the text loses much of its value (i.e. other writers). Please your audience before you please your peers.

Writing is communication. Be clear and concise in how you intend your text to be read. The English language has punctuation marks for a reason, and that reason is so the average reader knows if the sentence is a statement, a question, an exclamation, a request or a command.

Punctuation marks are great. You can communicate an idea so much more effectively with them than without them. For example, it has become common among my generation to use a tilde (~) to express an extension of the final syllables. This means, if you wanted to write the Mrs. Doubtfire quote "Hellooooo!", you can write it as the much more aesthetically attractive "Hello~!". I have a valley girl unicorn in my story that speaks in a sing-song voice, so many of her sentences use a tilde. I also use a tilde to denote how a magical incantation is spoken. Older readers may not get it, but my target audience will know exactly what it means. They use it in online games and text messages all the time.

From a forum discussion,

"How do you filter through all the seemingly useful crits to find the ones that are actually worth taking note of? I just find myself doubting my own opinion AND that of the critiquers after a while!"

My reply:

You can tell which advice to take and which not to take by being well read in the genre you write in and aware of the various writing composition theories floating around.

For example, there is a theory that says you should avoid adverbs. I think, for some genres, that may be good advice, but I write humor and humor is hard to do without adverbs. Thus, I use adverbs in my writing.

Ultimately, you are the writer of your story and you must know who your target audience is. You cannot expect everyone to like your writing, but you can tailor your writing for a specific group of people. Doing that will improve your chances of being successful with your target audience.

From a forum discussion,

"I can't remember exactly, but I think Jenny Crusie might have talked about prologues in her Beginnings and Endings workshop. It was either there or her pre conference workshop. But regardless, there I was--innocent little me sipping my tea and thinking about how much I would like a scone to go with it--when she blurted out, "Never write a prologue."

(She also said never write an epilogue, too, but that's another topic)

I think I was the only writer in the room who gasped...

http://jennifershirk.blogspot.com/2009/11/prologues-bad-rap-or-ditch-worthy.html

-This seems somewhat valid. I wonder if anyone thinks that my prologue would fall into the bad or good category? close quotes
Blogs like that are the result of over-analyzing writing."

My response:

Here's the first thing she (and others) do wrong: they assume Chapter 1 is the "start" of the story.

The story actually starts where the writer starts writing; so if they wrote a prologue, that's where the story starts!

I think the biggest mistake people do is decide a prologue is bad because it creates a number of questions that are not resolved by the end of the prologue. They don't ever ask themselves, "Maybe if I read the story, the answers will come?".

An effective prologues is just a hook. Prologues do not follow the usual conventions of a chapter, which is a self-contained story with a cliffhanger tagged to the end.

Prologues can do many things, but if they don't force you to read the rest of the book to answer your questions, it's not doing its primary job.

On a forum thread about rosy writing in modern literature, someone posted the following:

"Mark Twain said it best: Eschew adjectives."

I understand this is an often quoted thing in the writing world, but I disagree with this viewpoint.

Mark Twain is a great writer who, unlike many of the great writers before him, wrote stories intended to be read by the common man rather than the upper elite of society.

However, keep in mind he was writing in an age when most of the population was illiterate and the majority of those who were literate didn't know the meanings of most adjectives. This is often forgotten, but his advice was meant for his time period.

Unfortunately, how we use a language evolves over time.

All writing, no matter what other purpose it may have, is intended to communicate ideas. That is what language is for. As the way people speak evolves, so too must the way people write their stories in order to effectively communicate their ideas.

The honest truth is, of the literate English speakers today, many have difficulty following along Mark Twain's text because of the dialect it is written in. That goes double for older writers like Shakespeare. Words that were once common in those days are not so common anymore, and many words that are common today did not exist when those writers were alive.

If words are tools, when they gave advice on writing they were using a very different set of tools compared to the tools we use today.

You have to look at how people speak today to understand how to write today. You also have to know who your target audience is. I would not write a book for Americans the way I would write a book for British English because of the significant differences in how English is commonly spoken in both countries.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/the-authors-hearts-beat-faster-publishing-was-so-close-now/?ref=books

"According to Brent Lewis, vice president of digital and Internet for Harlequin, editors at Harlequin will not vet the books. Author Solutions will charge $599 or more to publish and distribute books, mostly in digital form, and will split those revenues with Harlequin."

And of all the print on demand providers they could have used, they choose to do business with Author House, the people that have scammed millions of authors.

Yet more proof publishers don't care about authors, they just care about making as much money as they can from them.

I admit that I roll my eyes every time any American woman says that she is a feminist and I have a sincere belief that the feminism classes taught in college campuses nationwide is a form of hate-mongering almost as bad as white supremacy.

I realize the point of view I'm about to share is not popular, but I believe that it is true.

Feminism is, like so many other forms of sexism, unnecessary. There is nothing to be gained by blaming men for all the woes of women anymore than there is something to gain by blaming (enter any group of people here) for the woes of (enter any group of people here).

For the US, Feminism was a product of the civil rights movement in the prior century. It’s served its purpose in the form of many hundreds of laws guaranteeing women the same rights as men. The factors that created feminism no longer exist in the US, no matter how hard people try to prove they do. Women can vote, own property, divorce, hold any job they want, get maternity leave and even decide to change their own gender.

Now many will point out that the government does not guarantee that women receive paid maternity leave-- that is a benefit the employer can choose to give. I realize many women feel their employer should pay them 12 weeks worth of wages for getting knocked up, but I think that is an unreasonable desire. Just because you can have children does not mean your employer should financially assist you through a pregnancy. It does not benefit your employer for you to bear children (you can't even argue it helps keep our species alive because we actually have overpopulation issues today). In fact, paid pregnancy leave means your employer has to pay two people to do your job, as they have to hire someone else to temporarily perform your duties while you're at home watching TV. Is that fair to your employer? If you think so, you must really hate your employer.

Another nail in feminism's coffin is the fact the majority of women like to be treated as women. I have never once in my life met a girl who didn't want chivalrous courtesy shown to her, and I've known some pretty die-hard lesbians that blame men for everything yet act like its a crime when a guy doesn't treat her "like a woman". So I conclude that all women want men to be chivalrous. Hell, you need only look to Craigslist to see the thousands that refuse to date a guy that isn’t taller and earns more money than they do.

Women want and expect doors held open for them. They like it when a guy only sits after they have done so. They actively use puppy dog looks and soft voices to coerce men into doing special favors for them. Women don’t have any problems with the special treatment and accommodations women receive in our culture when it suits their own agenda. And mind you I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with women doing these things, I am only pointing out that their vocal feministic statements are not supported by their actual behavior-- behavior resulting from the true subconscious beliefs they have about their role in society.

(This is not something unique to women-- I think at times all people, including myself, say they want something without fully understanding what that actually entails).

I think learning history is fine. Hell, I think its important and vital for any democratic society because if the people are ignorant they will make decisions based on irrationality rather than rationality. But there is a point where a professor stops talking about historical fact and begins using the classroom as a pulpit for their own misguided agenda. Some of these professors manage to connect entirely unrelated things to the "unjust oppression of women".

Okay, women were historically subservient. That is an irrefutable fact.
What is not a fact is that it served no positive purpose.

Anyone that has actually studied history knows the primary reason men came into prominence in primitive societies is because the sex ratio is not equal; there are less males born than females, but a male can produce more offspring than a female can. That's the main reason polygamy has historically been predominant and men have been the rulers: guys were, from a survival point of view, more important than women are. And women are inherently physically weaker than men. Sure, MODERN MEDICINE AND FOOD has resolved many of the physical differences between men and women, but when you consider the majority of ancient humans were malnourished, parasite infested over-worked serfs for nobility, the boost males get from testosterone makes a hell of a lot of difference-- so does not having to worry about debilitating menstrual periods.

It's also true that a woman was a fragile thing that needed to be better taken care of, for those who weren't completely disease ridden or malnourished produced healthy children that had a better chance of surviving their first couple years. Until the 20th century, the chances of an infant dying could be decided by a coin toss. And those desirable women needed to be protected against men that wanted them for themselves.

It is a historical fact that we as a species probably would not have survived if our cultural attitudes toward men and women hadn't existed-- yet people are led to believe all of this was a great crime against women and should never have happened.

I am of the opinion that things could have been handled a better way because I believe gender does not solely determine things like intelligence or physical strength, and ideally I think people should be free to live the lives they want to.

Having said that, I think it is also unfair to our ancestors to act as if they were evil tyrants who abused women just to feel good about themselves. While that may be the motivation for a minority of individuals, that was not the motivation for entire cultures. Instead, cultural behaviors and ideas about women were developed to survive in a world that was trying to kill our species.  If you truly understand how older cultures were setup and what their actual beliefs were, you can understand how not allowing women to divorce or inherit property, or marrying off healthy twelve year old women to wealthy thirty year old men was necessary for our species to survive. The majority of the true atrocities-- like making wives die with their husbands or killing women as a witch-- are due more to religious superstition than anything else (and as far as European witch burning was concerned, more influential men were executed than non-influential women because the whole thing had more to do with justifying political assassinations and ethnic cleansing than genuine belief that they were devil worshipers).

Those that can only see things in black and white will likely not accept my point of view, for the same reasons there are many thousands of people who believe that wars are never necessary even if it means their own civilization is destroyed by invading nations that lack such noble ideas.

But I am an objective realist. Although I do have powerful feelings about what is right and wrong, and I personally believe women are entitled to as many rights as men have and gender has little to do with intelligence, I can still accept that right and wrong are intangible and loosely-defined ideas created in people's heads and do not exist in reality. It is pointless to look at the past as nothing but a source of wrongs and fail to see it is only because of our ancestors' beliefs and actions that a country like the USA was able to be created.

If we failed to have generations where only the most healthy of men had dominion over the most healthy of women until advances in the sciences allowed us to combat diseases and parasites, I do not think we would have survived as a species. That is a harsh truth to accept but I think it is an important one. It is too easy for people to forget they only exist because thousands of people before them suffered greatly and fought bravely to allow our modern world to exist-- and I think the form of feminism most preached is a great slap in the face to all our ancestors because it demeans and misconstrues why they behaved the way they did and what good consequences came from these behaviors.

The only places feminism has any value are in (primarily third world) countries where the issue of equal rights regardless of gender is still a factor. In the US, I really don't think the "girl power" cults do anything but make some women hate men for no reason at all-- especially when American women have no idea what "oppression" really is.

I suppose in summary I feel at one time America needed feminism but now it has no place in our society.

The internet is a blessing because, for the first time in the history of the world, the entire body of human knowledge is at our fingertips. We are the first generation of human beings to have ever had such an enormous library of information at our disposal.

Ironically the internet is also a curse because the majority of human knowledge is pure bullshit and only by studying all of the bullshit can we separate fact from fiction.

The greatest innovation of mankind may very well be our undoing for the same reason that there are a thousand slicing at the branches of evil to the one hacking at the root.

Hospital Forces Lesbian to Die Alone
...as her partner and children sit outside her room, and a US Judge says the hospital had every right.


That's pretty messed up, but sadly I'm not surprised. It just goes to show how far we still have to go until America lives up to the promise of freedom from religious persecution. That's really what anti-homosexual attitudes stem from. Religion.

And if you think I'm just speaking out my butt, no. I've been Agnostic since I was a teenager but I was raised Lutheran. My father forced me to attend a Sunday service a couple months ago when I was visiting because my grandfather drags him to it.

First thing I receive when I step into the door?

A pamphlet that was essentially a gay hate manifesto about how the preacher was angry with some other Lutheran churches for allowing gay pastors, and how those gay pastors were dooming others to damnation.

Of course I'm handed this pamphlet by a little white haired lady in a sunday hat who looks as far removed from a lynch mob as the mascot for Grandma's Cookies.

The preacher also spent the entire time preaching his viewpoints (especially to all the children in the audience, lovely) and having everyone sing songs and prayers for all those people. Everyone except me, of course. I refused to even go through the motions of communion, and when the guy noticed I was the only one in my row who didn't get up, the guy had the nerve to glare at me. So I glared right back and part of me wanted to choke him out with that stupid scarf around his neck.

The thing is, people like that are more common than the ones preaching tolerance toward diversity. The cycle of assholes preaching hatred to children who grow up to be preachers of hatred isn't going to end anytime soon, and one of the downsides to democratic systems is that it is tyranny by the majority.

Bear in mind, I'm not making a case for anti-religion. My point is that thousands of preachers across the country are telling kids being gay basically makes you Satan's henchmen and the majority of these kids grow up believing it without ever questioning it as they do with many of the things they were taught as children. They carry those beliefs into adulthood and act on them, even if they become doctors, lawyers, judges, policemen and nurses. They even try to make their beliefs laws for everyone else to follow.

Hell, our government funds abstinence sex education in schools. Abstinence is built around the idea you don't have sex until marriage. Marriage is a religious practice yet seemingly everyone we elect into office thinks this is a fantastic idea. They find ways to fund churches and give them special deals on taxes and property purchases even though they aren't supposed to be able to do that. They've got "In God we Trust" on everything (that happened in 1956, btw) and the military allows officers to force soldiers to attend religious functions (I'm speaking from experience here). Judges are allowed to erect Ten Commandment statues outside their court houses so every Hindu, Wiccan, Atheist or what-have-you knows exactly what kind of treatment they'll get inside the courthouse.

This is all an issue near and dear to my heart, but not because I'm gay. I'm not gay. But I was an infantryman and I have a very good idea what kind of experiences soldiers went through to first build this country and then keep it around. A lot of people have been killed or dismembered so we can have a government system that hypothetically allows every good and honest person to live a pleasant and safe life. I say hypothetically because that is not what the majority has decided to do with this opportunity that has been given to them.

Our country has a long way to go.

I got to thinking about something tonight and I thought I'd share my thoughts to see what others think. 

When I decided to upload chapters here I had no desire to get my book into the top lists and read by a HP editor. I did some research into this website before uploading, so I knew that I didn't have the time to commit to marketing my manuscript to other users (I only log into this site a few times per week). My only goal was to get additional feedback on my writing, as I'm considering self-publishing my story once I've completed the roleplaying game based on the world in my book (as I have little money to spend on marketing, in order to maximize my marketing efforts I would release the novel and the game books at the same time so both products help market each other). 

Anyway, I've noticed that there is a large turnover of "backings"-- sometimes within a few hours after someone has backed a book, they have already replaced that book with another book. This makes me wonder if users time would be better served to invest their Authonomy hours into writing a series of books, edit these books, self publish and then market these books directly to consumers rather than invest most of their day into marketing their books to other authors here in the hopes a HP editor might publish their novel if enough people back it. Nothing against HP here but as near as I can tell HP has yet to actually publish a book that reached the "Editor's Desk". The time investment to reach the top of the lists doesn't appear to pay off. 

I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade here. I genuinely believe there are many talented authors here and that many of the books I have read on this website are as publishable as anything being released by publishing houses today. 

In fact, I would wager it would be more beneficial for Authonomy writers who have publishable manuscripts to form a group of some kind to help promote each other's self-published books directly to consumers than to continue begging other authors to back their books here in the hopes HP will publish their books. This group would do the same task that publishing houses currently do (including both editing and marketing), only it would be a publisher "owned" by the authors and not by shareholders who will never read their books anyway. 

What do other people think? I think Web 2.0 websites are a path to allowing the publishing industry to be easier to enter for new authors (along with helping authors hone their craft via feedback from other authors), but from what I have seen so far I have doubts that the Authonomy system is the best way to go about it. 

(I also posted this onto the official Authonomy forums)

I came across an article on Wow.com where they interviewed a psychologist that specialized in videogame addiction.

I was really hoping this doctor might be someone that breaks the stereotype, but alas, it was not to be.

Here is a part where the interviewer asks her if she's ever played World of Warcraft before; the game she is treating people for being addicted to.

[quote]
Do you think that would help, though? When I mention the rested XP and the mechanics in the game that ask you to stop playing once in a while, wouldn't that help for you to have a sense of what is this game like and what does this feel like and what happens here?

I do think it would be a -- I think it's a wonderful idea. I just feel no motivation to do it, so I probably won't.

Not even a curiosity even? Professional curiosity? In terms of working with these people who have done this for hours and hours and hours, you don't have a curiosity to check it out?

I satisfied my curiosity by sitting with and watching, on quite a few occasions, other people playing the game, but for my own, for me to play it, no I'm sorry.

No, and I will say, and forgive me if this is presumptuous, I apologize in advance --

I know just what you're going to say, go ahead.

I will say it's a very different experience watching someone else play and actually playing yourself.

I'm sure that's true.

And I'm not saying it as a gamer and as a fanboy of these games, I'm saying it as someone who has introduced people to games. I have a friend who enjoys watching me play, and it's two different experiences, when she picks up the controller and then she's watching me play, it's an almost entirely different point of view.

I'm sure that's really true, but I'm just of a different generation, and my brain is not wired to do it, and I have a very busy and fulfilling life, so it's like, why would I do it except to understand you guys better. Which is a good reason. [/quote]

This is the problem with psychologists who don't understand their own field of study. Hell, she even talked about brain scans at one point, trying to use activity in one area of the brain as evidence to support her half-baked conclusions. That kind of quackery might fool some people but anyone who actually understands biology knows the brain is so utterly complicated that no two people's brains are wired exactly the same, meaning different parts of the brain sometimes do completely different functions. That's why sometimes people have gotten lucky and suffered head trauma injuries where parts of their brain gets damaged, but the brain just re-wires itself so some undamaged part takes over whatever task the other part used to do.

(Yes, I know a lot of magazines show "diagrams" of the brain and how each area is responsible for some specific aspect of behavior. They aren't remotely representative of how the human brain functions. Compare the diagrams between different magazines and you'll see they hardly ever match up. Due to how lax journalism standards have become, you are as likely to learn human anatomy from the New York Times as you are from the Weekly World News)

But your brain doesn't need to be specially wired to enjoy videogames. That is entirely a fetter, a bias, a pre-determined choice.

"I'm too good to play videogames," is what this psychologist actually means.

A videogame is fundamentally no different than any board game. Their basic building blocks are the same. From a strictly mechanics point of view, there isn't any reason at all for someone to like Monopoly but not like to play World of Warcraft. There are a lot of elements of Monopoly in World of Warcraft, especially when you look at the resource management in both games.

It's the "label" of it being a videogame, and all the stigma that goes with the label, that prevents them from wanting to play. It's their perceptions and nothing more.

The problem with calling videogame addiction an addiction is that psychology is full of quackery.

We're talking about a "Science" that used to remove parts of people's brains because their parents wanted their children to be quieter.

We're talking about a "Science" that used to consider homosexuality a psychological disorder and invented the vibrator as a means of treating "female hysteria" (and, btw,  adamantly believed women were incapable of having orgasms).

We're talking about a "Science" where children are routinely given drugs like Ritalin even though the methods these drugs work are not fully understood and in defiance of any potential long-term side effects the child might develop from their body adapting to the chemical changes. And for what reason? Because the kids are bored in school and don't like to sit in their chairs (because you know, sitting in chairs all day is exactly what human beings have been doing for the past few thousand years, not running around exploring the world to learn about it or avoiding certain death everywhere).

The problem with most psychology studies is this: they assume that the modern cultural norms of Western society are the way humans beings are supposed to be, and anything that doesn't conform to those ideas is "abnormal." They have a psychological disorder for every person alive on the planet and a drug intended to "treat the effects".

Almost all of it is bullshit.

Sure, I believe there are true disorders of the mind. Like seeing people and things that aren't there. But being addicted to videogames? This is modern day quackery no different then when doctors drilled holes in people's skulls.

People that choose to neglect to pay their bills because they play World of Warcraft all day aren't suffering from a disease. Nor are the people that gamble away all their money. Psychologists can mis-represent all the many hormones in our bodies any way they like, but there is no way in the nine hells of Hades that you can produce enough of that shit to get yourself chemically addicted to...yourself. It's not like shooting yourself up with crack.

These are chemicals your body naturally produces and has been producing in the bodies of your ancestors for millions upon millions of years. You cannot get addicted to it. They are part of your normal biological function.

You would have to possess a rare neurological disorder that sets your dopamine system into over-drive when you do any mildly stressful activity in order to truly replicate the kind of dopamine levels one receives from things like alcohol and heroin. And in these cases, something as simple as driving your car would set you off. Neither videogames or gambling would be the sole trigger point as these psychologists claim. The brain does not distinguish between the stress you receive from playing videogames and driving your car. It doesn't say, "Okay, he's playing WoW! Crazy dopamine time and let's flood him with endorphins too!" and later say, "Time to go down the highway at 70 miles per hour, darting in and out of traffic while rock music blasts out of the stereo! Let's shut off the drugs and save them for WoW time!".

It doesn't work like that and you don't need a doctorate to understand it.


The only problem with these people is a matter of values. They don't value paying their bills, showing up to work or forming real-life relationships with people. Whether that is a "problem" or not is a point of view. It used to be considered "unhealthy" to read books all day. Hell, there are parts of the United States where people still believe getting a suntan is healthy (sun-tans are actually your skin burning and eventually causes skin cancer).

Most addicts claim it's a problem because other people are telling them it is a problem, or they just don't want to take any responsibility for their behavior.

If someone wants to throw away all their money gambling or sit in their room playing videogames all day, I say let them. As long as they don't start doing something actually harmful to other people or themselves, it's not an issue. And when they do turn toward criminal behavior to help fund their play-time, that really is a completely separate thing we are dealing with, and it's not addiction but people that have no respect for other people. You can claim that is a psychological disorder, but I just think these people have a different value system. They follow a different code of conduct. That's not a psychological disorder; that's a difference of opinion.

Sure, you can suggest having a difference of opinion can be dangerous in some situations like with serial killers, but we're not talking about serial killers. We're talking about people that play videogames all day because they want a good story, or the social interactivity, or the wish fulfilment of being important in some small social group when they can't in reality because not everyone can be a hero IRL.

The problem with "being addicted to WoW" is that you can't pay for these damn games if you aren't working a job. The internet connection costs money. The subscription costs money. The computer and its maintenance costs money. As far as cultural norms are concerned, it takes a functioning and productive member of society to play online games. Homeless people can't do it.

So some of them don't want to spend time with their families all the time and skip holidays? So what? That's not necessarily because of the game; maybe their families just suck? My family sucks and I purposely try to avoid anyone on my mother's side of the family because half of them are criminals and the other half try to leech whatever money you have out of you while they park their motorhomes in your driveway for months / years at a time.

Some of them don't have romantic relationships outside of the game? But have you seen some of these people? Some of them have a better chance of winning people over with their amazing personalities than they do trying to get a date with their initial physical appearance. We weren't all born with a face for TV. What works for some people doesn't work for everyone. A lot of these people actually improve their dating pools by playing these games and form long lasting friendships they otherwise would have had a very difficult time making. Especially those with disabilities. 

Neurology I can get behind. I can understand that. But psychology revolves around questionnaires and misinterpretation of statistics as absolute facts when they actually only represent a small portion of cultural behavior in isolated communities. This world is huge, and what we define as culturally acceptable is constantly changing.

It used to be completely normal to have a public execution followed by a pie eating contest at the local fair.

It used to be normal to buy a prostitute for an hour of sex as part of a religious worship to Greek gods.

It used to be normal to pack up your tent and wander the plains whenever the seasons changed.

It used to be normal to eat everything you could so you could pack on pounds to help last you through the winter.

Or strap boards of wood to your child's head and feet so their bones grow to make them look like, "The Gods."

Human behavior is so amazingly diverse, complicated, and ever changing that it's impossible to say, "This is the cultural norm and anything that deviates from it is a disease of the mind."


I'll admit, this is an issue that pushes my buttons a lot because as a game designer I spend a great deal of time trying to understand people so that I can craft fun and enjoyable games for them, and these "doctors" can't be bothered to even try to understand the people they claim they want to help.....for 100$ an hour, plus the cost of a daily drug prescription.

Quite honestly, they used to say the same shit about Dungeons and Dragons being something that people get addicted to. They said it about television and comic books, too. I'm surprised people still give these psychologists any credibility whatsoever. Are we that eager to want to believe the opinions of people that went to college over common sense? You can get a doctorate in Theology from these very same colleges. That doesn't make it any less than the study of superstitious stuff people believe.

I succumbed to it.

I joined Authonomy. You can read the first eight chapters of my fifteen chapter novel there.


I've thought a great deal about it, and I've pretty much accepted the chances of getting an agent or a publisher is slim because of current situations.

That's okay, though.

When Walt Disney created Steam Boat Willie, the distributors didn't want it, claiming that the public didn't want "talking cartoons". So what did Walt do? He convinced theaters in New York city to play it, and when the public embraced the film, the distributors changed their minds. Now they wanted to deal with him.

I'm sure the manuscript has small number of typos, and some characters might need some slight characterization work, but the story itself is there. It's just that few agents will give it a chance based on premise.

So, I've uploaded, to see what this community thinks. I know the rough draft pages of the first chapter are extremely popular on Tokyopop.com (It's over 18,000 views now- that is 10,000 more than the 2nd most popular). The other chapters aren't quite as popular though (I wonder if it is partly because it's difficult to find the links with how Tokyopop is set up?) but I blame this mostly on the rough draft nature. The new version has a different flow to the story.

Anyway, as I wait for the last of the rejections to pour in, I'm building Plan B. Maybe by the third book a publisher or agent will be coming to me?

I have some experience with web promotion because of my webcomic, the pages uploaded on Tokyopop.com and with the silly videos I’ve uploaded to Youtube. I've also been watching POD technology since Lulu.com came out and how it's been working for some people. I can probably use this knowledge to build an effective marketing strategy.

To do this, I’ll identify the biggest problems I see with trying to self-publish and be successful (i.e. actually be able to live off the earnings. Not driving sport cars or owning mansions, but just being able to focus on writing 24/7 without going homeless or starving. The kind of thing book advances are supposed to help with.).

Problem #1: Traditional methods of marketing and book promotion will not work. I just do not have the money.

Solution: Non-traditional methods of marketing must be used. I will need to fall back on my background in film production and game design. I do know artists and programmers. I have some very talented film school friends. Youtube “book ads” are do-able, although I’m not convinced how useful they actually are given the differences between the two media. Viral marketing or astroturfing most likely works better, but it's getting harder to do that.

I know two individuals that each developed modest online game engines in their spare time.  Small web-games are do-able, but it will cost money for at least the server bandwidth and that money needs to be recouped somehow. I can design F2P system for an MMO, but nothing for small online games that I think would actually work. Money is a hurdle for taking advantage of this resource. 

I write game reviews and strategy guides. I can very easily put links to my novel website into these products. The marketing won’t be significant but it’s better than not having it. I used this strategy for my webcomic and I still get hits from my reviews and guides. 

There are some self-published review sites out there. I can submit the books to them, although there’s no guarantees the reviews will be effective marketing for the target audience. I guess it would still be better than not having it at all.

 

Problem #2: Lack of a publisher means lack of an in-house professional editor. No matter how talented a writer, novels are large beasts that are difficult to examine. Another pair of eyes is always needed to catch mistakes, typos and plot inconsistencies. 

Solution: Beta readers, although this won’t work forever. It absolutely won’t work if the series becomes popular as roughdraft manuscripts will get leaked before they are polished. A professional editor will be needed by or after book three. This will cost money.

  

Problem #3: I will not be getting my books into bookstores. 

Solution:  Even if I did, I doubt I would make any profit off the sales anyway, and it is simply too much work for me to drive around the country convincing every bookstore to stock 5 or 10 books. 

For a self-publisher right now, having a book in a store is more about vanity. I don’t want vanity, I want long-term success but I need to start building it now. Internet sales need to drive everything.
 

Problem #4: Young adults don’t buy items online as frequently as adults. This is because they rarely own credit /debit cards. Certainly, adults can purchase my books for themselves, but they aren’t the target audience.

Solution: This is a hard one. They clearly can get parents to pay for their online game subscriptions, so ordering a book online doesn’t seem out of the question. However, I haven’t found a lot of reliable data on young adult online spending habits. I really need more information about this.

 

Conclusion:

Any business plan is going to have to come down to merchandising. Trying to make a living off direct book sales seems unrealistic. It’s merchandising that needs to bring in the money. This is how successful webcomic creators make a living off their work.

Unfortunately, to merchandise effectively, it pretty much needs to be a series. I will likely need to write three books to really start building a fanbase large enough to market to. However, these books do not necessarily need to be novels. They can be one novel and several game books.

My primary merchandising strategy will need to be based around games. This is what I do best.

Other merchandising resources like CafePress and similar services exist that have no start up fees. At the bare minimum, t-shirts and coffee mugs cost artwork. There is a vast army of artists available through sites like DeviantArt that are hungry for work. Artwork is not a problem in itself, but the ways I can merchandise at the moment is limited because of financial restraints.

Other than game books, posters are likely the most effective merchandise I can market at the initial phase.

Posters cost artwork, but posters can use the same artwork that the game book and book cover uses (repeatable content, heh. I smile each time I realize the same principles I use to design games can be applied to other things, too).

Short term goal ) Complete the roleplaying game system product.

a)      This is more difficult endeavor than it may appear, but I can certainly write an RPG book by myself. I’ve done it before.

b)      Distribution is not difficult. The same POD and eBook distribution systems that I use for the novel can be used to release the game book (Amazon.com, RPGNow, etc).

c)      The difficulty in publishing an RPG book comes from playtesting and purchasing artwork the final product will need. Gamers expect a lot of artwork, especially for the monster manual. Quality artwork costs money, although it is not difficult to find. The problem is the quantity of artwork that is needed.  Also, part of a quality game book is that the rules are easy to understand yet cover all conceivable areas of gameplay. That requires playtesting, which takes time. Consumers have very high standards for roleplaying game products. I cannot half-ass this.

d)      Releasing expansion products will not be difficult if I build even a small fanbase for the games. Fans can create expansion products and I can put my stamp of approval on them. Even if I don’t’ make money off the sales of their expansion products, the value of my brand does increase. The more people playing my system, the more valuable of a license that brand is.

e)      It would be best to hold off releasing the novel until I can release the game book in order to maximize marketing efforts toward both products.

 

Long term goal) Conversion of roleplaying game system into online videogame product.

a)      There is very little money in roleplaying game systems by themselves. However, roleplaying game systems that have an established brand name (such as Champions and Dungeons & Dragons) are valuable commodities for online game developers wishing to create MMOs. A roleplaying game system with a series of fantasy novels that help promote the game system and help developers flesh out the virtual game world is an extremely valuable commodity.

b)      However, it is only a valuable commodity if you have a reasonably large fanbase.  A large fanbase comes down to building a quality product and being able to effectively market it.

 

So to summarize things, I’ve concluded there is very little money in self-publishing a single novel. Any self-publishing business strategy will need to be aimed toward creating quality books that market a game system that will be used to market an online MMO in the distant future. This is at least a ten year project.

Luckily, I have 80% of a game rulebook written already, and I’ve drafted it to help me design the content that will appear in the other books. The game book isn’t created after the novels are written, nor is the novels written after the game book. They are both created at the same time and therefore possess synergy most tie-ins won’t have because they are traditionally created as separate products.

However, the game book needs some playtesting, and after that it needs editing.

What I don’t have is money for large amounts of game book artwork. Even at, say, 20$ per black and white image, every character class, race and monster needs an image. This doesn’t include the necessary maps either. I can estimate that artwork for a book will cost at least $1,000 at the cheapest, unless I can convince someone to work for free (highly unlikely due to the quantity of artwork needed) or barter in exchange for something else (case by case basis; not something I'd plan around).

 I have to sigh here.

Every idea would be feasible if there was enough time and money.

Like many things, there probably is some solution to the money issue that is my greatest hurdle. I just need to approach this as if it was a game design flaw and figure out how to design around it.

Even if I do get traditionally published, it doesn't change my long term strategy. I need to build a brand either way.

I have to wonder how the Disney brothers would go about this? I always tend to refer back to thinking about Walt and Roy Disney because I truly admire what they accomplished with their company. I know they didn't begin as their own distributor when they started out, but what if they had to? How would they go about it? Hmm..

Dear Whomever,

I would appreciate if you would consider my 76,127 word fantasy novel TWILIGHT CHRONICLES.

An encounter with a strange medallion leaves sixteen year old Gestalt possessed by an ancient Demon King, making him a key player in a war between the Demon King and the Goddess of Life. Unfortunately, the Demon King wants to destroy the world and the Goddess wants to enslave everyone in it!

With the aid of a talking teddy bear, a grumpy demon dog and a unicorn princess that wants to marry him, Gestalt embarks on a journey to stop the Goddess’ sinister plot and find a way to get rid of the Demon King—yet, he must rely on the power of the Demon King in order to stand a chance against the minions of the Goddess.

Can Gestalt resist against the corrupting temptations of the Demon King and save the world, rather than destroy it? Is it even possible for a mere human to resist the power of a Demon King?

I am a twenty-six year old writer / documentary film-maker / amateur adventurer who enjoys jogging at midnight, detests the taste of coconut, tries very hard to not eat ice cream at every meal, and has a slight obsession with researching mythology.

Thank you for your time and attention, and if you would like to see a synopsis and a partial, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you.


Naturally, I customize bits and pieces of this for different agents, but this is basically the query I use for Twilight Chronicles.

My constantly rejected query, of course.

I know it's not a terrible query. I've had a full request and two partial requests because of it (or some form of it). It should prove that I know how to spell and that there is a plot to the story.

It is still rather frustrating to be rejected before the pages have been looked at.

Okay, so you didn't like my first ten pages. I can accept that much, though I wish you'd read the first chapter at least. The first ten pages can be altered very easily.

But rejecting based on what is basically a blurb, without actually looking at the real story? A blurb that I wouldn't even put on a book anyway, because readers don't place as many demands on what blurbs should and should not have as agents do.

This query represents a tiny portion of the novel's plot. You can't see the humor of the characters, or how the protagonist grows from being a fairly pessimistic kid to a more responsible young adult. You can't see the interesting way magic works in the world, or the action that occurs. You can't see the romance in the story. You don't hear about the demons that try to kill Gestalt because they don't want him to be the next demon king. I don't mention the airship battles. I don't mention the homages to other literary works and pop culture. I don't mention 90% of what is in the story.

I can't mention these things because I can't condense those elements into a couple sentences. I just can't. It took 76,127 words to tell the story for a reason.

There is about 50 agents on agentquery.com I can submit to. I think I've been rejected by the majority of them by now. There is like maybe 5 of them left.

How many has read a full? One.

And he liked the manuscript, and left me with the impression if he represented fantasy he might have took me on (the info I found about him seeking fantasy must have been wrong, so it's really my fault for submitting to him, I guess). I don't think he was letting me down easy-- he told me to submit to other agents and keep trying. He seemed confident someone would take me on.

So how many others have read a partial? Two. Both rejected, with no reasons given for why (I wish they had said why. I could probably fix it).

How many do I hope have read at least the first chapter? I supposed the handful that allow you to submit the first chapter, but I can't be sure who is reading it or if they actually did.

Now, how many agents do I know rejected based on just the query because their submission guidelines just want a query and NOTHING else?

20

20 out of 50. That's almost half of them.

This is such a frustrating business.

Someone on a writing forum I frequent asked what military base facilities look like because they wanted to write a scene where one was attacked but they have never been on a base before.

The following is the reply I wrote.

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

I was in the Army for five years. I went to a lot of bases and was inside many buildings.

A good description of any military building is that they are built out of solid stone bricks and painted grey.

The only time you really encounter the wooden billets is in like basic training or national guard bases- the stuff was built during like WW II. Some bases still have some billets like that, but they are rare to encounter these days. Watch the first part of the film Full Metal Jacket. These kind of buildings aren't common anymore and when you do encounter them, they aren't very well kept.

Regardless of which type, the kind of things you can expect are meticulously polished tile floors not unlike you would find in a hospital. There is a huge obsession with mopping and buffing floors, and not on a "once a week basis", but a once every couple hours basis. Despite the obsession with floor cleanliness, the plumbing and electrical wiring of buildings leaves a great deal to be desired.

You can expect most buildings to have a firewatch (basically two lower enlisted soldiers who sit there to answer phones and make sure crazy people don't run into the building to kill everyone) at the front doors.

Most all modern billets (the ones made of stone) are connected to a mess hall (aka cafeteria). There are also many laundry machines (and behind these machines are probably the dirtiest areas in the entire building, yet they rarely get cleaned) on the floors soldiers live on and these floors are pretty much like single bedroom apartments with huge portable closets (lockers) dividing up the room in 2 areas. There is nearly always 2 soldiers to a room. Every room has one bathroom, about 2 windows, and no kitchen. There is no carpet, only the tile floors so many soldiers get rugs.

The offices of units are usually built into the bottom levels of the buildings the enlisted soldiers live on. The office also contains the supply depo (backup of military gear, and sensitive items like weapons, ammo and night vision goggles that soldiers aren't allowed to keep in their rooms). The supply area I would best describe as a chicken-caged area in a room about the size of a shopping mall martial art dojo, and inside the caged area is a desk for the supply sgt and shelves of card board boxes where gear is kept, and a locked vault where weapons, ammo and night vision goggles are kept. It does not look like Q's room in James Bond, as most military films depict it. It looks more like the warehouse for a military surplus store, only it can be anywhere from the size of a bedroom to the size of a small dining hall depending on if the unit is infantry or not (infantry = bigger room).

This is one reason why most films that depict attacks on military bases are unrealistic since the majority of soldiers have their weapons locked up in a vault that generally speaking only 3 people in their unit can open, so the majority of soldiers on a base aren't gonna do much fighting for the first few hours until those vaults get opened up. If an attack went off in the middle of the night, chances are good nobody in the damn building can even open the vault since many upper enlisted with the keys don't live in the building (they are married and may not even live on base). Soldiers are not allowed to keep their own firearms in their rooms, and if your CO (who likely also doesn't live on base) is a particularly jackass individual you can't even have so much as a bowie knife or a paintball gun in your room.

So on that note, I wouldn't worry about possibly depicting a base as being unprepared for an attack because that would be closer to reality than you may think. When I was deployed, in our commander's infinite wisdom our weapons were kept at one end of the camp locked in a connex while we slept in tents at the other end of the base. It would take at least 2 or 3 minutes for me to run across the camp. I'm absolutely serious about this.

Billets do not tend to have air conditioning. Soldiers tend to prop fans in their windows during the summer, but in my experience it does little to change the fact you are in a brick building and bake accordingly. They do have gas heaters for the winter.

There is normally a grass field directly behind the building where soldiers have morning physical training (think of gym class from high school, only at 4 am in the morning with a lot of yelling going on since everything is done in cadence).

There are also buildings where no soldiers live and exist only for things like discharging soldiers, legal aid, receiving new soldiers and getting medical shots. These are basically like you'd expect to see in any huge office building and resemble a meps station somewhat. There are normally meps stations local and if you really wanted to you could walk inside one and look around to see what I mean.

There are buildings for storing vehicles, but most vehicles not under repair are stored inside marshaling yards. These look identical to the kind you find outside national guard armories, only much larger. Each marshaling yard belongs to a specific unit, so you don't see tractor trailers in the same yards as tanks very often since those are different jobs. Each marshaling yard is connected to a big brick building that houses the maintenance (mechanics) garage and offices. It looks pretty much like any civilian mechanic garage.

Hospitals resemble any veteran hospital you've ever seen. There might be a library of donated books, there are usually televisions everywhere in the waiting room turned to some news channel, and there definitely isn't a gift shop.

Shooting ranges are generally the same ones used during WW II or Vietnam, depending on when the base was built.

Most military bases have so much space surrounding them that the government leases property to local farmers. It's not unusual for dairy cows to be out around where infantry conduct field exercises.

I think that is about as best description as I can give.

As a writer, one of the things I want to focus on is writing stories that will appeal to boys. I have nothing against girls and I do hope my stories appeal to girls too, but it's boys that I really want my work to appeal to.

The reason? It's simple, really.
There is not enough good fiction for boys coming out today.

Do some Googling for "fiction for boys" or "Stories for boys" or any combination of "boys" and "fiction", and you'll basically come up with the Mommy List of boy's fiction. 

Hatchet.

Where the Red Fern Grows.

Maybe Catcher in the Rye.

The Hobbit.

The Chronicles of Narnia.

Harry Potter.

And a whole lot of books about learning manners, the value of friendship, walking away from bullies and always being respectful to your parents no matter how much of a jackass they are.

Occasionally they offer the toilet humor book as if all guys really want to read a book of fart jokes.

What all these stories have in common is that with the exception of The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, I didn't read these books when I was a boy. Harry Potter I likely would have read had it been published when I was still a boy rather than an adult. And The Catcher in the Rye is exceptionally boring for a young boy because it was written for people that are old enough to be drugged out and disenfranchised with society, or at least have friends that are.

What did I read when I was a boy? I leaned toward the stories that had action-y storylines in them.

I loved Redwall. I think that was one of the best stories I ever read as a child.

I loved the Indian in the Cupboard, and I liked the sequel, too.

I read many comic books, too. I loved Spider-Man, but I read so many series I couldn't even list them all here.

I also read licensed LucasArts books; The Young Indiana Jones Adventures and some of the Star Wars books. I also read some of the teen oriented Star Trek The Next Generation books (I forget what the series was called). I did read a few of the Goosebumps books. I enjoyed these books, but they never had what I really was looking for; action!

It's so simple if you think about it. It's the reason we wasted hours in front of a Nintendo, staring at crudely drawn 8 bit characters beating the hell out of each other. We like action. We want to live through an adventure where we have power.

I think that desire-- to have power-- could be a reaction to society trying to cut our balls off constantly.

My Life Story and How It Determined What I Read

When I was a kid, my parents divorced. I ended up with a stepmom that zealously protested all the videogames I played because they were so "violent" (Double Dragon! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Mega Man! OMG!). I bought a Dungeons and Dragons boxed set from a garage sale once, and my stepmother threw a fit, claiming it was satanic. My father threw it away into the trash. They didn't want me to watch PG-13 movies, and heaven forbid anything rated R. I also wasn't allowed to go any fucking where for fear I might get hurt, and I was never allowed to take up the sports I was interested in (such as wrestling or martial arts) because they didn't want me to learn "violent tendencies".

I basically couldn't be a boy.

As an adult I can forgive them for being absolutely stupid people that bought into every moral panic alarm from the religiously eccentric psychologists that campaigned against everything in the 80s, but I'll never forget that my parents were absolutely stupid people or that many parents continue to behave the same way mine did.

In comparison, when I visited my mother on the weekend I watched pretty much anything I wanted to, played anything I wanted to and went into the woods to play with neighborhood kids. When I turned 14, I decided I wanted to live with my mother and after a difficult court battle between my parents, I moved in with my mother where I was finally allowed to play football and study Tae kwon do.

What is my  point in telling this story? My point is that a young boy in America is one of the most powerless people you will ever encounter. There is a huge part of society that is constantly trying to shut us down and force us to be little mindless Lemmings that never do anything more interesting than talk about our feelings. Aside from sports, girls are allowed to express themselves in more physical ways than a guy is. In school, a girl can slap and kick the crap out of a guy, but it's never okay for a guy to make any kind of physical contact with a girl for any reason at all, even so much as a damn hug. I still remember my middle school dances, and they were lame. Teachers breaking up kids from grinding, hand holding and kissing? I admit, I lived in a small town then but I'm certain this sort of thing continues across the country because I read about the resulting lawsuits in the papers.

It's not just our behavior that they try to control. It's even the clothes we wear.
"Don't wear this shirt with this band's name on it!"
"Don't wear your pants like that!"
"Don't wear these kind of shoes!"
"Don't wear trenchcoats!"
"Don't wear this, and don't wear that!"

Boys are oppressed. Sure, no one is holding an uzi to our head, but it's still oppression when what you are allowed to read, think, feel and wear is restricted to a narrow list of choices intended to choke out your individuality and discourage bravery. Even with a fight, my principal would tell me that, "It takes two to fight." to justify suspending both boys, when in reality, no, it only takes one asshole that wants to beat the living shit out of the other.

Option A) Defend yourself and retain your individuality, self-respect and your life. But you'll be suspended from school.

Option B) Allow someone to beat the shit out of you and you'll lose self-respect, eyeballs, broken bones and anything else that is destroyed by their shoes kicking and stomping you in the face when you fall to the ground. You can come back to school when you get out of the hospital.

Yet somehow option B is the one the school faculty wants you to choose.

So where is our escape? For everyone who isn't fortunate enough to make it onto the football team, it's games, television shows, movies and books. Living through a fictional character that is powerful and courageous enough to resist the forces that oppress them, if only for a brief moment-- and maybe, just maybe, we'll learn how to be brave in our own lives through these fantasies. I truly believe one of the reasons I was able to stand up to my father and leave his household was because I wanted to be like the heroes I admired.

What Boys Really Want in Stories

What do boys really want? The Japanese get it. Look at boy's manga stories, like Dragon Ball Z, One Piece or Naruto. Young men resisting against the powers that try to hold them down. That's really the heart of the story, and that's really what makes them so popular. But they have lots of action too, and action is one of the clearest ways to feel powerful.

So what if Goku is extremely unrealistic flying through the air as he blows up planets with fireballs?

Sometimes, that's the way boys want to be.

Sometimes we want to see the world blow up, and having that safe way to see the world blow up helps us deal with all our complicated emotions before they explode inside us.

If more books were written like a comic book or a videogame and less like a soap opera, boys would read more. I guarantee you that, because I still remember exactly what it was like to be a young boy and I've never forgotten what I wanted. I wanted the action, because there was so much to gain from it. But it's the action that is sorely lacking from the majority of young adult books these days.

There are exceptions, of course. But as I walk through a bookstore where the YA tables are almost exclusively filled with books promising a story that can be summarized with the tagline " a teenage girl and those guys she is interested in dating", they are the minority.

There are lots of girl books published these days, but hardly any boy books. Where's the balance?

What goes on in the mind of publishers? What kind of boy do they think wants to read about the young girl who all the pretty boys want to date because she's just so damn cute, and if any action occurs it is given less description than the wallpaper of a bedroom (Oh sure, you can spend a paragraph writing about the damn grass and how the sun shines on it, and what it smells like, but a fight boils down to a sentence or two?). Or the focus is on using clever MacGyver tricks to defeat the villain like the the crew in Scooby Doo, which really leaves you feeling empty and wondering "Was justice really served?"

I didn't enjoy those stories when I was a kid (I did read several of them via the Babysitters Club series- please don't ask why-- and they made such a deep impact in my young mind that I can't remember a single thing from any of them), and I doubt most boys want to read them now when the action is so much better on television.

In truth, many of the greatest stories for boys are in the form of videogames. Chrono Trigger, Xenogears and Final Fantasy 6 & 7 come to my immediate mind. If there were books that were written like those games, I'm certain they would be best sellers.

There Are Exceptions, But To Be An Exception Means To Be A Minority

Now, like I said before there are exceptions. The Percy Jackson series and the Artemis Fowl series are two recent additions to the fiction genre that come to mind. If I was a little boy again, I'd read those. My point is that there is far more girl-oriented fantasy coming out than boy-oriented fantasy as if that is the only thing agents and publishers want to print and anything not starring a female lead has a difficult time getting through the ranks.

Hell, I read about situations where an author was asked by their agent to change the main character from a boy to a girl (interestingly enough, in one case this change would also make the story a lesbian romance).

In my quest for publication, I research agents that handle fantasy and I look at what stories those agents are selling. Do you know how common a story with a male protagonist is among their sales? Really? Do you really want to know?

There are entire agencies where every agent is female, and the only stories they seem to accept are stories with female protagonists and by female authors since those are the only stories they have sold.

Is this a mere coincidence? 

I probably won't get any brownie points for saying this, but I find it statistically improbable that over the past several years, an entire agency of agents that specialize in young adult fantasy is unable to find just one story they like which has a male protagonist-- or is even written by a guy.

It just seems there is at least a bias toward stories that are for girls and resistance against stories for boys.

Some of these agencies do represent a few male authors, or at least one of the books features a male protagonist. That doesn't change the overwhelming majority of fantasy they represent are stories about girls and their romance with some supernatural creature. I query them with my story, but it's more out of desperation than anything else (there does not seem to be many agents that accept unsolicited submissions for fantasy). But I know they will reject the query because it doesn't sound like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan-fic, and I'm never surprised when they reject my query without looking at any sample pages.

These agents often make the argument they can reject by query because "it's the same as a reader in a bookstore reading the blurb!".

I say no. I say it's not anything like that all because first of all, you're NOT a reader in a bookstore. You're an agent who is trying to find and sell marketable books to publishers. You're confusing yourself with a consumer when you are not a consumer.

You are a salesperson.

Does the electronic store salesperson need to be in love with every DVD Player and TV they sell to a customer? Or do they only have to find the product the customer is looking for? I lean toward the latter.

I worked at a Halloween Store for a few months during college. I can tell you right now, I did not locate costumes for customers that I personally wanted to wear. I found them the costumes they wanted, and if they didn't really know what they wanted, I suggested some things based on what they liked.

They liked, not what I liked.

Agents should be looking for books they know have a market, not books they personally want to read.

And acquisition editors are clearly guilty of this same thing since they seem to be putting little pressure on agents to find something that appeals to boys. Maybe they just don't know how to market books to boys and are under the mistaken impression boys do not read? I'll talk about this later.

Back to the query and blurb comparison: let's be honest here, our queries aren't blurbs. Agents are far too picky about queries for them to be anywhere close to a blurb. I don't think I've ever purchased a book because of a blurb. I've always read the first chapter, and if I made it to the end, then I skim through the pages to see if this author is one of those "talk about the surrounding area for 5 paragraphs before anything actually happens" authors, if the book is primarily about the immature ramblings of a teenage girl, and if they can write a decent action scene. I rarely purchase books for myself these days because few books pass my standard checks.

But I have purchased books as birthday presents for teenage girls. I can at least recognize they like that sort of thing without needing to be a teenage girl myself.

Back to blurbs: I rely on the blurb to tell me minor things: the genre of the story, who the main character is and what they are going to do in the story. I've rarely encountered a blurb that accurately described the whole story. 

As for the emphasize on romance: Sure, I wrote a story where the protagonist has a growing romance with a unicorn princess, but that isn't the focus of the story. I actually put that into the story because I thought it would be funny and different.

If You Want Buffy Back, Fine. But Let Us Have Our Heroes Too

I'm positive the urban fantasy YA "Buffy wannabe who falls for supernatural dude" books must be making some money, else the agents wouldn't be in business. However, I think more money would be made if more agents were more open-minded about different types of stories. Reading pages and pages of a teenage girl's inner most thoughts about how she is crushing on some guy might be exactly what most girl readers want, but it's the very last thing most guy readers want.

I read many of the blogs of these agents. They talk about how these stories must make them fall in love with the story, and even if something seems like it has a market, they'll pass. Is that truly a good way to do business? There are a lot of television shows, books and films out there which I find completely uninteresting--like most reality shows-- but these stories do have mass appeal and a large market. I just don't exist inside that market, and I can recognize that. Why can't agents recognize the market for a work without needing to be part of that market?

This is such a frustrating business. Whether you are published or not has less to do with the quality of what you have written and more about the reading habits of a handful of people so out of touch with the current generation that they consider book marketing to be to laying books on tables inside a book store and making announcements on sites only read by industry professionals and wannabe authors.

A More Sensible Way of Marketing Books to Boys

You know how I would market books to teenage boys?

Firstly, I'd hire comic book / manga artists to design the covers and interior illustrations. One would think this is so obvious, but again, they are out of touch.

I really want to stress this point. I'm sorry to say, but most artists drawing YA book covers are better suited to other endeavors than appealing to the minds of teenagers-- especially teenage boys.


Let me give you an example of what I mean,



Harry Potter. Most popular children's novel in the history of the world.
Terrible cover artwork.



Kingdom Hearts for the PS2. Now that's a cover that will appeal to kids.
Hell, I like it and I'm 26 years old.

Okay, so that's children stuff. What about teens?




Twilight. A highly popular vampire novel.
It has someone holding an apple on the cover.
Seriously, what the hell does apples have to do with vampires?
When I think vampires, apples are not what comes to mind.



Castlevania: Curse of Darkness for the PS2.
This is a vampire game. And guess what? It looks like it.
You can tell by the sad looking man in tight leather pants with demonic wings coming out of his back all artistic-like.

Hell, just look at any of the latest Castlevania covers for how to market vampire-themed stories.










But what do publishers use instead?



Right.
A 20 minute photoshop job.

There is no excuse for terrible cover artwork in this day and age.
Let me show you what I mean.




This is a concept cover I designed and hired an artist to draw.
I think I paid her about $50 dollars.
And look at it.
I bet you that a book with this cover would grab kid's attention.
I'm confident they would pick it up and at least look through the pages.

(I may end up using this cover if I give in to frustration and self-publish, but at least I can find solace in knowing whatever stores my book is in, kids will look at it and think, "I need to check this book out." and that they will know what the story offers by just glancing at the cover)


Moving on.

I'd have ads on game magazines and websites that used this comic book / manga artwork. If it works for webcomics, comic books, films and movies, I see no reason it won't work with books if the artwork is able to catch their eye.

I'd get my authors to make guest appearances on G4 shows, and even web shows like The Angry Videogame Nerd.

I'd try to get a game publisher to put paper inserts into game boxes that talk about the books and where they can be ordered. Maybe work out some kind of deal where the back of the book has an ad for their games, and exchange marketing that way. A deal like that costs them nothing and only costs me slips of paper. Gamers are already used to ads coming to them this way. They are always trying to sell game figurines, magazine subscriptions and t shirts with paper inserts packaged with the game manual.

I'd design a 2.0 website that encouraged readers (versus aspiring authors) to go to the site to read and play games worth playing.

I have a lot of other ideas too, namely ones that make it fun for readers to become involved with the book franchise. I'm a game designer, so creating fun things is sort of my thing. The only reason I haven't self-published and done my own marketing thing is because I realize the monetary investment. I don't have the funds to do it properly. The only reason I want a publisher is to cover the marketing, because marketing is what drives sales. It's odd to say that, but it's really what things have come down to.

I may have a lot of faith in my ability to entertain, but I'm not alone. I have a growing fanbase for my work, and I've yet to put any real effort into marketing. Someone at G4 recently asked me for permission to feature one of my videos on a new show. I have the most popular user-submitted fiction on Tokyopop.com, and the chapters I uploaded are extremely rough draft. I've had a very good agent look at my manuscript and he left me with the impression if I had written something in a genre he handled, he would have taken me on.

I admit, I'm frustrated with the publishing industry-- in both what they publish and how hard it is to break into it. The only way to improve what is published is by getting published yourself. But trying to break into this industry is like trying to stick your head through a Cheerio.


Oh, and just in case some agent or publisher reads this and wants to pass me off as just being bitter, I'm not alone in my opinion.

(I originally wrote this for a message forum on a private Ragnarok Online server I play and help GM. I was going to post it into the GM forum but decided against it because I realized I'm outnumbered by the other people in that forum who disagree with my views and it wouldn't make any difference at all. However, I think this post summarizes my views on the role of a game designer in an MMORPG very well, and I wanted to post it somewhere.)
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Someone said the following in a thread to justify their proposal for a new weapon,

"This is our server and from my time here I have had a chance to enjoy several things that would never have flown in Gravity-land."


I just wanted to say I've heard this argument applied to justify a lot of proposals lately, and while it is Ragnarok Online ran by a different development crew, that doesn't mean the spirit of the game needs to go out the window.

Running a private server is much like running a game of D&D in that the GM is able to make changes to the game and doesn't have to run it just like Wizards of the Coast. In fact, D&D's dungeon master guide often points out that the Game Master does not have to run the game precisely the way the game book tells him/her to and he/she is free to make whatever changes they feel will improve the quality of the gameplay for their players.

However, "improving the quality" is vague, so there is talk about what improving the quality of the game experience actually means. It doesn't mean changing things just for the hell of it. It means giving characters more experience from monsters because leveling up is too slow for the amount of time players have to devote to the game, or creating new magical items for players to use to overcome dungeon puzzles, or inventing new spell schools that apply only to followers of new gods for the homebrew campaign setting being played (like say, technomagecraft for a futuristic game world). There must be logical reasons behind changes and the pro's and con's need to be weighed, always asking if the change is neccessary and improves the quality of the gameplay experience.

However, I think I've seen more house rules where a logic based methodology of making changes went out the window than was followed, and often the new rules either overcomplicate things (I have seen roll charts to determine how big your sex organs are and what kind of kinks your character has) or unbalanced things (instant kill spell that always works, even on gods). I can't remember how it worked but someone didn't like how complicated the grappling rules were, so he created a simpler system that actually made grappling useless because you could never succeed on a roll unless you were like a damn dragon.

It is rarely the players that do damage to the game. It is always the game master and their desire to make the game "their own". They start tweaking this rule and that rule, adding something completely new, and bit by bit the original game has so much stuff tacked onto it without any method to guide the implementation of changes, that it becomes a huge mess that is only enjoyed by the GM running it and not by the players. I've rarely met any of these GMs who will admit their brilliant ideas are actually destructive to the game balance because they view every idea as their baby.

You've probably seen servers were characters have hundreds of levels and god items rain down from the sky. I don't think our server is in any danger of that. However, it's often not big changes that cause the game to be unfun, it's the seemingly small changes like tweaking stat growth or altering the chance to procs or changing skill damage formulas that are the primary culprit. It's the small changes that lack synergy with other content that cause the game to become unfun. These small flaws add together in the player's mind, making the gameplay worse than it was before the changes.

An example would be "I think Wizards need 10 more stat bonus to INT cause they need more magic damage, and I think Sin X is too buff so let's reduce their stats by 20!",

...which is looking at the parts of the game (certain classes and their abilities) without thinking about the game as a holistic entity, as classes are really just the fingers of the giant that is the game system.

And then there is the changing of numbers without considering the specific consequences of how changing the numbers increase or decrease how strong those fingers are.

I never worked for Gravity but I have a very good idea of what kind of work Gravity designers have put into every change. I've had to think about how many mobs a character can kill in 15 minute intervals, in very specific dungeons. To do that, I had to break everything down into steps on a time line. I had to take respawn times, the statistics of the monsters, and the ever rising and lower levels of HP and MP of the characters into account. I had to systemically know exactly what skills they would use at what time to best optimize their kill rate. Even how much time it takes to go from attacking one enemy to the next. And I've had to figure out how much experience they'd be getting while doing it all. And this had to be done by hand because the dungeon didn't actually exist, and the creation of the document is what would guide the creation of the dungeon or any alterations to the amount of damage characters deal (the same method is used to determine both changes).

It is extremely time consuming to professionally make a design document, and the first time you do it is often error ridden and needs constant editing and refining. The rough draft of any proposal consumes weeks, and the final proposal can take one or two months. During that process, when you look at half of what you originally came up with, you realize it's either unbalanced, unnecessary or unfeasible (while anything can be done given enough time, unfeasible usually means it'd take too much time to create it compared to how much value the content actually adds to the gameplay experience).

You've got a great opportunity with a private server to play around with things and learn what makes these kind of games tick. You can screw around and see what breaks without having to worry about people canceling their subscriptions in protest, because there are no subscriptions and the population is small enough you don't need thousands of dollars to run the servers.

There is a lot more you learn from the failures than learn from the successes. However, you can only really learn from mistakes occurred while trying to improve the quality of the game, because it is easy to know how to mess one up but difficult to know how to make one better.

Improving the quality of the game should not turn into a game all its own (a metagame) where you are only making changes to see how awesome you are at predicting the behavior of players. It shouldn't be a social experiment. That is treating players like they live in an ant farm, and it becomes easy to forget your goal is to run a recreational game where they can have fun without frustration (feeling challenged and feeling frustrated are not identical. Frustration means they feel hopeless and want to quit because they believe they cannot win). They did not sign up to be your lab rat. They signed up to play a game with you and not against you.

I've seen so many GMs who act like they are a god and treat the players accordingly that I have a tendency to get rather upset when I see even a hint of that kind of attitude. I've never viewed a designer as Zeus raining thunderbolts down from the sky.

I view a game designer as a customer service position. You are solving problems for your players and ensuring they are having an enjoyable experience at the recreational site. You are a host, and needing to occasionally eject someone from the recreational site because they are disturbing the other guests doesn't turn you into a warden.

I don't know if any of you have ever worked in a customer service role before, but when you are good at the job it is because you are truly taking on the concerns of every customer as if they were your own. They are all equal. The customer may contradict themselves or they may misunderstand something, but their concern is always right and shows there is some flaw in the system, and it's your job to find the real source of that flaw and fix it. Sometimes this means a new rule needs adding. Most of the time it just means the customer needs the existing rules to be communicated in a better way.

The best game designers are the ones who enjoy helping people.

The worst ones are the type who are only interested in their own glory, reputation, and using their game to prove how intelligent they are.