A Blessing of Monsters has been retitled. Big surprise, right? There’s no way I’d be able to keep that title. Anyway, the new title is: Epic Fantasy With No Dull Parts.

That’s unlikely to be the final title, either, I know. Titles are hard.

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Let me drop this quick quote on you from a Writer Beware post:

The most financially successful self-publishers write more than their peers, and spend less time marketing. In fact, those self-publishers who marketed the most earned the least.

Authors’ online activity: Mostly good for having fun and maybe letting people know when something new comes out once in a while.

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How to recognize when someone is drowning.

It’s not what you think.

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“I am not a small press. I am an author with 18 titles for sale. That is more titles that some big publishing houses. I have advertising currently running in Locus, Publishers Weekly, Fantasy and Sci Fi, and Revolver magazines. I have blog advertising across the entire blog-o-sphere. I am not a small press or even self published. M. R. Mathias’ books are PUBLISHED by Michael Robb Mathias Jr. and should be treated no differently that any big named publishers title. WHY? Because I do my job as a publisher too. Please quit sending my posts into the self published/small press thread. My titles are neither. I have 92k twitter followers @DahgMahn and 10 titles in their genre bestselling list. There is nothing self pubbed, or small, about books written by M. R. Mathias.
Thank you,
M.R.Mathias’ publisher, Michael Robb Mathias Jr.”

He’s not a self-published author because he does his job as a publisher. Or something.

He also doesn’t seem to understand why people think he’s an ass. But hey, his bad behavior is going to really hurt his sales right? Well, as I have been saying, not so much.

One of the books in question. That sales rank doesn’t exactly scream “self-sabotage.”

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Wonder no more! Here are the top 3:

Of course that doesn’t include random beat boxing, which is almost constant.

Welcome to my life!

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1) Dungeon Kickstarters.

2) Eleven problems music can solve.

3) George Lucas Does Something Likeable For a Change: Revenge on Rich Neighbors

4) The Nine Circles of Hell… in Lego.

5) Inventor turns Nerf gun into a working Tesla gun.

6) The creator and showrunner of COMMUNITY responds to being fired via press release.

7) The Most Successful Self-Published SF/F Authors.

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Once again, the editor mentioned in my subject header has been accused of rewriting author’s stories without their knowledge and permission, but this time he reportedly offered to let the author buy the story back at an increased price!

Hey, I guess adding rape and bestiality scenes ups the word count, right?

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“I’ll never buy one of your books!”

Seriously. Don’t say this.

It used to be that, whenever authors went online, people told them “Be careful what you say! Don’t be political! Don’t be controversial! You’ll drive away readers!” And people believed that, too, until it became clear that it just wasn’t true.

The truth is that most writers don’t care about some stranger who pops up and swears they won’t give us money. That just means they’re part of the largest set of human beings on the planet: My non-fans.

What’s more, it just makes a reader look silly. So if you are never going to read some particular author’s work again, go for it. Hey, blog about it or Twitter about it with your friends. But don’t bother telling the author, because they don’t care.

In other news, life has been determined to interfere with my revisions on A Blessing of Monsters but I’m making headway. In fact, I’d be nearly finished with them right now if I hadn’t come up with a startling new idea that really pulls things together.

Tomorrow is going to be another big working day. I’m tempted to go on an internet fast so I can wrap this sucker up.

Mirrored from Twenty Palaces. You can comment here or there.

As I mentioned last December, my son has been writing a novel. A few weeks ago he gave me the first revised draft, and I have been working on a copy edit and edit letter for him. Well, I finished it last night and it’s waiting for him to notice it.

He did a fine job, to be honest. His draft came to nearly 10K words and was pretty clean. “Pretty clean” in this case means that, while there were a lot of corrections on each page, they were the same errors over and over. I think that, by the time he reaches page 50 on these edits, he’ll have punctuation around quotation marks down pat.

The title of the story is “The Twin Swords of Zordain” and it’s a comic fantasy. The current plan is that he will do the revisions and I will publish it here, on this blog. For this, he’ll receive a penny a word.

I foresee many Pokemon cards in our future.

Anyway, last week we were walking together to the bus, and we started talking about the edit letter. He was feeling a little anxious about it, because of course he wanted it to be finished for him two or three days after he gave me his manuscript.

And he wanted his money. “See, Dad, I had the money for the booster box I just bought, but I won’t have any new money until you finish my book. So, if you could get that back to me, that would be great.”

So I gave him a hug and welcomed him to my world.

Anyway, the envelope is still sitting on the table waiting for him. We’ll see how long it takes him to notice.

In other news, the book I started at the same time through the same process is going through some pretty heavy revisions. Work work work.

Mirrored from Twenty Palaces. You can comment here or there.

As I mentioned last month, I had an idea to create a homeschool project based on Mur Lafferty’s post on sexism. Basically, I asked my son to keep watch for three instances of girl-hate just like in the opening of BURN NOTICE.

It took a few weeks (we don’t watch a lot of TV or partake of other media), but he identified them. Two came straight out of episodes of BN, basically “punch like a girl” type stuff.

But the third one makes me a little sad. There’s a game I really like called Sentinels of the Multiverse; the boy and I play it a couple of times a month. In the course of supporting and following their Kickstarter, I discovered they have fun downloads on their site, one of which is a group of story challenges.

It’s a cool idea: You give yourself points based on in-game challenges they set: Defeat Baron Blade while playing as Legacy. Defeat a villain using only two heroes. Deal 20 or more damage in a single attack. Let the enraged T-Rex defeat the villain for you. Each is worth a certain number of points, and you get to count them up.

The problem comes from this challenge: “Catfight: Win a four-hero game against Citizen Dawn while using only female heroes.” Citizen Dawn is sort of a Magneto-style villain, the leader of a large number of low-powered villains and she’s pretty tough. However, as I explained to my son, if you have to come up with a special word for it when women do it…

Anyway, it’s still a great game and I still enjoy playing it. I really like trying to work out the best ways to pick heroes whose powers complement each other, especially against a specific villain. When the second edition comes out, I plan to push it to you guys (or you can still get it from Kickstarter.) But, you know, I wish I hadn’t had to explain this thing to my son.

Lesson over. I hope it sticks.

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