Is there a better way to reach more weirdos?

Today, I ran across this blog post from Raw Dog Screaming Press, which was talking about how some people are publishing a few thousand ebooks, often with knockoff titles of bestseller books to confuse readers. While there’s a number of small press publishers and indie writers who work to make quality ebooks, there’s also a lot of operations set up strictly for the purpose of making a quick buck off of impulse buyers. What this leads to is reader fatigue with book promotions of any kind. Readers can’t be sure who to trust, so they stop paying attention to announcements of book releases. These ebook spammers are only in ebooks for the money, and that makes it so much harder for the rest of us to get our message out through all the noise.

Raw Dog wrote:

Karen Peebles, who is the author of I am the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, says she has self-published around 10,000 books though CreateSpace, not all of which are in her own name. “I am a single mother who home schools her children,” says Peebles, who says she sells “thousands and thousands” of books a month. “Self-publishing is a great way for me to make income. I receive a pretty nice royalty every month.”

Reading a quote like this makes me a very sad Zoe. I could be accused of a lot of things on my writing, but trying to trick readers will never be one of them. So yeah, it offends me that someone like Karen is enjoying so much success by taking advantage of people. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want a similar kind of success. Yeah, I’m not in it for the money, but that doesn’t mean I find the idea of making a few dollars offensive.

Thing is, I can’t rightly say that I’d be selling more if only people like Karen would grow a conscience and stop selling their crap titles. Even with less authors in the pool, I’m still an acquired taste. With their focus on bizarro fiction, I suspect Raw Dog Screaming may also have the same problem. We’re not looking for just any reader. We’re looking for the distinguished connoisseur of weird shit. Continue reading →

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A YA rant…

This morning, just getting off my couch, I stumbled onto a realization about something I hate about YA writing, and by extension something I hate about real adults. It’s a fallacy that is embraced by adults who read YA, and it’s an excuse that I hear over and over as a justification from real adults for why they try to program their teens like they’re personal appliances and not people with their own personalities and needs.

In two different reviews with two entirely different premises, the reviewers explained how the teen character gets into trouble, and the parents respond with unreasonably harsh punishment methods. Yet the adult reviewers both said, “I had an easy time relating to the parents, because they were just protecting their kids from bad influences.” Urgh!

News flash, adults: those “bad influences” are called “the rest of the human race,” and eventually, your own little bad influence is going to have to go out and deal with all those other people. The longer you insist on protecting and coddling your teen, the worse an influence they will be to someone else’s kids. That’s right, someone is looking at your “little angel” as their “little shit.” And they’re right to do so, because it will be your kid going “Hey, I’ve never done this before. Let’s try it.” It will be your kid acting as the bad influence because they had their own bad influence at home. YOU.

The sad joke is, for all your smothering efforts to coddle and protect your charges, you can’t change their minds on anything. You have a slim window of opportunity to influence their decision before they’ve made their minds up on any topic, but once your teen takes it in their head that something is a good idea, you have no more chance of stopping them than your parents had of stopping you before you made your own fuck ups. Continue reading →

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Why I won’t be buying Diablo III: a rant

I kinda suspected this was coming, and have had this creeping worry ever since Starcraft II and its single episode of ret-con bullshit. But even knowing that Blizzard stopped giving a fuck about everyone besides their World of Warcraft players, I still held out hope that they’d remember what was great about the Diablo series and not fuck it up. I also hoped that instead of rehashing the rescue Deckard Cain sub-plot, we might see a new lore guide.

But no, Deckard Cain is about the only thing that came back for Diablo III. Yet this is not why I’m pissed off. No, I’m pissed because the skill trees are gone. The attributes menus are gone. The game only gives you a predefined skill set for each character class, and you adjust NOTHING about their stats. The game does it all for you.

Remember how in Diablo’s dungeons, some were all twisty and turny, like mini-labyrinths where you weren’t quite sure if you’d just doubled back or not? Or remember walking outside of Tristram and being presented with an open field? Yeah, forget that kind of freedom. Here, the game has straight corridors that lead you where you need to be. You can’t get lost because your goals on the map will blink at you, to make sure you can’t make a mistake and wander off somewhere else. So much for the fun of exploration. Continue reading →

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The mainstream isn’t for me; a ramble…

So I’m still wandering in this crisis of identity lately, not knowing what to do with myself in the absence of day long writing sprees. I’m still disillusioned and unable to recapture that creative spark that kept me working with enthusiasm, even on my worst days. But, in looking around at the creative offerings of other people, I’m reminded again of why I felt the need to write so differently.

It’s because I need diversity, and I’m not finding it in the creative efforts of most folks. Their main characters are white, and straight, and almost all narratives are set up in a heteronormative framework where anyone who isn’t straight or white is cast in shady terms for being different.

Which is not to say that all of this fiction is bad. Some of it is really good, which is why I still make an effort at reading mainstream stuff. But I can count on books like this to never push any boundaries, lest the writer risk making the mainstream squirm. So if there’s a gay character, they’re the sexless “safe gay” whom the female characters can confide in. There will be no trans characters, no bis, and nothing “kinky” in the story, unless that kink is displayed by the antagonist as a way to show off their “bizarre perversions.” Continue reading →

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Game review: Red Dead Redemption

“What, bitch is reviewing an old game?” Yeah, I know Red Dead Redemption has been out a while, but I didn’t have an Xbox to get it when it first came out. Once again, I was lured to a game by the siren call of an engrossing story, and that turned out to be a half truth. Before I get to the gushing and ranting about the game, I want to make clear that this is a two-part review, and a long review at that. First, I need to review the game itself, as in the game mechanics, the graphics, the sound, and the overall atmosphere. Then in the second part, I’ll review the story.

So, I loved the game, but I didn’t like the story. The story is all about this pissy outlaw who finally got caught and was made to pay for his crimes. Despite this, the main character manages to look down on everyone else he works with, or for, even with him being worse or no better than some of his cohorts.

But let’s set all of that aside and talk about that after I talk about the game play. First of all, the world is fantastically detailed, with every ride on horseback leading to a nature hunt of sorts. Throughout the game, I was spotting new species of animals. I saw incredible animal interactions occurring randomly, like an owl swooping down on a rattlesnake, or foxes trying to sneak into a hen house. At one point, I even decided to look for the rattlesnakes to see if they were really there, and sure enough, they are, and they look and act like real rattlesnakes when provoked.

The models are so well animated that just by the lope and profile, I could tell what animals were long before I could make out the details of their fur. That’s AMAZING recreation of a world environment, and I cannot gush enough about how much I enjoyed riding around on my horse, just watching the world around me. Day or night, the trips to any location are so engrossing that even after I learned about fast traveling using a camp, I only used it for really, really long trips. Continue reading →

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Writing update…

You’d think with this month being my birthday that I’d be in better shape. But right after the warmer weather of March, this has been a cold and grey month in Milan, and I’m having to bundle up and deal with all kinds of joint pain and mood problems.

Despite this, I did get some writing done…and then Word erased what I’d written. I don’t get it. I’ve got the system doing backups, and I make regular USB key backups. Yet, sometimes Word hiccups, and I lose a few chapters in the process.

I’ve gone back and rewritten two of those chapters, and I’ll get back to where I was, I’m sure. Once I finish Thicker Than Blood, I can get back into All Maid Up and finish another season or two before I take another break. With the series, I always post the rough draft online, and I save the chapters as individual files. So I shouldn’t lose any of those, at least.

And then, after I finish the serial…I dunno. I’m finishing these projects for a literal handful of four or five people, but after this I don’t have any other stories that I want to work on. Maybe after I finish the serial and have a month or two off, the muse will come up with something. But it’s been a while since I’ve had any new ideas, and the few old ideas I had, I’m passing on because they’re not likely to sell, even if I first gave them away for free as another serial.

Maybe some of it is just the continued wacky weather driving me nuts, but I’m not getting anything out of writing like I used to. It used to charge me up, and now it just grinds at me. When I don’t feel like writing, I game all day. But I’m running out of games, and money to buy more. And at the end of a day of gaming, I feel like I’ve wasted my time. I feel like I should have written something. And the muse is like, “Well yeah, and I’d love to help. But every idea I pitch, you shoot down on the grounds that no one wants to read this crap.” And, the thing is, I know I’m right in turning down these pitches, because no one wants to read that crap. I got history providing the burden of proof. Readers want escapism, and my muse apparently hates escapism. So, we’re at an impasse, and in the meantime, I try to finish what’s on tap.

I dunno, maybe someday I’ll come up with an idea that doesn’t suck. But it’s probably not gonna be today.

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Game review: Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus

So, after several week of contacting Sony, I found out that my purchase of Unit 13 was refunded to my wallet again. For all intents and purposes, I consider the matter with Sony fairly resolved. So I cut my losses and did the honorable thing by deleting my copy of the game.

I decided to pick up a different game, Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus, which ought to carry the subtitle, The Longest Ninja Gaiden Title Evar. No. E.V.A.R. Rather than make a full game, Team Ninja has ported a PS3 title to the Vita and added a few features for the touch pad and rear touch interface. So, how does that work out?

Well, it’s hard to say. First of all, Ninja Gaiden has always had a reputation for being difficult. But, up until a certain point, I didn’t feel the game was being too cheap. But, I was playing at the lowest level, so that should be taken into account. However, in Chapter 12, two days into having a great time with the many long fights, I was put against a helicopter who can fire heat seeking missiles sideways out of the launcher rack, and these missiles, even when blind-fired from behind a building, fly to their target. Even if said building should cause the missiles to blow up before reaching their target. This cheap ass boss tactic left me completely cold, so much so that I stopped playing, won’t finish the rest, and don’t care enough about the story to YouTube the rest. If it wasn’t for the eleven chapters of fun…nine chapters of fun I had, this would be a one star game.

I want to make clear, I made a brief attempt to play on Normal Mode, but I died so much in the first level that I just opted to go with “Hero Mode” AKA: Easy Mode for people who are trying to avoid saying easy. On this level, the fights kinda went like this. The bad guys spam all their weapons until Ryu drops to low enough health to auto block. Then Ryu turns into an actual ninja and starts killing people. This kinda of fighting style is known as “You guys are going to get tired of whipping my ass soon.” (I’m sure it translates better in hiragana.) Right after the fight is over, many of the enemies drop blue health essence, so Ryu pulls back from the edge of death, ready to get his ass kicked again while I study the patterns of my enemies. Continue reading →

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Game review: Unit 13

I got Unit 13 shortly after launch, and if you don’t know why I didn’t play it until this month, it’s because the version I got online wouldn’t play in English. After having no success dealing with Zipper Interactive or Sony about this, I decided to make do by switching my system language to Italian and playing the game in what should now be my second language. I’d say that I’m doing…moderately well.

I’m not so good with Italian, but once I got the gist of the missions, the rest of the game became easier to understand. A training camp mission introduces players to the basic combat functions, and it unlocks the first single mission. Single missions are graded by points that convert to a star level, from one two five. Points can be accrued for killing enemies in a variety of ways, including extra awards for head shots, or for shooting enemy mines to kill the terrorists. Completing single missions with a high star rating will allow you to unlock primary missions, which pit an agent against a high ranking terrorist and his freaking huge army of cloned minions.

In this case, not having a story makes the game easier to play. Objectives are written out during the audio briefing for each mission. I can read Italian better than I can speak it, so having each mission explain in the bullet points in little words helps. Of course, I would have like a larger font. Sometimes the little text here is hard to see.

The radio chatter with the command post during missions is all the same stuff said in the briefing, so once an agent is selected, the rest of the game plays like a standard military FPS. I’ve usually gone with the agent suggested by the game for each level, but during one or two mission, I substituted the default choice with a sniper, to help him level up a bit. (Though, so far as I can tell, leveling up doesn’t seem to do anything for any agent.) I can’t say I have a preferred agent yet, as all have certain strengths for their kinds of missions. Continue reading →

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A writing update? Now? HERE? Well, okay then…

This should be a good season for me, and April should be a good month. Sadly, it never is. The weather shifts hot and cold so fast, I can’t adjust and end up dropping for longer and longer fatigue comas. So then I end up awake all night because I was crashed during the day. This also messes with my diet, so of course that’s another thing making me cranky.

Despite all of this, I’ve written another 20K of Thicker Than Blood, and I’ve started doing brief promos for book 3 Roll the Bones after I finished the cover. Because sales weren’t so hot on either of the first two books, I wanted to run an Indiegogo campaign for my editor, Tara Frauendienst. Or, more truthfully, Tara will run an Indiegogo campaign and collect donations for her editing fee. In this way, I won’t see a dime of the proceeds from the campaign. It will all go to Tara, who deserves a huge bonus for all the work she’s done on the first two books. I’m proud of the work she did, and I will do everything I can to promote this project. I’ve written up the basic proposal for her, and I’m offering some other books out to help sweeten the deal. When we get the proposal on the site, I’ll bug folks here and on Twitter.

But, assuming that the project is a success, I’ll have to give out a lot of books. I’m not on Smashwords, so I can’t use their coupon system. Amazon doesn’t have a coupon system, nor do I think I have the ability to offer 100% discounts through No Boundaries Press. I probably should have thought of this sooner, but for the past few weeks, my larger concern was baking my brain for some decent incentives that would make donating feel like money well spent.

I have to know how I’m getting those ebooks out to people before we can put this project up on the Indiegogo site, but short of hosting them on my site and using the honor system, I don’t know what to do. So, comments are open, for once. Any ideas? Really, I’m open to suggestions here.

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Why social media sometimes does more harm than good…

I rambled on this topic yesterday on Twitter, but since I ramble about a lot of things, this topic passed through the stream pretty fast. Summing up, the changes to Twitter’s RT system have made cross-promotion more difficult for indies, while making it easier for cliques to either promote themselves or to shut others out who don’t share their same interests. The problem is Twitter, though, and not the actions of the users.

Giving brief anecdotal examples, when I’m online all day, I’ll see someone RT something I tweet or retweet, and many times, it’s not even people following me. They just saw my tweet in the general timeline and sent it along. It might be a one-line joke, or several tweets strung together in a ramble. Or it might be a news story from someone else that I was passing along. So if I sit here all day and watch those little user portraits changing, I can confirm that several people are RTing links, and that the people of Twitter are doing their part. The key point is, I only see it if I sit on top of my stream like an owl watching for a mouse to come popping out of its hole.

But let’s say that I’ve published a new book, and I post a link and then leave for a nice dinner with hubby to celebrate. And let’s say that five authors also RT that link in the time I was gone. When I come back, all I see is the one RT. I don’t know who to thank, or who to make a note of later so I can promote their stuff in return. The only way I could know that is by being here 100% of the time, and that’s not how Twitter is supposed to work. People check in when they want, and they ought to be able to see when other people retweeted their stuff.

I’m a die-hard Twitter junkie, and if I can miss stuff like this, you can be sure authors who only check in for an hour or two are also missing out on who retweeted what. So even if they’re committed to cross-promotion and reciprocating retweets, they can’t know who to retweet anymore. This isn’t authors behaving badly. It’s twitter cutting off their ability to keep track of their follower’s activities. And if this is a problem for authors, its even more so a problem for the casual user who only checks the most recent tweets and mentions before checking back out. Continue reading →

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