The Pulp Writer Show

Hosted by Jonathan Moeller (author of the FROSTBORN and SEVENFOLD SWORD fantasy series and the SILENT ORDER scifi series), the Pulp Writer Show discusses how to write, format, publish, and sell your novel. Sometimes there are jokes.

Episode 248: Worldbuilding Challenges For Writers & Fourteen Years Of Self-Publishing 04/21/2025

Episode 247: Marketing Dangers For Writers 04/14/2025

Episode 247: Marketing Dangers For Writers In this week's episode, we take a look at marketing for writers, and discuss how it can both benefit and hinder writers. This coupon code will get you 50% off the : BARBARIAN50 The coupon code is valid through May 2, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, ! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 247 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 11th, 2025, and today we are looking at marketing challenges for writers. First, let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians, Book Five in the Dragonskull series (as excellent narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That code is BARBARIAN50. We will have the coupon code in the show notes along with links to the store. This coupon code is valid through May 2, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. I am done with the rough draft of Shield of Battle and its accompanying short story, Raven’s Hunt. I am currently editing them and making good progress on that. The book should come out either right before or right after Easter, with right after being the more likely option the way it looks right now. I'm also 14,000 words into Ghost in the Corruption, which will be my main project once Shield of Battle comes out. Audio recording is still underway for Shield of Deception and Ghost in the Assembly. So more updates on that to come. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:01:17 Question of the Week And now let's take a look at Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what is the best TV show you started watching in 2025 (if any)? No wrong answers, obviously. Justin says: Television shows? The TV in my house is used for video games and movies. It has been 18 years since I watched any TV shows. Surabhi says: Nowadays the only non-Marvel series I watch are animes like Doraemon and Shinchan XD. Perry says: I never watched a lot of TV but I do catch the odd European football or hockey game. That said, I'm enjoying The Wheel of Time. Sam says: Clarkson's Farm. He might be a love him/hate him chap, but he certainly does make for entertaining shows. It also shows just how fickle the farming industry can be and shines a much needed light on the issues they face. I would like to second Sam’s recommendation of Clarkson's Farm. It's definitely well worth watching if you have access to Amazon Prime. Bonnie says: I'm totally out of the loop. Haven't really watched any TV since I binged Avengers and Star War when home with Covid in 2021. I read during downtime. Andrew says: Tracker is okay. Matlock is good, well-written. I want to like Watson, but have given up. Dark Winds is excellent. 1923 got so dark, I quit. Landman started great, got worse when wife character entered the picture. Re-watching Lonesome Dove. Love it. David says: The Blacklist. Michael says: No particular series as I don't really watch much on TV, but a shout out to the Japanese NHK World Channel, which is essentially their international service in English available to watch live on their website, at least in my country or via their app. There's so much good content on there, really interesting documentaries, news features, Japanese shows, and of course the highlights of the Sumo tournaments. Larry says: Starting The Outpost. John says: My brother has recommended Wolf Hall. My most anticipated series is Andor. I think of what I watched this year thus far my guilty pleasure was Reacher, most emotional was 1923, most cerebral has been Severance, and funniest has been The Residence. No favorite standout yet. Juana says: Tracker. William says: Poker Face was enjoyable. For myself, I think it would be Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light about the downfall of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII. I'll have more to say about that later in my Winter/Spring 2025 Movie Roundup post in a few weeks. 00:03:29 Main Topic: Marketing Now let's move on to our main topic, writing adjacent activities: marketing. This is part of my podcast series about what I call writing adjacent activities. What do I mean by this? I'm talking about the tasks that seem like they're part of the writing process but really belong in a different category. These tasks are important, don't get me wrong, but they can also be a pitfall if you spend too much time on them or don't use that time correctly. In this series, we are focusing on a few of these tasks and how they can benefit or hinder your writing process, even though they seem like good uses of time and may in fact be beneficial. In this episode, we will talk about marketing. For the self-published author, it is an absolutely essential thing to do. Even traditionally published authors are becoming involved in their marketing or hiring marketing firms apart from their publishers to help with that work. Even important tasks can still take time away from the most important one, writing. First, how does marketing work for writers in the first place? Even as traditional advertising and print media like newspapers and periodicals has all disappeared by 2025, there are still many, many ways to advertise a book. Here are some examples: Social media and I don't mean ads, I mean posting content about your book or engaging readers on social media about your book. It's become increasingly common in this age of a video-based social media like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels for authors to post short clips about them interacting with their book or doing things with their book and so forth. And that is, I think, a distinct category from ads. Ads of course are another type of marketing such as Amazon Ads, Facebook, BookBub, etc. An email newsletter where you send out an email to your newsletter subscribers when a book comes out Having an author website Group promotions where you work together with a group of authors to promote Doing interviews with podcasts, local media, etc. (though these days podcasts have essentially superseded local media) Sending out advanced reader copies Permafree/discounts I should note that of everything on this list, I've done them all except for advanced reader copies, which I never really bothered to do because I write so fast that it seems to be kind of pointless at that point. Now I got to admit that list seems overwhelming, but you're not going to do them all simultaneously. Most authors pick a few from the list and then focus on them, and then some of them take some work upfront like setting up your author website and then it's less work to maintain it and update it as you go along than it is to set it up to begin with. For example, making many of my series starters permafree has been an extremely successful strategy for me. For an author who only has two books, that strategy would not be as effective, but if you have a series of nine books then that is a good idea. So why is it beneficial to market your books? A couple years ago (and I've told this story before, but it bears repeating), I was at a Subway waiting in line to order lunch. The person in front of me was staring at the menu in great confusion. “Does this shop sell submarine sandwiches?”, she finally asked the sandwich artist. Even with 40,000 locations worldwide and millions of dollars in advertising each year, this person was completely unaware of Subway's offerings. This moment made me realize that marketing must be constant even for big legacy brands like Subway or Coca-Cola because there is always someone out there who isn't familiar with what you have to offer them. If multi-billion dollar corporations like Coca-Cola and Subway have people who haven't heard of them, how much more [work is there for] indie authors like us? There is in my opinion, an erroneous sentiment that getting too involved in marketing as an author somehow cheapens your work, devalues your art, or means that you're not as committed to your art. That sentiment is frankly, in my opinion, self-destructive and keeping a lot of people from reaching new readers or keeping existing ones as new books come out. Marketing is necessary and needs to be ongoing to work. It's important to remember that readers love new books and want to know more about them. Your goal is to just let them know what's available and how to find your work. You're not being annoying by creating an ad or sending out a newsletter when a new book drops. Even if you have loyal readers, it's likely only a very tiny percentage of them are obsessively checking ebook stores daily for your latest publications. Social media and newsletters in particular are effective ways to let people know when the latest content is ready or can help them get excited for an upcoming release. Just as importantly, good marketing can help you find people who are interested in your genre or read authors similar to you. So marketing is a good thing and it is in fact necessary if you want to have a career as an indie author or sell books in any quantities. However, it can become a pitfall that takes time away from actually writing new books. So when can it be a pitfall? There are about five different ways it can become a hindrance to writing. #1: The most obvious pitfall is that time spent working on marketing is time not spent on writing. Although marketing is an essential part of how writers make income, it's only going to go so far compared to creating new books. This is in fact a decision I've had to make many times where if there's only so many hours in the day, and if I have an hour and I have to choose an hour spent fiddling with ads to try and optimize them to sell old books or to focus on writing new books, very often I have decided to focus on writing new books. Or if I have ads that are underperforming, I just shut them off and don't think about them until I have a free moment when the current book is done because writing the latest book is where my attention and priority should be. #2: The second pitfall is that spending too much time on social media or various forums like Reddit can also skew your perspective and give you an unreal view of the preferences of your readership. You'll likely only engage with a small percentage of your readers online. Just because they're reaching out to you or sharing their opinions online doesn't mean that their opinion matches the rest of your readership. An example of this is when Warner Brothers thought there was a massive demand for the Snyder Cut of the Justice League movie based on an online fan campaign and spent a very large amount of money for the recut of the movie, only for it to have a fairly modest audience that didn't recoup the cost. Later it came out that much of the Twitter campaign for the recut were bot accounts, people with multiple social media accounts, or people that ultimately pirated the movie instead of getting an HBO subscription to watch it when it finally became available on streaming. The Internet is a very useful tool, but it's best to take it with a grain of salt and remember that that just because one person is saying something on the Internet doesn't mean there are ten or even a hundred silent people who share their views. As with the example with the Justice League movie, large businesses have run into that trouble where they assume just because a particular audience segment is very loud on social media, therefore it must be a large segment when in fact it turns out to be just a very loud minority that ultimately isn't going to have much buying power. So that is something to keep in mind when you examine [social media], that opinions expressed online may not necessarily reflect reality. #3: There is also the temptation to get so lost in thinking of how a book will be marketed, that when you write it, you don't try to write a book that is authentic to you or your readers. Trying to piece together a book based on the latest tropes or sales trends will likely mean that by the time the book is ready, social media will have moved onto another one. Writing to market is a form of marketing that sometimes works, but often results in something that feels formulaic or doesn't match your writing style. You can't always tell if the author hated the book when they were writing it, but sometimes you can. And it's sometimes very obvious to tell if an author wrote a book not because he or she enjoyed writing it but because they thought it would sell. And I think deep down, you really have to enjoy the genre you're writing in, which is why many frustrated mystery, fantasy, and science fiction authors saw how well romance doing and so decided to try writing romance only to deep down they didn't enjoy reading romance and so they didn't write a romance book that anyone would enjoy reading. So that is the potential risk of that temptation. #4: Another pitfall is the urge to market your way out of a book that isn't connecting with readers. If a book doesn't meet reader expectations, no amount of marketing is going to significantly change that. Sometimes it's best to cut your losses with a book or series if it's not performing the way that you expect instead of throwing even more money marketing at it. I'm afraid I have a very recent example for my own life in the form of these Stealth and Spells Online series. I think the problem with that series is I fundamentally misread what the LitRPG audience wants. Stealth and Spells Online is about a virtual reality game, but what the LitRPG audience really seems to want these days is either Portal Isekai or System Apocalypse Fantasy, which Stealth and Spells Online most definitely isn't. I told the narrator that I intended to write a LitRPG, but what I ended up with was a science fiction espionage thriller with LitRPG elements. So that, as you might expect, has been very hard to market and very hard to turn a profit while marketing it. So what I decided to do was I originally planned for seven or eight books in the series, but I'm going to cut it down to three and wrap up the story in hopefully a satisfying way with book number three this summer. That is a lived experience example of a changing course when some marketing doesn't work. #5: There can be a feeling that you're missing out if you're not trying a marketing strategy that worked for someone else, so you'll end up stretching yourself thin by trying everything, stretching your marketing time across social media, newsletters, video content, posting the spaces like Goodreads, assembling a launch team, sending out advanced reader copies, going on podcasts, doing interviews with local media, and doing guest blog posts simply is not sustainable. There is a potential value in doing a short-term marketing sprint like that where you do all the things for a few days, but doing that all the time is not a good idea. As we mentioned earlier, it can take away time that should be spent writing. So really the best marketing course is to pick a few tactics that you enjoy and are comfortable using and then do those most of the time and save everything else for special occasions or if an opportunity comes up. For myself, I mostly focus on setting first in series permafree and doing various ad campaigns on Facebook, Amazon, and BookBub. I tend to stay away from TikTok and video marketing and some of the more time intensive things. I prefer things like permafree or various CPC ads where I can set it up and let it run and then check on it every few days to make sure it's working or not spending too much. So how can you balance time spent on marketing with making progress with your writing? The best way to market your old books is to publish a new one. Algorithms on online stores like Amazon and all the others reward fresh books and readers have short memories, so taking years between series risks them forgetting you. Finishing a series in a timely fashion is crucial now many readers, especially in Epic Fantasy (for a variety of reasons), will only start series that are already completed, having been burned by series that were left unfinished. Having a polished product should also precede your marketing efforts. If your cover looks bad, your money would be better spent on getting a professional looking cover instead of more Facebook ads. Taking the time to make a good cover and good ad copy for your ads is also important before you spend money on marketing. For marketing, it will save you time and money to map out your goals for it each year just like you map out a set of goals for what you'll publish each year. Having a clear set of goals will keep you from trying every new thing that you hear about just because it worked for someone else. It's also wise to be honest with yourself about your strengths when considering how you spend your marketing time. If you hate TikTok, forcing yourself to make videos there isn't going to lead to compelling content that would make people want to buy your book. The authors who have had success with TikTok had that because they were able to genuinely connect with an audience there, not just because they threw a book trailer on the platform and hoped for the best. As with many writing adjacent activities, it is best to have a set block of time to work on marketing and to plan even the time spent checking ads and responding to social media comments so it doesn't take over your writing time. Just like having a plan for each year with some larger goals is a good idea, having a daily or weekly set of goals for marketing can help keep you focused. In conclusion, the true pitfall of any writing adjacent activity is they need to be kept adjacent to the actual production of new writing. All the tasks we covered in the series are important, but writing should always be the priority if you are a writer. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/36099205

Episode 246: Professional Development For Writers 04/07/2025

Episode 246: Professional Development For Writers In this week's episode, we take a look at professional development for writers, and examine both the benefits and the pitfalls. We also take a look at my advertising results for March 2025. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the : ORCCURSE50 The coupon code is valid through April 25, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, ! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 246 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 4, 2025, and today we are looking at professional development for writers. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing and audiobook projects, Question of the Week, and then a look back at how my various ads performed for March 2025. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Curse of the Orcs, Book Four in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is ORCCURSE50. As always, you can find the coupon code and the links to my store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through April 25th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing projects. I'm very pleased to report that the rough draft of Shield of Battle is done, 102,800 words written in 22 days. That will be the second to last book in the Shield War series. If all goes well, I'm still hoping to have that out and edited and published before the end of the month. I'm now working on a currently untitled short story that newsletter subscribers will get for free in ebook form when Shield of Battle comes out. So this might be a great time to sign up for my new release newsletter. I am also 10,000 words into Ghost in the Corruption and that will be my main project after Shield of Battle is out. Recording is still underway for Shield of Deception and Ghost in the Assembly. That is Brad Wills and Hollis McCarthy narrating, respectively. So I am looking forward to having those audiobooks out for you to listen to and then Shield the Battle and Ghost in the Corruption available for you to read, but I just have to get back to work on them. 00:01:48 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what games (if any) are you currently playing? No wrong answers, including “I don't play video games”. The inspiration for this question was that the fact that Nintendo was having this big Switch 2 announcement on April 2, which is amusing to me personally on a meta level because people have been speculating wildly about a Switch successor for years. Baseless Switch 2 rumors have been a clickfarm industry for years. Probably Nintendo had to have it on April 2 so no one would think it was a really elaborate April Fool's Day joke. Justin says: Online it would be World of Warcraft Classic. Otherwise, it is Conquest of the New World. Like me, my games are old and dated. I can relate to Justin because I'm currently playing a game that was first made in 1994, but more on that later. Sam says: Currently dancing between two games, my long-term love game, Final Fantasy 14 and Dragon Age: the Veilguard. The Veilguard was a massive disappointment for me, unfortunately, but it still has its reasonably okay points, but man, the developers dropped the ball in the worst way since Cyberpunk’s disastrous release. That's interesting because I've actually encountered a couple different people who have played Dragon Age: Veilguard and they either love it or hate it. There is just no in-between. So that does seem to be the kind of game where you either love the thing or you just hate it. Todd says: Enjoying No Man's Sky, waiting for Light No Fire. Continuing to grind World of Warcraft retail. Recently played the re-release of Half Life. Today, I also installed Lands of Lore, gotta love Patrick Stewart as King Richard! I had forgotten that Patrick Stewart voiced King Richard back in the ‘90s in the Lands of Lore game. His most famous video game part (I think) is playing Emperor Uriel Septim in the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. JKM says: Monster Hunter Wilds and Star Citizen. Jesse says: Been doing an on and off run on Enshrouded. The story hasn't hugely gripped me as yet, but the mechanics are fun if you like Breath of the Wilds-esque world exploration. Michael says: I'm currently playing Star Traders: Frontiers, which is a 2D indie space trading/exploration/crew management game in a vaguely Dune-like setting. It has turn based squad combat in Darkest Dungeon style too. Originally a mobile game but mechanics are surprisingly deep. It's good fun. Randy says: Wizardry Remaster. Ironic because I didn't play the original. For myself, I am kind of alternating between three current games. I am playing the Master of Magic remake on the PC and I'm determined to finally beat a campaign at that. I am still playing Iratus: Lord of the Dead and drawing closer to the final level. And when I'm really tired and don't want to do anything else that requires a lot of brain power, I still fire up some Starfield and go really mess up the day of some procedurally generated space pirates. So watch my website and Facebook for Question of the Week if you want to have your comment read on the show as well. 00:04:39 Ad Results for March 2025 Now let's look at how my ads for my books did in March 2025, which is interesting because I changed things up a fair bit for ads in March. The reason I did this is because the economy isn't great and not likely to improve for several years. I saw someone arguing that all the policy decisions in the Covid era will have a 15 year economic hangover into which we're only five years, and I think that argument might have some merit to it. So because of that, I thought it might be prudent to move some older series into Kindle Unlimited. So I did that with the Demonsouled books and with Cloak Games, though not with Cloak Mage, which will remain wide as new books come out. I might do it with Silent Order as well, but I haven't decided. My thinking is that as people are looking to economize, subscription services will probably offer better value than direct book sales. So let's see how we did. For Facebook ads, I did Cloak Games/Cloak Mage and The Ghosts. For Games/Cloak Mage, I got $4.14 back for every $1 spent, with 10% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For The Ghosts, I got back $8.73 for every dollar spent, with 6% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. Obviously the total for The Ghosts might be inflated because of Ghosts in the Assembly, which did well. Thanks, everyone! Without Ghosts in the Assembly, The Ghosts still would've done $3.68 for every dollar spent, with 15% for the profit coming from the audiobooks. So still pretty good. For Amazon ads, I mostly focused on Half-Elven Thief. Remember that for an Amazon ad to be successful, it needs to get a sale or a complete Kindle Unlimited read for every six to eight clicks. So for Half-Elven Thief, I got back $3.41 for every $1 spent, with a sale or a complete KU read for every 0.84 clicks, which is a really good result. However, it was not all roses in Amazon ads because I gave up on advertising Stealth and Spells Online: Creation. I've realized I fundamentally misunderstood what readers in the LitRPG actually want. I'm still going to finish the series this summer with the final book. I am 75,000 words into it as of this recording, but I don't think I'm going to advertise the series anymore. For Demonsouled, I did a combined Facebook/Amazon ads campaign and for a combined campaign like that, it's easiest just to track the return. So for Demonsouled, I got back $2.53 for every dollar spent on Facebook and Amazon ads. So that was pretty close to how it did in February. I also did some BookBub ad campaigns for The Ghosts and Sevenfold Sword on Apple. For The Ghosts, we got back $9.24 for every dollar I spent and for Sevenfold Sword, I got back $6.76 back for every dollar spent. So those are some very good results. Finally, I've begun experimenting with BookBub ads for Google Play. I tried out Sevenfold Sword first and for Sevenfold Sword on Google Play with BookBub ads, we got back $3.86 for every dollar. So that is a promising beginning and I might try more experiments with BookBub ads and Google Play in May. So a good month all in all. Thanks for reading, everyone. Hopefully I'll have more new books for you soon. 00:07:46 Main Topic: Professional Development So our main topic this week will be part three of our series on writing adjacent activities, and that is professional development. As I mentioned on past episodes, I'm working on a new podcast series on what I call writing adjacent activities. What do I mean by this? I'm talking about the tasks that seem like they're a part of the writing process but really belong in a different category. These tasks are important, but they can also be a pitfall if you spend too much time on them or don't use that time correctly. In this series, we'll focus on a few of these tasks and how they can benefit or hinder your writing process, even though they seem like good uses of time and may in fact be beneficial in proper amounts. In this episode, we'll talk about professional development for writers. Those working in education, healthcare, or the corporate world will be very familiar with this concept. For those who aren't familiar with professional development, let's explain what it is. What is professional development and what is it for writers specifically? Professional development generally means gaining skills or knowledge that can help someone stay current in their field and grow in their work. In some fields like teaching or healthcare, professional development is required and must be done regularly. Some examples of typical professional development tasks include learning a new programming language, attending conferences, and reading professional journals. Writers have many of these same opportunities. Ther are a slew of conferences, workshops, webinars, videos, courses, and books available for writers to hone their craft, pick up marketing skills, and learn the ever evolving technical skills needed to self-publish and have an online presence. Some of these options, especially conferences and retreats, can be very expensive and time consuming while others are free and quick to consume, such as blog posts or podcast episodes. How can you benefit from professional development? There are five ways. #1: You can learn information and techniques that can help you improve your writing. An example would be a workshop session presenting data on when readers typically give up when starting a new book, which can help you think about how your book is structured. #2: You can learn about technology and software that can make your work more efficient or look more professional. An example of this would be tutorials on how to use formatting software to turn Word documents into a formatted ebook. #3: In-person professional development can help you network with others in your field. For example, if one of your priorities is being added to group promotion, meeting other authors at a workshop or a conference could lead to more promising leads than just emailing people. #4: You can keep up with the constant changes in the field and adjust your strategies and plans accordingly. For example, Amazon's policies for KDP change constantly, sometimes monthly, it feels like. Writing blogs and podcasts can often explain these changes in a practical way that's more efficient than trying to parse long legal documents yourself. #5: Finally, and fifthly, some people find professional development motivational or it helps them to feel more excited about their work. An example is a phenomenon called the post conference high, when someone returns from a conference with a high level of excitement and a list of plans a mile long. It's easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day tasks of work and sometimes professional development can shake things up in a positive way. So professional development can be a good thing, but there are ways it can hinder your writing process. So we'll look at four ways that professional development can get in the way of you actually sitting down and getting some writing done. #1: One of the downsides of being a writer is that professional development must be self-funded or you must pursue your own scholarships or grants for it, which are pretty limited compared to professional development in other fields. It is quite easy to spend tens of thousands of dollars on it each year, so each opportunity must be carefully considered. It's important not to spend money without a clear plan for how to turn it into action and without researching less expensive (but still effective) options that might serve your purposes. It's also important to look carefully to see if you can find lower cost options before registering for something. For example, instead of going to a weeklong residential bootcamp to learn WordPress, you could find a community education class or a LinkedIn Learning class (which many libraries provide to their patrons). Do you need a full course offered by another author or are you only interested in one portion of it and can learn that information from a YouTube channel? There is a lot of nonsense on the Internet of course, but one of the advantages of living in the modern era is that there is an abundance of good free information. You just have to find it. My podcast transcriptionist has something that she likes to call the Two Buck Chuck Principle. It is named after the store brand of wine from Trader Joe's. That's way back when it was $2 a bottle, hence the popular nickname for it. Many people refuse to stray from this cheapest available option at the store because they find it meets their alcohol related needs and refuse to buy more expensive bottles. The point of this principle is that like those Trader Joe's shoppers, my podcast transcriptionist will search for the free and low cost option for something first and then see what is missing from them that a more expensive option offers before buying the more expensive option. For example, if you're just starting out as a writer, you may be tempted to pay $3,000 or $4,000 for consulting sessions about advertising strategies because you read a convincing testimonial. Realistically, if you only have one or two books with only a handful of reviews and you're not willing to throw thousands of additional dollars on a professional style ad campaign, this would be severe overkill. Applying the Two Buck Chuck Principle to this person's ad spending, it would make more sense to learn the basics first through webinars and blog posts on the topic. Something like Brian Cohen's Five Day Amazon Ad Challenge would teach the basics of using the interface and some strategies that keep a rookie from overspending or straying from their target audience. Once a writer has a few years of sales and several books in the same series, then perhaps it might be wise to progress to something more advanced and expensive, like hiring a consultant. For most professional development, if you're paying money, you're either paying for being in a physical location or you're paying for the time someone else took to assemble and present the knowledge for you (in the case of a conference or workshop, both). For the latter, you can usually apply this Two Buck Chuck Principle by taking the time to assemble the knowledge yourself or find others who have through blogs, podcasts, and lower cost books. Someone like Joanna Penn or David Gaughran provides a wealth of sensible advice through these types of much lower cost options. #2: Professional development, like many other writing adjacent activities, can give you the illusion of progress. Knowing about something and actually doing it are very different things. You have to have a specific plan for how you will implement your professional development. The sooner you start after completing your professional development activity, the more likely you are to benefit from it. Even five minutes a day working on it helps keep the knowledge fresh and gives you the confidence to continue. #3: The number of available options for professional development can be paralyzing and it can be easy to feel like you have to do it all. The fear of missing out is a very real phenomenon, but it's necessary to combat it by being intentional with your time. Start by making your goals for the next year and then seeing what professional development you need to further those goals. For example, if creating video content is not part of your goals for the year, then it doesn't make sense to watch webinars on creating Instagram Reels or TikTok videos, even if you feel like it might be useful or you have a fear of missing out on the information. Your professional development, your goals, and your output all need to be in harmony in order to progress as a writer. I have talked before about how a certain degree of tunnel vision is necessary to write at the pace that I do. Because I want to publish frequently, I often ignore conference and workshop opportunities because travel actively hinders my main goal of getting down as many words as possible each day. #4: Professional development can take up so much time that it keeps you from the priority of writers, which is actually writing. Like the other writing adjacent activities out there, they expand to the size you'll allow. Planning your professional development goals for the year when you've created your writing goals can help you be disciplined in choosing the activities that will serve you best and fit with the time you can give them. For example, if your goal is to set up an author website in May, you can allocate a little block of time each day for that month to watching tutorials, reading instructions, checking out other author sites for inspiration, and testing out the software. You wouldn't want to attend a three week intensive writing retreat in May because that would likely derail your progress on your other goal. So finally, what do I personally do for professional development? What has helped me? I think the biggest help I had in terms of writing advice was a book called Billion Dollar Outlines by David Farland. It's well worth reading and a good look at story structure and understanding story structure that I think would be very helpful if you're struggling to finish an outline and write a book. Most of my professional development since then has been aimed towards the goal of trying to sell as many books as possible. So I took the Self-Publishing Formula course on advertising for Facebook, which was very helpful. I read a couple of different books on Facebook advertising, which was helpful. What was really helpful was a course on Photoshop I took in 2020 and 2021 that really increased my Photoshop skills and gave me the ability to do my own covers, which is very helpful because you often have to book a cover designer out well in advance. So that was very useful. And beyond that, I keep an eye on the various writing podcasts and Facebook groups. I don't really participate in the Facebook groups because that can be a huge time sink. Arguing with random people over the internet is not a productive use of time, but it is a good way to keep an eye on news within the indie author space and what people are doing and what trends you can... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/36006810

Episode 245: Research Challenges For Writers 03/31/2025

Episode 245: Research Challenges For Writers In this week's episode, we take a look at how research can both help and hinder writers, and offer tips for effective research for fiction. This coupon code will get you 25% off : DRAGONOMNI25 The coupon code is valid through April 14th, 2025. ! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 245 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 28th, 2025, and today we are looking at some of the challenges of research for writers. Before we get into that, we'll do Coupon of the Week, an update my current writing and audiobook projects, and then Question of the Week. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Dragontiarna: Omnibus One at my Payhip store, and that is DRAGONOMNI25. This coupon code will be valid through April the 14th, 2025. So if you need a new ebook to read for spring, we have got you covered. Let's have an update on my current writing projects. I'm currently 70,000 words into Shield of Battle, which I believe will put me on chapter 16 of 24, so I'm about two thirds of the way through the rough draft. I'm still hoping to have it out towards the end of April, if all goes well. I am 7,000 words into Ghost in the Corruption, which will be the sequel to Ghost in the Assembly, and hopefully that will be out sometime after Shield of Battle. In audiobook news, recording is underway for both Shield of Deception and Ghost in the Assembly. Brad Wills will be recording Shield of Deception and Hollis McCarthy will be recording Ghost in the Assembly. So I am looking forward to both those audiobooks and that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:01:25 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question, do you read comics books or graphic novels, Marvel, DC, indie manga, whatever? No wrong answers, obviously, including “I don't read comics.” Ryan says: I don't read comic books, they just don't appeal to me. I prefer world building through writing as opposed to images, and I think you don't get the same feel for characters in a comic as you do in a novel. Justin says: Once upon a time, I did read comics. It's been a long time since I knew of the mainstream comics interested me, sadly. I have read some manga in the last year, but any associated light novel wins handily. There are a few web comics to keep up with. I have bought books and merch from the Foglios for Girl Genius and Tayler for Schlock Mercenary, but even then, it's been years since my last purchase. Juana says: I love Batman. End of story. John says: I enjoy graphic novels, mainly for the art. Most recent read was The Wizard of Earthsea graphic novel, which is a true work of art published just this month. Randy says: Marvel/DC stuff, not much anymore. I can sit down and read Peanuts, Pearls Before Swine, etc. collections anytime, probably not the “comics” you meant. Jenny says: Rat Queens! So good! Gary says: I don't read comics. Bob says: Nope. Used to devour DC and Marvel as a kid. Wish I still had some of them. Probably worth big bucks now. Tom says: I used to be a Marvel Zombie. Seriously, I have 20-30 long boxes filled with comics. I had to kick the habit though. Nowadays it's mostly just a few TV show based series. Would love to read some Frostborn graphic novels though! And finally, Tracy says: I don't read comics. For myself, I agree with many of the commenters where my answer is I don't read comics. It's not out of snobbery or disdain for the art form. It just doesn't speak to me or hold my interest. Of course not all art speaks to all people at all times. I was curious about this topic because I see people discussing comic books online all the time, but apparently the industry is in bad shape financially with multiple bankruptcies and closures and so forth. So I was wondering if comics were kind of more of a vintage art form that is less popular with younger generations as the older generations start to die off. But you never know. Things always are on a wheel and come around again. 00:03:36 Main Topic of the Week: Writing Adjacent Activities: Research So now back to our main topic or to start with our main topic, research challenges for writers. As I mentioned two episodes ago, I'm working on a new podcast series about what I call writing adjacent activities. What do I mean by this? I'm talking about tasks that seem like they're part of the writing process but really belong in a different category. These tasks are important, but they can also be a pitfall if you spend too much time on them or don't use that time correctly. In this series, we will focus on a few of these tasks and how they can benefit or hinder your writing process, even though they seem like good uses of time and may be beneficial. In this episode, we'll talk about research for fiction writing. How much research is necessary and how does research help? When does it get to the point where it becomes a pitfall instead of an asset? What are some things that work well for me when researching matters for my books? First of all, why should writers even have to research in order to write a work of fiction? Why can't we just make up details since the characters and the plot are also made up? Why research? Research can help provide crucial information for the plot. For example, of a spy novel set in World War II focuses on the Canadians battling the British is inaccurate to the point of farce. Knowing which countries were Axis and which were Allies is an important piece of research that should have been done for that story in advance of writing it. There's a British TV series called The Goes Wrong Show about a group of inept actors putting on bad plays that's quite funny, and one of the episodes has them putting on a play that is widely criticized for its lazy historical research, which includes such things as Winston Churchill being a prime minister during the Vietnam War. In the show, of course, this is played for comedy as part of how bad the actors are, but you don't want to do this in real life. Research prevents factual errors that can distract readers. Some of the biggest examples of this are military terminology, the British peerage system, and information about weapons like guns. All of these things have very distinct details that avid readers in a certain genre will notice and be upset about if they're incorrect. You'll notice that successful thriller writers tend to put a lot of time into researching and lovingly describing various pieces of military hardware in their books. For a genre like historical romance, the distinction seems unimportant to a modern American, but to a debutante in Regency England, the difference between marrying a baron and a duke is immense and the titles can't be used interchangeably in a work of historical fiction. For example, the duke and baron would be addressed differently and enter a room in a different order, but more importantly, in a status conscious marriage market like the debutante season, a duke would be a highly sought after potential husband while a baron might be less of a catch, especially if the family is not so wealthy. This detail changes the characters and plots completely. To return to the firearm examples, for one of the famous errors that sometimes new writers do is a character puts a silencer on a revolver, which doesn't work because you can't silence a revolver. Much of the noise comes from the rear of the weapon when it's fired in addition to the muzzle flash and muzzle noise, so there are little details like that (both for weapons and the British peerage system) that you do need to watch out for. Research can give you ideas or add depth through details. For example, someone writing a romance novel about two rival managers in a theme park could discover that this particular theme park has an intricate underground system of tunnels that includes storage areas and staff break rooms. The writer realizes this would give good opportunities for the characters to have a conversation or confrontation in a more private place than outside of a busy ride. What are some good sources for research? Not all research is going to the library and looking at books that haven't been checked out in 10 years or so. Sometimes research for writing fiction is about checking or learning basic facts like street names, what the word is for cat in Spanish, or what a certain chain store was named in 2008. Making these details up only makes sense if the places and languages are completely fictional. Where more academic and in depth research comes in is when a high level of informational accuracy is required by genre convention, like in thrillers, historical fiction, a legal drama, or a medical thriller. One of the criticisms of the relatively recent Disney Plus show She Hulk was that although She Hulk's profession is a lawyer and she spends all of her time doing lawyer things, none of the writers had a background in law and it seemed like their legal advisor was quite hands off in their approach. They tried to write around it instead, and the results were disappointing to both fans of the source material and new viewers because as I've often said before, you don't need to be totally accurate, but it needs to feel accurate. Anyone watching the show would know that the American legal system works nothing like the way it's portrayed, not even in the abstract. One of the additional complaints about the show is that they missed the chance to showcase the character by barely showing them doing any actual work or to only show it as a farce, making She Hulk seem more frivolous and unlikable without her defining trait of being a really good lawyer. Trying to write around factual information is usually not the best solution, and it could hurt the reader's feeling of immersion or cause them just to feel annoyed. For genres that require a high level of information accuracy, try starting with the general overview books and then looking at more specific information as needed. You don't need to become an expert in every piece of medieval weaponry to write a historical or a fantasy book, but you do need to know the basics in order to have the characters use them in a convincing way. As I've said before, I often talk about how verisimilitude is the goal in writing. You need to know and share just enough to make the reader feel convinced and have the characters be able to act in a believable way in the world there inhabiting. Often writers are advised to use YouTube for research because it's free and usually easy to understand. However, YouTubers usually don't cite their sources and incorrect information often gets reshared this way. That said, it can still be useful. For example, if we go back to our example of the theme park romance novel, the writer could find YouTube footage of what the line looks like for a certain ride without having to go see it in person and determine from the footage if a child could really climb over a railing to escape their parents, for example, if that was one of the plot contrivances the writer wanted to put in the book. I would strongly recommend you don't use a LLM program like ChatGPT for research, and if you do, you should cross-reference and double check its answers for accuracy because ChatGPT essentially makes stuff up. Unlike a search engine ChatGPT essentially guesses at its answers instead of retrieving them. For example, if you ask ChatGPT who the spouse of one reality star is, it confidently lists her brother as her husband because the names are very frequently paired and they had the same last name, ChatGPT made a guess and that guess was quite wrong. It's also important to note that it's not trained on recent information. It won't, for example, be able to tell you on what date a movie is going to come out in two weeks because it may not have access to that information yet, and it might instead give you the premiere date for previous films or guess at a date. How much research is necessary and when is it a pitfall instead of an asset? Too much research can keep you from starting to actually write. It's a real temptation if you enjoy research to spend months bogged down in every possible source of information. It's also good to take a step back, look at your book’s outline, and determine what's truly needed. When you're writing, you can add a note, “research this” and note about what fact you need to look up and then keep going. It isn't a great idea to stop writing every time you need to look up a specific fact. Doing that can often lead to research spirals that take too much time and then you lose your writing momentum. Having researched too much can also drag down the plot with a lot of info dumps. We've all encountered books where the writer very clearly put in a lot of research into a very specific topic, so they were going to put all that research into the book, even if it was to the book's detriment. It's natural to want to use as much of your research as possible, but in reality, the only research that is good for the reader is what benefits the plot or adds to the feeling of verisimilitude without stopping the plot in its tracks. What are some things that have worked for me when researching subjects for my books? Because I write fantasy and science fiction, I tend not to do that much research. Usually it's if I need to look up a specific fact to increase the verisimilitude. I had to do that quite a bit with Silent Order because that’s science fiction and therefore a bit more fact-based. So I wanted to make sure I had things like the speed of light in kilometers or the amount of kilometers in a light year, for example, make sure that I had those numbers accurate. However, when I'm writing and there's something I want to look up later, I tend to literally just type “look this up later” and then keep going in the book. This actually happens quite a bit in the Cloak Games and Cloak Mage series because while that's set in a fantasy setting, that fantasy setting is a version of our own world. I do need to look things up reasonably frequently, like where this town is located or how long you would take to fly from Chicago to Boston, for example. So very often I will just type “look this up later”, and then in the editing process, I will actually look that up and make sure that I have a good information source, not ChatGPT, and then add that fact into the book as necessary. One thing I would recommend watching out for is that if the entire plot of the book hinges on a certain fact, like for example, say that you have in your book, the entire plot revolves around the fact that on average it takes about seven to eight hours to drive from Milwaukee to Detroit, it's a good idea to look it up and make sure that is actually true. If for example, you, let's talk hypothetically, if you weren't familiar with the geography of the United States and you had the plot being that it takes only three hours to drive from Milwaukee to Detroit, your book will not work because anyone remotely familiar with the American Midwest knows that if you are driving from Milwaukee to Detroit around the southern side of Lake Michigan, it takes at least seven hours and depending on traffic conditions, it can easily go much higher very quickly. So if you do have a fact around which the entire plot of your book hinges, it's a good idea to research that fact first and make sure that's accurate, so you can avoid the scenario where you write the book and then people are laughing at you because you wrote it only takes three hours to drive from Milwaukee to Detroit. So to sum up, research in fiction is very different from in the academic world, but that doesn't mean that's not important. Like so many things in life, it's all about balance. You don't want to go too far down the research rabbit hole to the detriment of finishing your book, but you do need enough information to maintain verisimilitude, but not an excess of detail that will derail the plot or keep you from finishing the book you want, just enough that it makes sense. An example for that for me would be one of the plot lines in Cloak of Spears which revolves around nuclear fusion. The book sold pretty well and people liked it, but I did get a email from an expert in nuclear fusion saying that the way I had described things is not actually how nuclear fusion works, and the fact of the matter was that thankfully for that book, it didn't matter because the actual intricacies of how nuclear fusion works is beyond my grasp and frankly beyond the grasp of most people. So I'd included enough verisimilitude to that the book worked for most people, but it was not enough to fool an actual expert in nuclear physics. So that brings me to a Abraham Lincoln quote I remember where he says, “you can fool some of the people some of the time and the rest of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.” And that is true with research and fiction. You'll want to do just enough to get verisimilitude so that you can fool most of the people, but you can't always expect to fool everybody. If you are writing about something which has subject matter experts, you may find that you'll have the subject matter experts writing to you and pointing things out. But what's important is that you do it well enough to fool most of the general audience, if not the subject matter experts. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/35909730

Episode 244: Inspirations For GHOST IN THE ASSEMBLY 03/24/2025

Episode 244: Inspirations For GHOST IN THE ASSEMBLY In this week's episode, I take a look at some of the historical influences & inspirations that went into my new book GHOST IN THE ASSEMBLY. This coupon code will get you 25% off : SILENT25 The coupon code is valid through April 7th, 2025. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 244 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 21st, 2025, and today we are looking at some of the historical influences that went into Ghost in the Assembly. Before we get into that, we will do Coupon of the Week and an update my current writing and audiobook projects. And then Question of the Week, which we did have time for this week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Silent Order: Omnibus One at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SILENT25. I'll have the links and the coupon code in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through April 7, 2025, so if you need a new book to read for these spring months, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing projects. I am 44,000 words into Shield of Battle, the fifth book in the Shield War series. I'm hoping to have that out towards the end of April, if all goes well. A reminder that the Shield War series will be six books, so Shield the Battle will be the second to last one. I have also started on the sequel to Ghost in the Assembly, and I am 4,000 words into that, give or take. I had originally planned to call this book Ghost in the Assassins, but I thought that sounded too similar to Ghost in the Assembly. So the fifth book in the Ghost Armor series will be called Ghost in the Corruption. A reminder that Ghost Armor will be six books long and Ghost in the Corruption will be the fifth of six books, so the second to last book in that series as well. In audio news, recording has started for Shield of Deception and Ghost in the Assembly. Shield of Deception will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills and Hollis McCarthy will excellently narrate Ghost in the Assembly. I expect both of them will probably be out sometime towards the end of May if all goes well, given how long it usually takes to record an audiobook. In Stealth and Spells Online news, I am 68,000 words into the third and final book in this trilogy. Once Ghost Armor and Shield War are complete, then I will hopefully release the final book in the Stealth and Spells Online because I've been working on that as a tertiary project for quite a long time now. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:02:17 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is of course designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what is your favorite style of fantasy setting (like a more high fantasy, one like Middle Earth or the Forgotten Realms, urban fantasy like the Dresden Files or Kate Daniels or more steampunk like Everon and so on)? No wrong answers, obviously. And as you can imagine this inspired quite a few responses. Perry says: Hyperborea! Lankhmar is up there as well. Setting where magic is rare, and usually dangerous or evil. The first edition of the Forgotten Realms (the grey box from the ‘80s) was great. Enough detail to let you use the setting, lots of room to make it your own. Then all the Forgotten Realms novels started to appear with the release of the second edition in the ‘90s and everybody in the world suddenly had powerful magic at their fingertips. Elminster, the Seven Sisters, Drizz’t, and others took the appeal right out of the setting for me. Joachim says: I like the Spelljammer Campaign setting best. A lot of great modules. It seemed it was not overly successful. A shame. I had a campaign running in this setting with some people who liked it. In addition to the Spelljammer modules, you can easily transfer any normal module centered on a small town onto an asteroid. Evan says: A huge Sanderson Cosmere fan here, especially Stormlight Archive. I like the magical progression tied in to character development, with a bit of mystery of how things work or an unknown that takes time to unwind or tease out. Justin says: My problem here is separating the settings from the authors. Given that near impossibility, I would cast my vote for high fantasy with a bit of techno/steampunk mixed in. Example – Andre Norton’s Witch World. Bonnie says: I seem to gravitate towards the swords and sorcery genre like Frostborn, but I also enjoyed the urban fantasy/Nadia and the other genres. I have to thank you for introducing me to all of these. Michael says: Okay, Jonathan, that's the second time I've noticed you indicating a preference for sword and sorcery saga where a barbarian hero travels between corrupt city states and now I really, really want you to write this. And yeah, that's definitely my favorite type of setting too. Simone says: Definitely urban fantasy. Even in your books, which offer an unusual variety of fantasy settings, I find I enjoy the Cloak series the best. Roger says: Being an old fogey, I prefer high fantasy always. Can't seem to get my head around urban fantasy. It jars with me. John says: While I enjoy all settings, I'm also a traditionalist and want a non-industrial, non punk setting without some sprawling empire, more like the aftermath of empire with multiple successor states. Jonathan T. says: Personally, Star Wars has always been fantasy in a science fiction setting, and that remains a personal favorite. Other than that, I suppose I'm for high fantasy, although I'm not opposed to high fantasy slapstick either such as the Wuntvor trilogy. At some point I must try again to surmount the obstacle known as The Wheel of Time. Catriona says: Epic and high fantasy are my favorite, enjoy Dark Fantasy, too. Urban fantasy is a hard pass for me. Juana says: Sword and sorcery, parfait gentle knights, medieval societies, historical fiction like Doyle's The White Company and Sir Nigel. Wherever Nadia lives. Justin says: Sword and sorcery, magical creatures/beasts. Definitely needs different environments like cities and wild mountains and forests. Not sure what genre that is, but that's what I like. MG says: High fantasy. Brandy says: I like ones with a clearly defined map. Sometimes it seems like the world wasn't thought about clearly, so it makes it hard to imagine and I find those stories the least successful. The ones I go back to repeatedly, the ones I read over and over or pimp out to other authors or groups are those I feel like they have a great structure and map, even if it's added on to later. So high, low, or middle, I just really just want the author to tell a great story and make it a great one. Speaking as an author myself, I really dislike drawing maps, but fantasy readers really like maps, so that's why I have been doing more and more maps lately. Pauline says: Urban fantasy is definitely my favorite. Jeremy says: High Fantasy is my favorite. However, my favorite fantasy author is Terry Brooks. His series is Low Fantasy based on Earth. I found out years after reading the series LOL. For myself, I think my favorite would be a pre-industrial setting with a lot of city-states and various dangerous magic, like you have a barbarian hero wandering from city-state to city-state with monster infested ruins and wilderness between them. When he gets to the city states, he can fight corrupt sorcerers, arrogant nobles, and thieves guilds, and then move on to a new adventure in the next book. So basically a sword and sorcery style setting. So that's it for Question of the Week. 00:06:30 Main Topic of the Week: Ghost in the Assembly: Inspirations and Sources (Note: Spoilers for Ghost in the Assembly!) This week and now onto our main topic, Ghost in the Assembly inspirations and sources that went into the book. I should mention that this episode contains mild spoilers for Ghost in the Assembly. So if you have not finished reading Ghost in the Assembly yet, stop listening and go finish reading Ghost in the Assembly. So I thought it would be interesting to talk about some of the ideas and influences that went into Ghost in the Assembly. I have to admit, it took me a few years of thinking between Ghost Night and Ghost Armor to figure out how to write more Caina stories because Caina had become a political figure by the end of Ghost Night and political figures typically do bad things for personal advancement and then lie about it. That is in some ways the essential definition of a political figure. This of course, is hard for a writer to use as a sympathetic protagonist. Of course, I eventually realized the way around this, the success of a political figure cannot be judged by their personal morality or even their political morality, but by the results of their decisions. Did they do the most for the greatest good of their people? Therefore, I just needed to write a political figure who did somewhat sketchy things (like subverting the Kyracian houses via buying up their debt) in the name of the greater good of the people (defending them from the impending attack of the Red Krakens). I frequently said that if you want to write a good fantasy novel, you should try to stick to about 15 to 25% of the actual harshness of the past. I don't think you want to go full Grimdark, but you don't want your fantasy world to be indistinguishable from a typical 21st century parliamentary democracy because I think that kind of defeats the purpose of fantasy where you want to visit a world that is eldritch and strange and at least somewhat different than our own. So for Ghost in the Assembly, I went to about 15 to 25% of the experience of ancient Greek democracy. For the entire time that New Kyre and the Kyracians have been in the series (Ghost in the Storm was way the heck back in 2012 and the Kyracians were mentioned before that), they've always been very loosely based on the democracy of ancient Athens. In fact, the very name Assembly of New Kyre comes from ancient Athens, where the gathering of voting citizens was called the ecclesia, which translates into English as assembly. Interestingly, this is also the origins of the word ecclesiastical in terms of a church since one of the first words for the church was ecclesia in the sense of the assembly of the believers in Christ. Athens wasn't the first ancient Greek democracy, but it was one of the most successful. It was also one of the democracies that self-destructed in the most spectacularly dramatic fashion possible. The Athenians decided to convert the Delian League from an alliance of city-states into their own private empire. A demagogue convinced them to waste enormous resources attacking Syracuse and Sicily, which ended disastrously. The Athenians were eventually defeated by the more militaristic Spartans. People have debated for centuries whether or not this means democracy is inferior to the Spartans’ harsher system, but that overlooks the key fact that a few decades later, Athens, Sparta, and all the rest of the Greek city-states were conquered by the Macedonians anyway. I suppose the actual historical lesson is that a city-state, regardless of its government, is no match for a larger centralized state with better leaders and better military organization. In fact, historically city-states tend to eventually get subsumed into larger political entities. If they last for a long time, it tends to be because of geography (like in ancient Greece) or because of weak and or remote central authority like the medieval Italian city-states, which were ostensibly under the authority of the Holy Roman emperor but in practice tended to do whatever they wanted. Places like modern Vatican City tend to be special exceptions. Caina's criticism of the assembly of New Kyre in the book is that it is not as egalitarian as it pretends and is easily swayed by both demagogues and bribes. The Athenian assembly of citizens had both these problems, but far worse. You needed to have a substantial level of property to be allowed to vote, and there were numerous examples of the votes swinging on bribes or last minute orations. The Athenian assembly was easily swayed into making bad decisions, such as supporting the disastrous attack on Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War that was the start of Athens’ downfall. In Ghost in the Assembly, Lady Eirenea Tritos is one of the nine chief magistrates of the city, but in an Athenian democracy, women were not allowed to vote and most definitely were not allowed to hold political office. The ancient Greeks in general did not have a very high opinion of women. One Greek orator said that men had wives to produce legitimate heirs, concubines to attend to the body's “daily needs”, and prostitutes for pleasure. Because of things like that, I thought a setting with a hundred percent of the harshness of ancient Greece would be off-putting to the reader. So as I said, I shot for between 15 and 25% of the actual harshness. New Kyre is definitely richer, better governed, and less elitist and chauvinistic than the ancient Greeks. That said, New Kyre isn't an egalitarian place. Nobles have vastly more rights and money than commoners, and both nobles and commoners own slaves and only the poorest commoners own no slaves themselves. Indeed, slavery is so common in New Kyre that the other nobles see Kylon's decision that House Kardamnos will have no slaves as a sign of malevolent and sinister foreign influence. Kalliope’s fear that she could be dispossessed and Kylon simply take her children is very real. If Kylon wanted, he probably could keep Kalliope from seeing Nikarion and Zoe ever again, though that would inevitably put him in conflict with Lysikas Agramemnos and Calliope is charismatic enough to powerful allies to her side. If Kylon did in fact refuse to allow Kalliope to see their children, he might well set off a civil war. But Kylon, who lost both his parents when he was young, doesn't want to deprive his children of a loving mother. Of course, the ancient Greeks never had to fight the Red Krakens and orcs. The Red Krakens, the Caphtori, are kind of written like snake-worshipping Vikings. In fact, Caphtori are inspired by the “Sea Peoples”, pirates that seem to have contributed to the collapse of Bronzes Age civilization. Historians argue endlessly about the impact of the Sea Peoples or whether they existed at all, but if they did exist, they might well have been proto-Ancient Greeks, perhaps Mycenaean in origin. Since having one ancient Greek-esque group fighting another would've been confusing in the book, I made the Caphtori/Red Kraken more like Vikings, which I suppose is a bit of historical anachronism, but Ghost Armor is a constructed world with elves, orcs, and sorcerers, so it's not like I'm writing period accurate historical fiction here. So these are some of the influences that went into Ghost in the Assembly. I don't have any grand concluding point here. Those were just some of the ideas I thought about and went into the story. Though I should mention that for a while I was a graduate student in medieval history and I hated the experience so much I left and went into IT instead. That said ,decades later it has proven a useful source of plot ideas for fantasy novels, so it worked out in the end. One final note, a reader suggested that Kalliope Agramemnos and Mardun Scorneus might hook up in later books. And I have to admit, I laughed at that suggestion. Kalliope would react with dismay at the thought of marrying anyone other than an extremely high ranking Kyracian noble, and at the prospect of marrying Kalliope, Mardun would think about it, fake his death, and flee back to the Empire, preferring to take his chances with the Magisterium rather than Kalliope. Anyway, thank you to everyone who has read Ghost in the Assembly. I am very grateful that so many people have enjoyed the book. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes of the show on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/35809375

Episode 243: Creating Series Bibles 03/17/2025

Episode 243: Creating Series Bibles In this week's episode, we take a look at the pros and cons of creating a series bible, and how it can potentially help when writing a book. This week's coupon code will get you GHOSTNIGHT25 The coupon code is valid through March 29th, 2025. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 243 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 14th, 2025, and today we are looking at writing series bibles. Before we get into that, let us start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks of the Ghost Night Series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is GHOSTNIGHT25. The coupon code and the links will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through March 29th, 2025. So if you need a new book to read for spring, we've got you covered. Now let's have some updates on my current writing and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report that Ghost in the Assembly, the fourth book in the Ghost Armor series, is now out. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. It has been selling well and been received well, so thank you all for that. Now that Ghost in the Assembly is out, my next project is Shield of Battle, the fifth book in The Shield War series, and I am 17,000 words into that and hope to make good progress on it next week. In audiobook news, Cloak Mage: Omnibus Three (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is now available, as is Half-Elven Thief: Omnibus One (which is narrated by Leanne Woodward). You can get both of them for the easy price of one credit. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. Usually at this point, we do Question of the Week, but I ran out of time to do Question of the Week this week. 00:01:32: Main Topic of the Week: Writing Adjacent Activities, Part I: Series Bibles So now we'll move right on to our main topic. Today, I'm starting a new series about what I call writing adjacent activities. What do I mean by this? I'm talking about tasks that seem like they're part of the writing process, but in reality, belong in a different category. Now these tasks are important, but they can also be a pitfall if you spend too much time on them, don't use them correctly, or you don't make the best use of your time with them. In this series, we'll focus on a few of these tasks and how they can be beneficial or a hindrance to your writing process, even though they seem like a good use of time and may be advantageous in different scenarios. In this episode, we’ll talk about creating series bibles, an activity that some writers love and others loathe or avoid altogether. We'll explain what series bibles are, how they can help you as a writer, and how to write them effectively without losing time on your actual writing. So to begin with, what is a series bible? This term originates in the world of television production (where they're often called show bibles), where having a document that kept track of characters, details mentioned on the show, and important information was crucial when many people were working on the same show. A series bible was essential for continuity and preventing writers from having to rewatch old episodes to find out, for the example of say, the names of Frasier's mother or Nile's first wife. The goal of a series bible for books is to be a reference to refer back to important facts and details about your story. They can prevent errors, reusing names, and save time by not having to check things in earlier books while writing. It is also more important to have a good series bible when a group of people are working together than an individual writer. Examples of things collected in series bibles are character details, locations, plot developments, and information about fictional worlds in the books. They can be incredibly detailed or very simple, depending on what information is tracked within them. Some books obviously will need series bible-ing less than others. For example, a contemporary romance will have less information to keep track of than a science fiction series in a fictional galaxy with its own technology and species because with the contemporary romance, you just need to keep track of the characters and the settings and the settings can be easily reused from the real world, which is quite a bit harder when you're writing a science fiction series with exotic aliens and strange technology. So why should you make a series bible? Continuity is quite challenging, especially as a series progresses or a writer creates interconnected series like my Frostborn, Sevenfold Sword, Dragontiarna, Dragonskull, and Shield War series. Do I remember whether an orc named in one chapter of the third Frostborn book survives so I can use him dozens and books in three series later? I don't off the top of my head. It helps to keep details consistent across books. If, for example, Ridmark carries his staff in his right hand, he shouldn't be switching to his left unless he has a plot reason for doing that. For certain kinds of writers, it can help with planning a series in conjunction with an outline. If you have your characters and location names planned in advance, it's easier than trying to think of them on the spot when writing. Additionally, if you're co-writing a series with one or more other people, this ensures that all the information stays consistent. For most cases, I think writing with another person or a group of people is probably the best reason to create a series bible. A series bible can also, if you're writing on your own, help you find patterns in your own writing. For example, if you're consistently not describing characters’ appearances until the fifth or sixth chapter in each book, that may be something you want to change in future books. Readers tend to like physical descriptions fairly early in the book because it helps them imagine the characters and they might be annoyed if a physical detail that appears late in the book doesn't match what they actually imagined. So how do you go about making a series bible (if you've decided that you need one)? It doesn't require special software, just a basic word processor file. You can just type the entire thing up in Word or even in Notepad if you want. Some people may use some programs like Scrivener or Hiveword, but for most people, that could be overkill. Some writers make series binders in a physical binder because they prefer to flip back and forth that way instead of using the word processor’s search feature. For myself, I would most definitely prefer using the word processor search feature. Decide before you start the project what categories would be most helpful to you. Remember the more categories you have in the series bible, the longer it will take to create and the more time it will take to maintain, especially as a series goes on. Some potential categories for your series bible include characters, locations, languages, magic systems, and a basic plot summary for each book in the series. From there, it's as simple as filling in categories with the information. Some people make different documents or pages for each category, while others like all the information to be in one place for easier searching. Some people create the series bibles while outlining. Some people create them while writing. Others do it after the book is complete. It'll be up to you to decide which one works best for your workflow, but the latter is often seen as the easiest because then you don't have to make changes as you edit the books. So what are the potential pitfalls or time wasting aspects of a series bible? Much like many other writing adjacent tasks, creating a detailed series bible can turn into something that feels like writing progress, but is actually hindering you from meeting your word count goals or actually getting on with finishing the story. It seems like the people who create series bibles before starting their draft tend to be the writers who have the most trouble actually finishing their drafts. If you're creating a series bible before creating your first draft, you may be spending a lot of time creating superfluous details that won't actually be needed for the book or creating such a volume of detail that writing the draft begins to feel daunting. You may not need one and might be creating a series bible unnecessarily. For one thing, they're intended for series, so creating one for a standalone book is most likely overkill. If it's a short series, without collaborators, in a contemporary realistic fiction setting, it may not be necessary or maybe only a brief character sheet would be sufficient. Just because some writers say that series bibles are helpful doesn't mean that's a requirement or that your book won't be as good without one. It's also a good idea to set a goal in advance of what categories you want and how much detail you need. That will help you figure out if you're spending more time on it than is necessary. Creating templates may also help, especially ones that allow for short responses instead of entire sentences or paragraphs. A consistent format may make the information easier to find and/or skim later. This would be something like a Dungeons and Dragons character sheet where you would just have a template where you could list the most pertinent details about the character as an aid to memory, like their age, ethnicity, eye color, hair color, height, brief physical descriptions, and things like that, short details that'd be a useful aid to spurring memory. And finally, as with so many things in life, it's important to be honest with yourself. Will you actually take the time to maintain this series bible across multiple books, or is the file going to sit forever unfinished in a corner of your hard drive? For many people, series bibles are often like the writing equivalent of a craft project that has started with good intentions but is ultimately left unfinished in a box somewhere. Since we cited TV series bibles as an example for this, I thought we would quote an example from the series bible for the TV show Lost. Note that the main purpose of this series bible was to get the TV show on air and to get advertisers for it, so the language here is a combination of characters’ facts and marketing speak to try and get people interested in the characters. Most series bibles for books use more of a factual approach, but it's still of interest as an example. Here’s the entry for the character of Boone: “Boone grew up in a world of wealth and privilege provided by a vast commercial empire run by his mother, "The Martha Stewart of the Wedding Industry." Fatherless from a very young age, Boone quickly assumed the role of family patriarch. In one fell swoop, he became the heir apparent and self-appointed guardian of his sister. But Boone has a dark secret - one even Shannon doesn't know. Diagnosed with schizophrenia during adolescence, he has since managed his illness with ongoing therapy and a cocktail of anti-psychotic medications - medications he stopped taking roughly a month before the crash. Ongoing survival crises find Boone at odds with his slipping sanity, leading to an inevitable breaking point which will not only put him at odds with the others, but make him an outright danger.” So you can probably tell from this paragraph that this was written partly to help the writers and partly to help pitch the show. But you can see how this kind of thing could be useful for remembering key details about a character when you're writing the third book in your series and need to look back and refresh your memory about the character’s details. You wouldn't need something so detailed or dramatically written, but just enough to capture the key character details so you could refresh your memory. So what do I do myself in terms of series bibles? Well, the answer is mostly not that much (chuckles). My method of continuity checking is that Windows Explorer, the file manager on Windows, has a feature that allows you to search inside documents. So if I need to refresh my memory about something in a series, I go to the series folder that holds all those Word documents, search for the term I'm looking for, and read through the results until I find it. It’s not very efficient. I have started making series bibles recently and by saying that I have started, I mean I have hired someone to do it for me. Why am I making them now? Like I said, making it easier to keep track of continuity because Ghosts in the Assembly was my 160th book, which is a lot to keep track of, and that's a lot of Control + F searching in Windows Explorer to find things. So I was thinking it was time to get better organized and have this information to be more accessible and easy to read. What do I include in mine? I'm only doing them for books I have finished and only about eight or nine pages for each book. The categories are timeline events, locations, creatures, magic and spells, and a brief list of key events. Will I ever publish these series bibles? Probably not, unless I can find a good source of artwork because when people think of published series bibles, they think of these big hardcover books you get Barnes and Noble called The World of Wheel of Time or The World of Fire and Ice and then there's a lot of beautiful illustrations in them. I might try something simpler, where it’s just the text. So I suppose the real answer is we will have to see. So that is my thoughts on series bibles. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you listen to all the backups episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/35699365

Episode 242: Five Writing Lessons From Barnes & Nobles' Turnaround 03/10/2025

Episode 242: Five Writing Lessons From Barnes & Nobles' Turnaround In this week's episode, we take a look at five lessons for writers from Barnes & Nobles' turnaround. I also discuss indie author advertising results from February 2025. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the : BLADE50 The coupon code is valid through March 28, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, ! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 242 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 7, 2025, and today we are looking at writing lessons from the dramatic turnaround of Barnes and Noble. We'll also look at my ad results for February 2025 and we'll also have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing projects and Question of the Week. First off, let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves, Book Number Three in the Dragon Skull Series (as excellent narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is BLADE50. We'll have the coupon code and the link in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through March 28th, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. The rough draft of Ghosts in the Assembly is done and I am 16% into the second phase of editing. If all goes well, I am planning to publish the book on March 14th, assuming there are no unanticipated interruptions, which is always risky to rely upon, but things are going well with it and I'm optimistic we can do that. I'm also 13,000 words into Shield of Battle and after Ghost in the Assembly is published, that will be my main project. In audiobook news, Orc-Hoard, the fourth book in the Half-Elven Thief series (as narrated by Leanne Woodward), is now available and you can get it at all the usual audiobook stores. Half-Elven Thief: Omnibus One (which is a combination of Half-Elven Thief, Wizard-Thief, and Half-Orc Paladin, the first three books in the series) is also now available in audio (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward), and you can give that omnibus edition at Audible, Amazon, and Apple. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:01:49 Question of the Week Question the Week is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, when you have an unpleasant chore that must be done, do you prefer to split it up into smaller parts over a number of days or just to get it all over with at once? No wrong answers, obviously. The inspiration for this question is the fact that it's tax prep time here in the United States, and I have spent a lot of time this week working on that. Justin says: I prefer to get it over with all at once if possible. Extending your example, I have somehow become the tax preparer for other family members, so there are a few days where that is what I do. I also set aside a few hours every month for vehicle maintenance: check fluids, tire pressure, top off everything, look at belts (replace if worn). It's amazing how more reliable cars are when you look after them a bit. That is very true. Good car maintenance advice from Justin. Catriona says: Procrastinate. I love to procrastinate, then the mad dash to the very last second of the deadline. Retired now, so no longer need to be efficiently organized. Jenny says: Oh, split if I can, procrastinate if I can't. Dishes? Do some or put some away, do more later or let my laundry pile up until I have no pants. And Juana says: Let's get this over with. (Transcriptionist’s note: this was posted in the form of a GIF of Liz Lemon from 30 Rock) For myself, I suppose the answer is that I essentially get to do both since I'm technically a small business owner as a publisher, I do some tax stuff every month and then usually have a couple of days in March that are all tax prep. Other than that, it really depends on the size of the task in question. My preferred way would be to split a task up into smaller pieces and do 'em until they're done. But if you have something like snow shoveling, for example, you really do have to kind of bite the bullet and get it over with all at once. 00:03:21 February 2025 Ad Results Now let's see how my ads did in February 2025. February is generally a better month for advertising than November, December, and January. The reason for that is that Valentine's Day and the Super Bowl drives some consumer spending, though not nearly as much as the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays, and so therefore the cost per click is often lower and you can usually have good results with ads. First up, Facebook ads. In February, I advertised both Cloak Games/Cloak Mage and all the Ghosts on Facebook. For Cloak Games/Cloak Mage, I got back $2.98 (USD) for every dollar spent, with 6.8% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For the Ghosts, I got back $3.24 cents for every dollar spent, with 15.4% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. I also ran a few different Amazon ad campaigns. Remember that for an Amazon ad campaign to work, it needs to generate a sale or a complete Kindle Unlimited page readthrough for every six to eight clicks. For Half-Elven Thief, I got back $2.30 for every dollar spent, with a sale for every 0.68 clicks. In other words, we had more total sales than we had clicks. For Stealth and Spells Online: Creation, I lost $2.52 for every dollar spent, with a sale for every 8.1 clicks. For The Linux Command Line Beginner's Guide, I got back $1.86 for every dollar spent, with a sale for every one click and 32% of the month's profit coming from the audiobook. I think this shows how badly I misjudged the LitRPG market with Stealth and Spells Online. The ads for Half-Elven Thief actually get more search terms for LitRPG related searches than Stealth and Spells actually does. I ran BookBub ads for Sevenfold Sword and The Ghosts on Apple, and here's how they did. For The Ghosts, I got back $5.26 for every dollar spent. For Sevenfold Sword, I got back $4.35 for every $1 spent. Finally, for the Demonsouled series, which is currently in KU, I did a combined Facebook and Amazon campaign, and when you run multi-platform ad campaigns like that, the most valuable metric tends to be honestly money back for dollar spent. So for Demonsouled, I got back $2.58 for every dollar spent. So good results, all in all, and I didn't actually lose that much money on Stealth and Spells. So thanks for reading everyone and hopefully I'll have more good books for you to read soon. 00:05:47 Main Topic: Lessons for Writers from Barnes and Noble’s Turnaround So now onto our main topic this week, lessons for Writers from Barnes and Noble's Turnaround because it is fair to say Barnes and Noble has had a turnaround recently. For a while at the end of the 2010s and the early 2020s, people would have their self-publishing predictions for the year, and one of them was almost always that Barnes and Noble is going to finally close, which was a reversal of fortune for it because if you remember in the ‘90s and the 2000s and even the early part of the 2010s, Barnes and Noble was the juggernaut in the publishing industry. They had forced out of business a lot of smaller indie bookstores and what Barnes and Noble wanted in the publishing industry, Barnes and Noble got. Then just as Barnes and Noble disrupted all the smaller book chains and independent bookstores, Amazon came along and disrupted Barnes and Noble. And so for a while it looked like Barnes and Noble was going to go out of business, but Barnes and Noble's revenue actually grew 1.6% in fiscal year 2024, and their foot traffic is up significantly. They're planning 60 new stores after a wave of closures in previous years. A few years ago, as I said, they seemed headed for extinction, yet a combination of unpredictable factors and good decisions helped turned around Barnes and Noble. What are some of those factors leading into it? I suspect one of them is that many people are forced to be on screens all day and can find this frustrating or stressful, especially when schooling and work were virtual. I've talked to some teachers over the past couple of years and they would tell me stories of, for example, younger children who will burst into tears at the site of a Chromebook just because the experience of remote learning via Chromebooks was so stressful and miserable in 2020 and 2021 (and places that held onto that policy for probably longer than they should have). So much socialization nowadays is conducted online too through TikToks and chats and text messages and so forth. Because of this, many now feel like print books are a break from being constantly online. Various social media people such as TikTokers and Instagrammers make Barnes and Noble trips and hauls, showing off giant stacks of the latest books, filling up feeds. Home book displays are also a trend online, as collectors show off carefully style collections of books. Owning physical books and browsing the shelves at Barnes and Noble has become cool again. Truly history is a wheel that keeps on turning. So what lessons can you take from this turnaround as a writer (even if your physical books aren't stocked by Barnes and Noble and you don't sell that many eBooks through them)? How they approach their relationship with their readers and their customers still has a few lessons to provide writers. #1: Focus on your primary mission and also double down on what actually works. Barnes and Noble started to devote much of their store space to a confusing, aimless mixture of toys and gifts mixed in with the books. The stores began to look cluttered and much of this merchandise did not actually sell to their customers. They also wasted a large sum of money trying to compete with Amazon, Apple, and tech companies with their Nook tablets and kept Nook ereaders as a strong store presence long after it was clear they had lost the battle for the ebook market. There was even an extremely ill-advised foray into Barnes and Noble restaurants. Customers were quick to reject $13 avocado toast and $7 oatmeal from a mall chain bookstore. One, when the company focused on returning to selling print books and making the store a better place to browse, sales improved. Many stores moved the gifts and games away from the book areas and back into the dedicated sections, which cleaned up the layout and made it easier for customers wanting non-book items to find what they were looking for. Since most of the customers were actually there to buy books, that made it easier to buy books. How to apply this as a writer? Your job as a writer is to create and sell books. Getting lost in side quests, like overly frequent social media posting, creating courses or webinars, and selling merchandises are only taking time away from what your readers actually want the most from you: more books. So double down on writing more books, just as Barnes Noble doubled down on selling more books. #2: Target the right people. Barnes Noble's display spaces and tables were taken up by books that publishers paid to place there. This led to their prime store space being taken up by books that were often poor sellers or not a good fit for their local customers. It was better to turn down the short-term money but have more targeted displays, including putting similar books in “thematic nooks.” By focusing much of their marketing on the BookTok/Bookstagram groups of heavy readers, they were able to find ways to appeal to a younger and growing customer base. Since this group loves books both as content and décor, showcasing exclusive or “aesthetic” special editions was a way to bring these customers back into the store and keep them from buying cheaper copies online. These readers were also willing to spend a few dollars extra for the experience and to ensure that the books they were buying weren't damaged, which is often a complaint when you buy books online, that they sometimes aren't packaged properly and arrive damaged in transit. Store space was also devoted to manga readers, another group that reads voraciously and enjoys the experience of reading the print version and later collecting the print version as opposed to the electronic one. Now, how do you apply this as a writer? Appeal to your core audience. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, find your core “thematic nook” (as Barnes Noble puts it), meaning similar authors and titles. There are resources like Publisher Rocket that can help you do this. Focus your advertising on finding these readers instead of the general population. For myself, I've experienced this lesson personally in the last four years because in the last four years I've tried three different new things: The Cormac Rogan Mysteries, the Stealth and Spells LitRPG book, and the Rivah Half-Elven series. And of the three, Rivah was by far the most successful because it was another form of epic fantasy, which I think is what my core audience really wants from me and not contemporary mysteries or LitRPG. So this is the lesson I can attest to through personal experience. #3: Give customers a good experience. Barnes and Noble spent money on repainting, installing brighter lighting, and changing store layouts. The CEO James Daunt stated it was their aim to make the store feels like “places of discovery.” Chairs were even added back to some stores to allow readers to browse in comfort. Now, how can you apply this to being a writer? First, you want to make sure that your readers have the easiest possible experience, the most pleasant possible experience in buying books from you. One way to do this is keep your website updated and check for broken links, which is easier said than done. I know, especially for me since Ghost in the Assembly will be my 160th novel, and that is a lot of links to check and my website had gotten complex enough that I finally hired someone to overhaul it and make sure all the links were working. But I think we've had good results since traffic is up and I get much fewer complaints now about dead links. It's often a good idea to refresh ad images to keep potential readers’ attention. For Facebook ads, I think based on my experience, the best you can hope for is two to three weeks of good results with a single image. For BookBub, maybe three or four days. So it's good to have a supply of ad images you can rotate out often. Finally, incentivize readers to read your newsletter by keeping it brief and providing some kind of special reward, like a discount or bonus content, which is why I give away a lot of short stories in my email newsletter. #4: Be willing to change it up or try new things. Barnes and Noble's leadership also ceded more control of the selection and displays to the individual stores, allowing them to better customize the stores towards the taste of the community. For most of Barnes and Noble's history, if you walked into the store and you saw the displays in the front and on the end caps where books were highlighted. Publishers paid through the nose for the privilege of having their books stocked that way. And while there is still some of that, obviously the new regime at Barnes and Noble has changed things around so that more local stores have greater control of what to put where, which means they can put out more books that their local community is more likely to buy. If you walk into a Barnes and Noble in Illinois, for example, you're much more likely to see a large display of Illinois local history than you would have otherwise. For another example, I once visited a Barnes and Noble in a large suburb that had a very large teenage population that had the Young Adult section wedged in a single cramped back corner by the bathrooms. It was extremely unpleasant to browse, especially if one person was already in the aisle. And of course, if there was a line for the bathroom, which is often the case, teenagers typically want more physical space from strangers. This decision to put the Young Adult section in a cramped corner in the back of the store was clearly made by someone who did not a lot of experience talking to or working with teenagers. After Daunt’s changes, Young Adult was moved to the center of the store. The aisles in the new section were extra wide to accommodate groups of teens browsing together, and it was now full of colorful displays, many of which were handmade by staff members. In the times I visited this Barnes and Noble since, it is always the busiest part of the store. Another surprise area of growth was the refreshing of the stationery and planner section. The previous selection was stale and heavily reliant on older licensed properties like Disney. It wasn't reflective of the trends in the category being popularized (once again by Instagram and TikTok), such as dot grid notebooks with high quality paper and guided journals (like the influencer favorite, the Five Minute Journal, which offers a few brief prompts to reflect on the day). Barnes and Noble bought the stationery brand Paper Source, which brought in fresh designs to its cards and stationery. They also changed their selection to adapt to two of the biggest trends in stationery, bullet journaling and customizable Japanese planners. Stationery enthusiasts were willing to pay a premium to be able to see stationery items in person before buying, since that allows you to avoid counterfeit versions that are sold online and ensure that the product was in pristine condition and would not arrive through the mail damaged. Since the margins on stationery are way higher than they are in books, this was a wise decision. Now how can we apply this lesson as a writer? One of the advantages of being self-published is the ability to change quickly based on data and reader feedback. For example, the Stealth and Spells Online series was originally called the Sevenfold Sword Online. Once I realized that readers were confusing this series with the main Sevenfold Sword series, I changed the title to help prevent confusion and emphasized that the series was in fact a separate one. I also changed the cover to reflect trends in the LitRPG series, such as characters’ faces usually not being shown and a more diffused, animation-influenced color palette. If one of your books isn't connecting with readers, it may be worth your time to update your blurb and cover trends based on your categories. Another similar experience I had was with the Silent Order covers where I went through five different iterations with that cover before I settled on the version I have now, which definitely sells the best. #5: Do what Amazon can't. The new CEO of Barnes and Noble focused on what Amazon couldn't do: provide a physical environment for browsing. Browsing aisles of books with a cup of coffee (from the Barnes and Noble Café) in hand is a relaxing experience for many people. Amazon famously tried to set up its own chain of physical bookstores, and it didn't work out because the experience for customers tended to be industrial and unpleasant in a way that made an airport newsstand seem downright cozy in comparison. The bookstores were stocked with just a very limited selection of popular books on plain shelves with electronic price tags. Nothing about it inspired browsing or finding new books, the most important way physical bookstores inspire readers to buy additional books. This was an example of Amazon doing the opposite of our first lesson. Rather than doubling down on what was working, they tried something that was away from their core competency of low prices and fast delivery, which was a physical bookstore. In fact, one of these Amazon... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/35577330

Episode 241: Escaping The Prestige Trap For Writers, Part II - Traditional Publishing & The New York Times Bestseller List 03/03/2025

Episode 241: Escaping The Prestige Trap For Writers, Part II - Traditional Publishing & The New York Times Bestseller List In this week’s episode, we continue our discuss about how seeking prestige can be dangerous for writers, specifically in the form of traditional publishing and the New York Times Bestseller list. This coupon code will get you 50% off the : DRAGONSHIELD50 The coupon code is valid through March 21, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, ! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 241 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February 28th, 2025. Today we are continuing our discussion of how to escape the trap of prestige for writers, specifically traditional publishing and The New York Times Bestseller List. Before we get to our main topic, we will do Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing and audiobook projects, and then Question of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, Book Two in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is DRAGONSHIELD50. As always, I'll include the coupon code and the link to the store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through March 21st, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook as we start to head into the spring months, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report I am done with the rough draft of Ghost in the Assembly. I came in at 106,000 words, so it'll definitely be over a hundred thousand words when it's done. I'm about 20% of the way through the first round of edits, so I am confident in saying that if all goes well and nothing unexpected happens, I am on track to have it out in March. I am also 10,000 words into Shield of Battle, which will be the fifth of six books in the Shield War series and I'm hoping to have that out in April, if all goes well. In audiobook news, recording for both Cloak of Dragonfire and Orc-Hoard is done. I'm just waiting for them to get through the processing on the various stores so they're available. There is also an audiobook edition of Half Elven Thief Omnibus One and Cloak Mage Omnibus Three that hopefully should be coming in March. More news with that to come. 00:01:55 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is your favorite subgenre of fantasy, high fantasy, epic fantasy, sword and sorcery, historical fantasy, urban fantasy, LitRPG, cultivation, or something else? No wrong answers, obviously. Cindy says: Epic fantasy or those with a good history for that world. The Ghost Series are fantastic at this. Thanks, Cindy. Justin says: I enjoy all those sub-genres, if they are done well. In times past I would've said comic fantasy, but that is because Terry Pratchett at his best was just that good. Mary says: High fantasy. Surabhi says: I'd honestly read anything fantasy that's written well and has characters I'm attached to, given that it's not too gritty. Bonus points if there's humor! Also, I love your books so much and they're the perfect blend of fantasy, adventure, and characters. Your books were what really got me into Sword and Sorcery. Thanks, Surabhi. Matthew says: See, that's difficult. I love my sabers, both light and metal. I would say urban fantasy crosses the boundary the most. If it's a captivating story, it will be read. John F says: I can't choose one- Lord of the Rings or LWW, The Inheritance Cycle, The Dresden Files, Caina, Ridmark, or Nadia. I think what draws me is great characters who grow. The setting/genre is just the device. That's why I keep coming back to your books. You create great characters. Thanks, John F. John K says: I think I'm partial to historical fantasy. I enjoy all genres, but when I think of my favorites, they tend to be derivations of historical settings. Think Guy Gavriel Kay or Miles Cameron. That said, I was weaned on Robert E. Howard, Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner, Jack Vance, so a strong sword and sorcery second place. Juana says: High fantasy. Belgariad, Tolkien, dragons, et cetera. Jonathan says: Sword and sorcery in space! Prehistoric sword and sorcery, sword and sorcery always. Quint: says Sword and sorcery! Michael says: Sword and sorcery. For myself, I think I would agree with our last couple of commenters and it would be sword and sorcery. My ideal fantasy novel has a barbarian hero wandering from corrupt city state to corrupt city state messing up the business of some evil wizards. I'm also very fond of what's called generic fantasy (if a fighter, a dwarf, an elf, and a wizard are going into a dungeon and fighting some orcs, I'm happy). 00:04:18 Main Topic of the Week: Escaping the Prestige Trap, Part 2 Now onto our main topic for the week, Escaping the Prestige Trap, Part 2, and we'll focus on traditional publishing and the New York Times Bestseller List this week. As we talked about last week, much of the idea of success, especially in the United States, is based on hitting certain milestones in a specific order. In the writing world, these measures of success have until fairly recently been getting an MFA, finding an agent, getting traditionally published, and hitting The New York Times Bestseller List. Last week we talked about the risks of an MFA and an agent. This week, we are going to talk about two more of those writing markers of prestige, getting traditionally published and having a book land on The New York Times Bestseller List. Why are they no longer as important? What should you devote your energy and focus to instead? So let's start with looking at getting traditionally published. Most writers have dreamed of seeing their book for sale and traditional publishing for a long time has been the only route to this path. Until about 15 years ago, traditional publishing was the way that a majority of authors made their living. Now that big name authors like Hugh Howie, Andy Weir, and Colleen Hoover have had success starting as self-published authors (or in the case of authors Sarah J. Maas and Ali Hazelwood, fan fiction authors) and then are getting traditional publishing deals made for them for their self-published works. It's proof that self-publishing is no longer a sign that the author isn't good enough to be published traditionally. Previous to the rise of the Kindle, that was a common belief that if you were self-published, it was because you were not good enough to get traditionally published. That was sort of this pernicious belief that traditional publishing was a meritocracy, when in fact it tended to be based on who you knew. But that was all 15 years ago and now we are well into the age of self-publishing. Why do authors still want to be traditionally published when in my frank opinion, self-publishing is the better path? Well, I think there are three main reasons for that. One of the main reasons is that the authors say they want to be traditionally published is to have someone else handle the marketing and the advertising. They don't realize how meager marketing budgets and staffing support are, especially for unknown authors. Many traditionally published authors are handling large portions of their own marketing and hiring publicists out of their own pocket because publishers are spending much less on marketing. The new reality is that traditional publishers aren't going to do much for you as a debut author unless you are already a public figure. Even traditionally published authors are not exempt from having to do their own marketing now. James Patterson set up an entire company himself to handle his marketing. Though, to be fair to James Patterson, his background was in advertising before he came into publishing, so he wasn't exactly a neophyte in the field, but you see more and more traditionally published authors who you think would be successful just discontented with the system and starting to dabble in self-publishing or looking at alternative publishers like Aethon Books and different arrangements of publishing because the traditional system is just so bad for writers. The second main reason authors want to be traditionally published is that they want to avoid the financial burden of publishing. This is an outdated way of thinking. The barrier to publishing these days is not so much financial as it is knowledge. In fact, I published a book entirely using free open source software in 2017 just to prove that it could be done. It was Silent Order: Eclipse Hand, the fourth book in my science fiction series. I wrote it on Ubuntu using Libre Office and I edited it in Libre Office and I did the formatting on Ubuntu and I did the cover in the GIMP, which is a free and open source image editing program. This was all using free software and I didn't have to pay for the program. Obviously I had to pay for the computer I was using and the Internet connection, but in the modern era, having an internet connection is in many ways almost a requirement, so that's the cost you would be paying anyway. The idea that you must spend tens of thousands of dollars in formatting, editing, cover, and marketing comes from scammy self-publishing services. Self-publishing, much like traditional publishing, has more than its fair share of scams or from people who aren't willing to take the time to learn these skills and just want to cut someone a check to solve the problem. There are many low cost and effective ways to learn these skills and resources designed specifically for authors. People like Joanna Penn have free videos online explaining how to do this, and as I've said, a lot of the software you can use to self-publish is either free or low cost, and you can get some very good programs like Atticus or Vellum or Jutoh for formatting eBooks for very low cost. The third reason that writers want to be traditionally published is that many believe they will get paid more this way, which is, unless you are in the top 1% of traditionally published authors, very wrong. Every so often, there's a study bemoaning the fact that most publishers will only sell about $600 worth of any individual book, and that is true of a large percentage of traditionally published books. Traditional publishers typically pay a lump sum called advance, and then royalties based on sales. An average advance is about the same as two or three months of salary from an office job and so not a reflection of the amount of time it typically takes most authors to finish a book. Most books do not earn out their advance, which means the advance is likely to be the only money the author receives for the book. Even well-known traditionally published authors are not earning enough to support themselves as full-time authors. So as you can see, all three of these reasons are putting a lot of faith in traditional publishers, faith that seems increasingly unnecessary or downright misplaced. I think it is very healthy to get rid of the idea that good writing comes from traditional publishers and that the prestige of being traditionally published is the only way you'll be accepted as a writer or be able to earn a living as a full-time writer. I strongly recommend that people stop thinking that marketing is beneath you as an author or too difficult to learn. Whether you are indie or tradpub, you are producing a product that you want to sell, thus you are a businessperson. The idea that only indie authors have to sell their work is outdated. The sooner you accept this reality, the more options you will have. Self-publishing and indie publishing are admittedly more work. However, the benefits are significant. Here are five benefits of self-publishing versus traditional publishing. The first advantage of self-publishing is you have complete creative control. You decide what the content of your book will be; you decide what the cover will be. If you don't want to make the covers yourself or you don't want to learn how to do that, you can very affordably hire someone to do it for you and they will make the cover exactly to your specifications. You also have more freedom to experiment with cross-genre books. As I've mentioned before, publishers really aren't a fan of cross genre books until they make a ton of money, like the new romantasy trend. Traditional publishing is very trend driven and cautious. Back in the 2000s before I gave up on traditional publishing and discovered self-publishing, I would submit to agents a lot. Agents all had these guidelines for fantasy saying that they didn't want to see stories with elves and orcs and dwarves and other traditional fantasy creatures because they thought that was passe. Well, when I started self-publishing, I thought I'm going to write a traditional fantasy series with elves and orcs and dwarves and other traditional fantasy creatures just because I can and Frostborn has been my bestselling series of all time in the time I've been self-publishing, so you can see the advantages of having creative control. The second advantage is you can control the marketing. Tradpub authors often sign a contract that they'll get their social media and website content approved by the publisher before posting. They may even be given boilerplate or pre-written things to post. In self-publishing, you have real time data to help you make decisions and adjust ads and overall strategy on the fly to maximize revenue. For example, if one of your books is selling strangely well on Google Play, it's time to adjust BookBub ads to focus on that platform instead of Amazon. You can also easily change your cover, your blurb, and so forth after release. I've changed covers of some of my books many times trying to optimize them for increased sales and that is nearly impossible to do with traditional publishing. And in fact, Brandon Sanderson gave a recent interview where he talked about how the original cover of his Mistborn book was so unrelated to the content of the book that it almost sunk the book and hence his career. You also have the ability to run ad campaigns as you see fit, not just an initial launch like tradpub does. For example, in February 2025, I've been heavily advertising my Demonsouled series even though I finished writing that series back in 2013, but I've been able to increase sales and derive a significant profit from those ads. A third big advantage is that you get a far greater share of the profits. Most of the stores, if you price an ebook between $2.99 (prices are USD) and $9.99, you will get 70% of the sale price, which means if you sell an ebook for $4.99, you're probably going to get about $3.50 per sale (depending on currency fluctuations and so forth). That is vastly more than you would get from any publishing contract. You also don't have to worry about the publisher trying to cheat you out of royalties. We talked about an agency stealing money last episode. Every platform you publish your book on, whether Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Smashwords and Apple will give you a monthly spreadsheet of your sales and then you can look at it for yourself, see exactly how many books you sold and exactly how much money you're going to get. I have only very rarely seen traditional publishing royalty statements that are as clear and have as much data in them as a spreadsheet from Google Play or Amazon. A fourth advantage is you don't have to worry about publishers abandoning you mid-series. In traditional publishing, there is what's called the Publishing Death Spiral where let's say an author is contracted to write a series of five books. The author writes the first book and it sells well. Then the author publishes the second book and it doesn't sell quite as well, but the publisher is annoyed enough by the decrease in sales that they drop the writer entirely and don't finish the series. This happens quite a bit in the traditional publishing world, and you don't have to worry about that in indie publishing because you can just publish as often as you want. If you're not happy with the sales of the first few books in the series, you can change the covers, try ad campaigns, and other strategies. Finally, you can publish as often as you want and when you want. In traditional publishing, there is often a rule of thumb that an author should only publish one book a year under their name. Considering that last year I published 10 books under my name, that seems somewhat ridiculous, but that's a function of the fact that traditional publishing has only so much capacity and the pieces of the machine involved there are slow and not very responsive. Whereas with self-publishing, you have much more freedom and everything involved with it is much more responsive. There's no artificial deadlines, so you can take as long as you want to prepare it and if the book is ready, you don't have to wait a year to put it out because it would mess up the publisher's schedule. So what to do instead of chasing traditional publishing? Learn about self-publishing, especially about scams and bad deals related to it. Publish your own works by a platform such as KDP, Barnes and Noble Press, Kobo Writing Life, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and possibly your own Payhip and/or Shopify store. Conquer your fear of marketing and advertising. Even traditionally published authors are shouldering more of this work and paying out of their own pocket to hire someone to do it, and if you are paying your own marketing costs, you might as well self-publish and keep a greater share of the profits. The second half of our main topic, another potential risk of prestige, is getting on The New York Times Bestseller List. I should note that I suppose someone could accuse me of sour grapes here saying, oh, Jonathan Moeller, you've never been on The New York Times Bestseller List. You must just be bitter about it. That is not true. I do not want to be on The New York Times Bestseller List. What I would like to be is a number one Amazon bestseller. Admittedly though, that's unlikely, but a number one Amazon bestseller would make a lot more money than a number one New York Times Bestseller List, though because of the way it works, if you are a number one Amazon bestseller, you might be a New York Times Bestseller, but you might not. Let's get into that now. Many writers have the dream of seeing their name on the New York Times Bestseller List. One self-help guru wrote about “manifesting” this milestone for herself by writing out the words “My book is number one on The New York Times Bestseller List” every day until it happened. Such is the mystique of this milestone that many authors crave it as a necessity. However, this list has seen challenges to its prestige in recent years. The one thing that shocks most people when they dig into the topic is that the list is not an objective list based on the raw number of books sold. The list is “editorial content” and The New York Times can exclude, include, or rank the books on the list however they choose. What it does not capture is perennial sellers or classics. For example, the Bible and the Quran are obviously some of the bestselling books of all time, but you won't see editions of the Bible or the Quran on the New York Times Bestseller List. Textbooks and classroom materials, I guarantee there are some textbooks that are standards in their field that would be on the bestseller list every year, but they're not because The New York Times doesn't track them. Ebooks available only from a single vendor such as Kindle Unlimited books, ebook sales from not reporting vendors such as Shopify or Payhip. Reference Works including test... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/35483660

Episode 240: Escaping The Prestige Trap For Writers, Part I - MFA Degrees & Literary Agents 02/24/2025

Episode 240: Escaping The Prestige Trap For Writers, Part I - MFA Degrees & Literary Agents In this week's behavior, we discuss how seeking prestige can be dangerous for writers, specifically in the form of MFA degrees and literary agents. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the : SQUIRE50 The coupon code is valid through March 14, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, ! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 240 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February the 20th, 2025, and today we are discussing how to escape the trap of prestige that can sometimes catch writers, specifically in the form of MFA degrees and literary agents. Before we get into greater detail with that, we will start with Coupon of the Week and then an update on my current writing projects and then also a Question of the Week before we get to the main topic. But first, let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, Book One of the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. And that coupon code is SQUIRE50. The coupon code is valid through March 14th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook as we head into spring, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on current writing projects. I am 94,000 words into Ghost in the Assembly. I had two 10,000 word days this week, which really moved the needle forward. We'll talk about those a little bit more later. I'm on Chapter 18 of 21, I believe, and if all goes well, I should hopefully finish the rough draft before the end of the month because I would like to get editing on that as soon as possible. For my next book, that will be Shield of Battle and I am 8,000 words into that and I'm hoping that'll come out in April. Ghost in the Assembly will be in March, if all goes well. In audiobook news, recording for Cloak of Dragonfire (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is finished and also recording on Orc-Hoard, the fourth book of the Half-Elven Thief series (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward). Both of those should be coming out sometime in March, if all goes well. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:01:45 Question of the Week And now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question, if you have off work or school because of a snow day or extreme cold or other intense weather, what do you do with the day? No wrong answers. We had a number of responses to this. Surabhi says: Ha, jokes on you! It never snows where I live. We do sometimes bunk school on rainy days, though. What I mostly do then is catching up on homework or listening to the rain. Justin says: We're having a snow day here; schools and many businesses are closed. So Lord of the Rings Extended Edition movie marathon! Popcorn popped, hot cocoa and cold soda prepped. I have to admit, that seems like a very good idea. Mary says: Read, write, watch the snow fall, try to exercise inside. Michael says: That hasn't happened to me since about 1985, but I seem to recall it was on my birthday and boy was I happy to miss school on my birthday! I think I read fantasy books, drank tea, and played video games. Juana says: curl up with a book and hot chocolate or tea. John says: Haven't had a snow day since I was a child, but I did either play in the snow or read a book (at that age, Andre Norton, Lester del Rey, or Ben Bova). I'm relocating later this year back to colder climes, but since I now only work remotely and have for the past six years, sadly my days change very little. Jenny says: Usually shovel snow, make a pot of warm food, more snow removal, watch movies or shows. Bob says: I'm retired now, so probably not much different than any other day, but when I was working, I'd probably be out shoveling snow so I can get to work whenever the roads were clear. Of course, that necessitated more shoveling when the snowplow dumped its load across the end of my driveway and that's why I moved south, where I rarely see snow. Yes, if you live in a colder climes and you have a driveway, you know that you'll shovel the driveway and then immediately when you're done, these snowplow will come and block up the end of the driveway. Finally, Dan says: For myself, I enjoy a free day. However, soon the home duties encroach on this free time. For myself, the answer is clearly that I write 10,000 words on the first snow day and then again on the second day because I just had two days in a row where it was too cold to leave the house. So what I did was stay home and wrote 20,000 words of Ghost in the Assembly. 00:03:54 Main Topic: Escaping the Trap of Prestige, Part I Now onto our main topic of the week, Escaping the Trap of Prestige, Part I-as it pertains to MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degrees and agents. I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm not looking to knock anyone who has a MFA or who has a literary agent, especially if it's working out for you and you're happy with it. What I'm trying to do here is warn younger writers who are just starting out about the potential consequences of these things, which can be very severe if you choose wrongly. So that is my goal with this episode, to help writers escape the potentially bad consequences of the prestige trap because newer writers in particular want validation. I mean, we all want validation, but writers especially want validation and new writers are very vulnerable to wanting validation to the point where it's been well known for years that there's a large scam industry of various things that take advantage of newer writers looking for validation such as vanity publishers, scammy agents, and a wide variety of other online publishing scams. This isn't to say that MFAs and literary agents are scams, though some literary agents have committed serious crimes (as we'll discuss later), but again, to warn against the danger of wanting prestige too badly and the bad decisions that can lead you to make. And some of this comes from the idea of success in life, especially in the United States and large parts of the Western world, is hitting certain milestones in a specific order. Like you graduate from college, you get a good job, you get married, you buy a house, you have your first kid, and if you don't do these things in the right order, there's something wrong with you and you have made mistakes in life, which isn't necessarily true, but is something that people can fall fall prey to and use to make destructive decisions. In the writing world, some of those measures of success have until fairly recently been getting a Master of Fine Arts degree, finding an agent, getting traditionally published, and hitting the New York Times list. As of this recording, I have sold well over 2 million books without following that normal route to writing success. In fact, I think it's closer to 2.25 million now, and I mention that not to toot my own horn, but to say that there are routes outside of the potentially dangerous prestige paths I'm talking about. And despite that, many aspiring writers feel they must follow that specific route to writer success, otherwise they aren't real writers. They’ve got to get the MFA, the agent, traditionally published, and then the New York Times list. The quest for prestige can keep writers from succeeding in two ways that are more significant, getting their work in front of readers who want to read it and deriving income from writing. So today in the first part of this two part episode series, we're going to talk about two of those writing markers of prestige, MFAs and literary agents. Why are they no longer as important? What should you devote your energy and focus to instead? So number one, the Master of Fine Arts trap. The Master of Fine Arts in writing has often been seen as a marker of writing ability, especially in the world of literary fiction. And I think the big problem, one of the big problems with MFA, first of all is cost. Getting a Master of Fine Arts degree is expensive, especially if you are not fortunate enough to receive scholarships or assistantships and so have to rely on student loans. The average cost of an MFA program is in the mid five figures when all is said and done, not even counting living expenses and textbooks and so forth. If you have to take out student loans to pay for that, that is a considerable loan burden, especially if you already have loans from your undergraduate degree. Even the people who get their MFA paid for (usually in exchange for teaching introductory writing classes to first year university students), the opportunity cost of taking two to three years to get this degree means you're sacrificing other things in your personal and professional life in order to get this MFA. It's a huge outlay of time and energy, especially if you're moving across the country for a residential program. And what are you getting in exchange for this massive outlay of time, money, and effort? You probably aren't going to learn the practical non-writing skills that you need in the modern writing world like marketing, data collection and analysis, and publication strategies (all of which I do on a fairly regular basis in addition to writing). All of these skills are important for writers now, even if they are traditionally published. The problem with many MFA programs is that they rarely, if ever teach these skills. It seems that what MFAs train their students to do is to become adjunct faculty professors with semester to semester contracts, which can pay around $2,000 to $4,000 USD per writing or literature course at most small to mid-size colleges and universities in the United States. Being an adjunct professor does not confer any benefits like health insurance or retirement funds. I was talking about this episode with my podcast transcriptionist and she mentioned once she was at a faculty meeting where an adjunct professor in English with an MFA did the math and realized based on her hourly wage (based on all the actual hours she put into a semester), if she worked at the local gas station chain, she would be making $7 per hour more at the local gas chain and she would be only working 40 hours a week. That can be a very dismaying realization, especially after all the work you have put into getting an MFA and teaching. Many defenders of the MFA degree will say that the real value of the degree is learning how to take criticism and learning to edit. But if you're writing in a genre outside of literary fiction, poetry, and memoirs, you are not likely to find a lot of useful advice. To return to my transcriptionist’s tales from her time inside academia, she once told me of meeting a faculty member who confessed that he never read a fantasy book and had no idea how to critique or help these students, and he was a writing professor. He meant well, but he's not even remotely an outlier in terms of MFA instructors and their familiarity with mysteries, romance, and science fiction works and fantasy, which is what most genre fiction is nowadays. Also, the quality of advice and help you receive varies wildly based on the quality of your cohort and instructors and their willingness to help others. It's a steep investment with very, very uncertain returns. So in short, an MFA takes a huge outlay of time and money with very few tangible benefits, especially with genre writers. In all frankness I would say an MFA is the kind of degree you should not go into debt to get and you should only get if you can have it paid for through scholarships or assistantships or so forth. So what should you do, in my opinion, other than an MFA degree? I think you should write as much as possible. You get better by practicing. You should read extensively. You will learn about writing by reading extensively, ideally in more than one genre. If you read enough and write enough, eventually you get to the moment where you read something and think, hey, I could do a better job than this. This is a major boost in confidence for any writer. It might be a good idea to join a local or online writing group if you'd like critique from other writers. A warning that writing groups can vary wildly in quality and some of them have a bad case of crab bucket syndrome, so you may have to try more than one group to find one that works for you. Another thing to do would be to listen to advice from successful writers. I saw a brief video from an author who recently pointed out that many people online giving writing advice aren't current or successful writers. One of the downsides of the Internet is that anyone can brand themselves an expert, whip together a course, and sell it online for a ridiculous fee. And people like this, their successes in creating methods or courses that turn writing into something more complicated to make aspiring writers reliant upon that process. Aspiring writers may end up spinning their wheels following all of these steps instead of getting to the actual work of churning out drafts. They may be spending money they can't afford in order to learn ineffective or even damaging strategies. Many successful writers offer sensible advice for free, such as Brandon Sanderson posting his writing lectures for free on his YouTube channel. If you're looking for writing advice, you could do a lot worse than watching those lectures. And if you're going to take advice from anyone you read on the internet, it's probably better to take advice from successful writers who have demonstrated that they know what they are doing. And finally, this may be more general advice, but it's a good idea to be open to learning and observing new experiences. It's probably a good idea to go to museums and cultural events, read about the latest developments in science and history, go on a hike in a new place, and observe the world around you. New writers often ask where writers get their ideas come from, and they very often come from just serendipitous things you can observe in the world around you. And that is also a good way to get out of your own head. If you're worried too much about writing, it's probably time to go for a long walk. So why are agents potentially dangerous to writers? For a long time (for a couple decades, in fact), from I'd say from maybe the ‘80s and the ‘90s to the rise of the Kindle in the 2010s, the only realistic way to get published for most writers in terms of fiction was to get a literary agent. Publishers did not take unsolicited submissions (most of them did not), and you had to go through an agent to send your manuscript to a publisher. The agents were very selective for a variety of reasons. Because of that, a lot of newer writers still idealize the process of getting agents. You'll see this on Twitter and other social media platforms where new writers will talk constantly about getting agents and what they have to do. And the ones who do get a request from an agent to send in the full manuscript after sending a few query chapters are just besides themselves with joy. And those who do get agents can sometimes sound like they're showing off their new boyfriend or girlfriend, like my agent says they like my book, or my agent says this or that. And as you can probably imagine from my description, this is an arrangement that has a lot of potential danger for the writer. The traditional first step in this time period I was mentioning after finishing a book has been to get as prestigious of an agent as possible to contact publishers and negotiate deals on their behalf. The agent takes 10 to 20% of what a publisher pays a writer, but in theory can get a writer a better deal and are acting in their best business interests. And as I mentioned before, most significantly, most publishers are not willing to read submissions that are not submitted by an agent. If getting traditionally published is the goal, an agent is the crucial first step. I mean, that's the ideal that we've been talking about. In reality, traditional publishing is as cautious and risk averse as it has ever been. Agents have followed suit. It takes industry connections and/or a significant social media presence to even get an agent to look at your book. Writing query letters and trying to get an agent also takes away from writing and is a completely separate skillset, as is the networking and social media work that is part of this process. Some people have spent months or even years working on query letters and getting an agent when they could have finished another book or more in the same time. Alright, so that is the practical and logistical reasons it's a bad idea for a writer to seek out an agent, and I frankly think you'd be better off. And now we get to the potentially criminal ones. The thing about literary agents is there's no licensing or requirement or anything of that nature. You can set up a website and call yourself a literary agent. If you consider something like a lawyer, by contrast, I'm sure those of you who are lawyers in the United States will have many complaints and stories about your state bar, which is in charge of licensing lawyers. But the point is that the state bar exists, and if a lawyer is behaving in an unethical or unscrupulous matter, that can be brought as complaint to the state bar. Nothing like that exists for literary agents at all. And because of that, scammy agents are everywhere. Some try to get writers to pay a fee upfront or other made up fees, or they get cuts from scammy book publishers or book packaging services. Or in general, they just try to squeeze every penny possible from aspiring writers. And this is often sadly very easy to do because as we've mentioned, many newer writers still think getting an agent is a major mark of prestige and humans crave prestige. And even if you get a prestigious and seemingly legitimate agent, that can potentially lead to life ruining problems because many of the legitimate agents are very sticky fingered. Several years ago, the firm of Donadio and Olson, which represented Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, Godfather author Mario Puzo, and Catch 22 author Joseph Heller found out that one of their accountants had been stealing millions from their authors for many years. Although the accountant was sentenced to two years of prison, it’s unlikely those authors will receive the money back fully. As Palahniuk put it in a blog post, “the legal process will be long and offers an iffy reward.” Mr. Palahniuk also lost out on money from touring to promote his books because of this crisis and said he was unable to support himself financially as a result of these stolen royalties. By not filtering your royalties and earning statements through a literary agency that can falsify reports about these documents (as the accountant in question did), you have a full sense of what you are earning and what amounts you should be receiving. Amazon is open to many criticisms because of its decisions, but they pay monthly and they send a very detailed spreadsheet monthly to any Kindle authors of what books sold and what they expect to earn. It's sometimes almost too much data to process. The traditional publishing world would never even consider showing that to writers and agents often keep that from their writers. Palahniuk trusted his agency and accepted the explanations that rampant piracy and financial difficulties in the publishing world were keeping over a million dollars in royalties from him. He even later found out that this accountant was keeping non-financial correspondence from him. Returning to the topic of Brandon Sanderson, I recently saw an interview between him and a podcaster Tim... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/35366480

Episode 239: Frozen Pizza Review Roundup 02/17/2025

Episode 239: Frozen Pizza Review Roundup In this week's episode, I discuss eating frozen pizza after a decade-long hiatus, and rate my favorite brands and styles of frozen pizza. 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 239 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February the 14th, 2025 and today we are rating the different brands of frozen pizza I tried over the last several months. I know that is an odd topic for a writing podcast, but it's my podcast and I like frozen pizza, so we're going to talk about frozen pizza this week. Before we do that, we will have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the eBooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store. That is all nine ebooks and this coupon code will get you 25% off any of them. That is DRAGONBOOK25. We'll have the links and the coupon code in the show notes. Someone pointed out that I've only been giving away coupon codes for audiobooks instead of ebooks, which is a fair argument, so that's why we're doing this. The coupon code will be valid through March 7th, 2025. So if you need a new series to read for spring, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing projects. As of this recording, I am 67,000 words into Ghost in the Assembly, which puts me on Chapter 13 of 21. I think this book will be in the Hundred Thousand Words Club, maybe a little less, maybe a little more, we'll see. I'm still hoping to have it out in March, if all goes well. My secondary project right now is Shield of Battle, the fifth of six books in The Shield War series, and I'm 5,000 words into that. Once Ghost in the Assembly is complete, it will be full speed ahead on Shield of Battle. In audiobook news, recording for Orc-Hoard (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) and recording for Cloak of Dragonfire (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) are both done and those should be showing up on audiobook stores soon. They haven't quite gotten through processing yet, but it is close. In regards to Cloak Mage and Half-Elven Thief, I am planning to work on those in the second half of 2025 once Ghost Armor and The Shield War are done, since there are only two books left in Shield War and I'm just about through the fourth book of six for the Ghost Armor series, that won't be too much longer. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects and let's move on now to Question of the Week. 00:02:22 Question of the Week Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what is your favorite kind of frozen pizza? No wrong answers, obviously. The inspiration for this question is that it's the topic of the episode, so here are the answers we got from people. Justin says: We do the Walmart Great Value rising crust frozen pizzas at my house. I add eight ounces of shredded cheese and sprinkle Italian herb mix on top. I've found that's a good idea myself. If you buy some of the cheaper frozen pizzas, you can add extra pepperoni, oregano, or whatever you want to it and that will enhance the flavor. John says: Trader Joe's. They have an Italian-made margherita that's quite good. Scott says: Red Baron Classic Crust, either Supreme or Four Meats. MW says: The one they sell in my country, brand name Dr. Oetker Ristorante with salami, mozzarella cheese, and green pesto. I often top it up with some goat’s cheese. Doug says: Digiorno’s Supreme. Juana says: Half pepperoni, half Canadian Bacon. Brooks says: Depends on the mood. We typically don't eat frozen pizza. If we do, it's usually Digiorno’s, although when I'm craving something junk food-ish and pizza at the same time, I will totally go for Totino’s. Plus the story behind that brand and how it revolutionized the frozen pizza business in general is amazing. Brandy says: I don't have a full size oven at the moment, so Totino's is my favorite because I like cheese pizza and it fits in my toaster oven. Otherwise, I make my own. Gary says: Generally a smaller local brand-they seem to be a little fresher with higher quality ingredients than larger brands. Parker says: Totino's, hands down-my favorite junk food. JT says: I either eat 7-Eleven pizzas or eat Totino's. Otherwise, my pizzas are almost as fresh as the day Adam and Eve were introduced to the concept in Eden. For myself, my answer will be the main topic of this episode, which we're going to get to right now. 00:04:15 Main Topic: Winter 2024/2025 Frozen Pizza Roundup I used to joke that if I lived long enough and could afford to retire, I wanted to start a YouTube channel that consisted entirely of different reviews of frozen pizza. The idea came from the sitcom Community. I always enjoyed the show since it's about a community college. I used to work in higher ed, so I could definitely relate to most of the jokes. One of the recurring gags is an elderly student named Leonard (who was played by the late actor Richard Erdman) has a YouTube channel where he reviews potato chips, frozen pizza, and other snack foods. Anyway, one member of my family gets quite ill if any gluten is consumed. So for about the last decade, I've been buying and eating gluten-free frozen pizzas, which are very nearly almost as good as the real thing these days. However, I eventually realized I could just buy myself a frozen pizza made with delicious, delicious gluten and get several lunches out of it over the course of the week. So that is what I did. Since I haven't had normal frozen pizza on a regular basis for nearly a decade, I decided to try a new brand every week. So here is the Winter 2024/2025 Frozen Pizza Roundup. Unlike my movie reviews, the pizza reviews will be in chronological order based on when I ate them. Grades are totally subjective and based on my own opinions and nothing else. I'll also be rating the pizza by eating it hot and eating it cold, since cold pizza is a different experience than hot pizza. Cold pizza for lunch the next day is something to look forward to, especially during a busy day. I should also mention that I bought each pizza myself. No one sent me any free stuff, so while my opinion is subjective, it is nonetheless unbiased. Additionally, I exactly follow the preparation directions for each pizza since I wanted to avoid the phenomenon you sometimes see on recipe blogs where a commenter will complain that a recipe didn't work and then will later admit that they took out the butter, cut the sugar in half, replaced the flour with cornstarch, and substituted canola oil for frosting. In terms of the health of eating this much pizza, I should point out I lost about five pounds during the time period here. Pizza, like most things, is perfectly fine when consumed in moderation. Eating an entire frozen pizza in one sitting is bad. I could do that when I was 20 years old and working as a truck unloader. Doing that when I'm a middle-aged man who spends most of his time sitting down and typing is a much worse idea. Besides, getting three meals out of a pizza is better and definitely more economical and I'm at the age where if I can lose a pound a month and keep it off, I'm doing well. With that rather lengthy introduction out of the way, on to the pizzas. First up is the Pothole Pizza Meat Sweats, which I ate on November 15th, 2024. Kwik Trip is a large brand of gas stations and convenience stores in the Upper American Midwest. They're known for having a wide variety of foods. Pothole Pizza is the store brand of frozen pizza, so for my first week of trying a non-GF pizza, I got one of those specifically the Meat Sweats variant with a lot of meat, specifically a whole bunch of pepperoni, sausage, ham, and bacon. It was really quite good. The crust was on the thicker side without being dough or bready. The sauce had a pleasant garlic flavor to it. The cheese was good and the pepperoni and sausage were ample. The sausage also had a pleasant spiciness to it as well. The abundance of cheese means that it is a little greasy but not unduly so. When cold, it is also good. You can't really taste the sauce, but the cheese sets well and the sausage tastes just as good cold as it does hot. Overall grade: A+ Next up is the Cheese Mountain Four Meat pizza, which I had on November 22nd, 2024. Cheese Mountain is Kwik Trip’s take and bake pizza, which isn't frozen (technically). The advantage of take and bake is that it's easier to cook since it hasn't been frozen, though you really should cook it on the same day that you buy it. Overall, I like this about the same as Pothole Pizza. The sauce on Pothole Pizza is better, while the crust on Cheese Mountain is superior. I do think the cheese on the Pothole is slightly better as well, which is ironic given that this pizza is named Cheese Mountain, but the cheese is still good. When cold, I don't think it's quite as good as the Pothole Pizza. Both the sausage and pepperoni aren’t as spicy as the toppings on the Pothole version. This was still good, but I still prefer the Pothole. Overall grade: A- Next up is Heggie’s pepperoni pizza, which I ate on December 6th, 2024. Heggie’s is a pizza company based out of Minnesota that distributes to the Upper Midwest and the Dakotas. I admit I don't go to bars all that often, but I've been told that Heggie’s is the official bar pizza of much of that region, so I decided to try that next. Having never tried it before, I came in with no expectations and was therefore quite pleasantly surprised by how good it was. It's a thin crust pizza, though a bit on the thicker side, which gives the crust some satisfying heft. The sauce had an excellent tang. The pepperoni was good and the cheese flavorful. When cold, it is likewise excellent. The spiciness of the pepperoni overcomes the more subdued taste a pizza often has while cold. Honestly, this is a superb example of a pepperoni pizza. Overall Grade: A Next up is Lottza Motzza Four Meat pizza, which I tried on December 13th, 2024. This was made by Brew Pub Pizza, which is itself owned by Bernatello’s, a Wisconsin based frozen pizza manufacturer and distributor. I quite like this one as well. The crust is thin and just a bit flaky, which is nice. The cheese was excellent and as the name indicates, there was indeed a lot of mozzarella cheese. When eaten cold, it is also a good meal. The large quantity of cheese helps, the crust remains flaky, and the spiciness of the sausage is highlighted when it is cold. Overall Grade: A Next up is Legit Three Meat Pizza, which I ate on December 20th, 2024. Legit Three Meat Pizza is made by Pep’s Pizza Company, which is based out of Green Bay in Wisconsin. I admit I didn't like this quite as much as the other ones on the list. The meat was good, but the cheese and sausage weren't quite as strong as the other examples on the list so far. I don't think it had quite enough sauce, which is actually amusing because I accidentally dripped a bunch of sauce in my shirt while I was eating it (which might be why I thought it didn't have enough sauce, because some of the sauce ended up on my shirt). Eaten cold, I actually think it tastes better cold than it does hot. However, this is one of the few pizzas on this list where I would recommend you add some oregano, frozen pizza spice, or garlic salt (depending on your preferences) because it's not quite as flavorful as others on this list. Overall Grade: B Next up is the Screamin’ Sicilian pepperoni pizza, which I tried on January 3rd, 2025. Screamin’ Sicilian pepperoni is produced by the Palermo’s Pizza Company, which is based in Wisconsin. I realized when I was writing this that a lot of pizza companies are based in Wisconsin, so I did some research. The reason is quite logical. Wisconsin is one of the leading producers of cheese in the United States, and so the pizza companies want to be closer to the supply, so to speak. Wisconsin is also generally considered to be more small business friendly than the neighboring states of Minnesota and Illinois. Having visited both Minneapolis and Chicago, I can hazard a guess that the only thing harder than running a small business in Minneapolis would be running one in Chicago. Anyway, back to the pizza. I quite like this one. It has abundant cheese and a very generous layer of pepperoni. There's enough pepperoni that the top layer of it becomes quite crispy. Crispy pepperoni is delicious. Additionally, the cheese is very good. I'd say the biggest weakness in the pizza is the crust, which is somewhat bland and a bit on the bready side. Eaten cold, it remains a good experience. The cheese sets well and the pepperoni retains the taste. As I said before, the crust remains the only weakness. Overall Grade: A- Next up is Pothole Pizza Pep Rally, which I ate on January 10th, 2025. This is another pizza from Kwik Trip’s Pothole brand, specifically an all pepperoni pizza, and frankly it was just superb. It has the same high quality crust, tasty sauce, and excellent cheese as the Meat Sweats version above. The pizza also has a generous layer of pepperoni, enough that crisps a bit in the oven. The combined flavor is just excellent. Eaten cold, it tastes just as good. The cheese, the pepperoni, and the sauce (especially the sauce) retain their flavor. I think a strong sauce is key to having pizza taste good while cold. The only thing I can say that’s negative about this pizza is that I think it would taste better with sausage, which is why they have the Meat Sweats pizza. Overall Grade: A Next up is Pep’s Drafthouse Double Pepperoni Doppelboch Pizza, which I ate on January 17th, 2025. This is another pizza from Pep’s Pizza Company, also did the Legit Three Meat pizza from several weeks ago. I like this one quite a lot better than the Legit Three Meat pizza. The crust was a bit thicker but much more flavorful. The pepperoni and the sauce both tasted good. The pizza had a mixture of mozzarella and provolone cheese, which I wasn't sure would work, but it really did. It gave the cheese a somewhat sharper flavor than the straight mozzarella that combined well with the pepperoni. Eaten cold, it isn't quite as good as hot, but granted that's true of many things. The sauce is definitely better when hot, though the cheese and pepperoni still carry the day. Overall Grade: A- Next up is Seventh Avenue Pepperoni and Meatball Pizza, which I ate on January 24th, 2025. Seventh Avenue is a regional frozen pizza in the Upper Midwest, specifically based out of Minneapolis. I have to admit, that makes me root for them a bit since as I mentioned above, running a small business in Minneapolis is a bit like playing the small business game on hard mode. Anyway, the pizza is quite good when it's hot. The cheese is on the higher end and the sausage is excellent. The crust isn't quite as good as the other ones on the list, but overall, the pizza is quite tasty. Eaten cold, I actually liked it a bit better. The sauce sets well and the cheese and toppings have strong flavor. I can tell that the cheese was very high quality because I needed to take three lactase pills before I ate it. Overall Grade: A- Next up is Tombstone pepperoni and sausage, which I ate on January 31st, 2025. I wanted to close out this review tour by trying some of the larger corporate pizzas, since all the pizzas I tried for this on the list came from relatively smaller, US-based companies. Tombstone was originally one of the oldest frozen pizza companies in the US, founded by Pep and Ron Simek in the ‘60s. Pep Pizza's company (mentioned above) is an effort to carry on that legacy. Tombstone is now owned by a very large multinational corporation that has something of a questionable reputation in certain areas (they're litigious, so you can Google them if you're curious). They're the kind of company whose “Controversies” Wikipedia article is as long as the actual article on the company itself. So honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect. The multinational company in question bought Tombstone way back in 2010, and I haven't had a Tombstone pizza since a couple of years before that. In all honesty, it wasn't bad. Eaten hot, the crust is crisp and a little bit on the thicker side and the sausage is good. I like the sauce as well. The cheese isn't as good as the others on this list, but it's by no means bad. Eaten cold, it's adequate, but as I said, not as good as most of the others on this list. But in all fairness, the biggest advantage of Tombstone is price. If I remember right, it's at least $2 cheaper than the next cheapest pizza I tried on the list. The downside of buying pizzas from smaller companies is that they tend to be proportionally more expensive. Given how bad the economy remains, this is an important fact, which in all fairness is one of the advantages of a larger company like the multinational food company we've been talking about- it is possible to drive down the cost and deliver a product that might not be as good as some of the others on this list but it is still good enough at a lower price. Overall Grade: B+ The next large corporate pizza I tried, and the last one we'll mention in this episode, is the Digiorno’s Classic Crust pepperoni pizza, which I tried on February 10th, 2025. Digiorno’s, like Tombstone, is part of the same food conglomerate I mentioned for the Tombstone pepperoni and sausage pizza, which makes sense because honestly, this tasted almost exactly the same as the Tombstone pizza. I thought that pepperoni was slightly better, but overall, it tasted very nearly the same. Eaten cold, I don't think it was quite as good. The crust definitely got a bit soggier than the others on the list. I think Digiorno’s is mostly known for their thick crust pizza, so I might try one of those instead and see what the difference is. But again, this had the significant advantage of being cheaper than many of the other options I tried. Granted, I still like the Tombstone pizza better, but this wasn't a bad pizza, either. Overall Grade: B So now we come to the conclusion. Overall, the Pothole Pizza Meat Sweats, Heggie’s pepperoni pizza, and the Lotzza Motzza Four Meat Pizza were my favorites. For the more budget conscious diner, I think the Tombstone Pizza offers the best value for price out of everything on this list. Given that I didn't give anything on this list a lower grade than a B, you might conclude that I like frozen pizza, and you would be right. I very much enjoy frozen pizza, and I very much enjoy having come back to gluten based pizza after a decade, after finally deciding that, you know what? When I have pizza, I'm going to buy a glutenous pizza and a non-gluten pizza for the family member who has trouble with gluten. Still, frozen pizza in general is really a miracle of technological achievement, isn't it? Making pizza from scratch is a lot of work, but you can go to the store, buy an entire pizza for under $10, and cook and eat it with minimal prep time. That would've been an unfathomable wonder for the vast majority of human history, and I think that is to be admired. So to celebrate this achievement, I think I'm going to eat some cold pizza now. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I promise that next week I will go back to talking about writing topics instead of movies or frozen pizza. I hope you found the show enjoyable. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/35286900

Episode 238: Winter 2024/2025 Movie Roundup 02/10/2025

Episode 238: Winter 2024/2025 Movie Roundup In this week's episode, I take a look at the movies and streaming shows I watched in winter 2024/2025, and share my opinions on them. I also take a look at my ebook advertising results from January 2025. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of , Book #3 in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: PALADIN50 The coupon code is valid through February 28, 2025. So if you need a ! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 238 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February 7, 2025 and today we are discussing the movies and streaming shows I watched in Winter 2024 and 2025. Before that, we will do Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing projects, Question of the Week, and my ad results from January 2025. First, let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Half-Orc Paladin, Book Three in the Half-Elven Thief Series (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is PALADIN50. This coupon code will be valid through February the 28th, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook to get you through the bad February weather, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. As I mentioned last week, Shield of Deception is now out and you can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords and my Payhip store. It is doing quite well. Thank you all for that. I hope you enjoy the book and I've been hearing good things about it from people who read it. Now that Shield of Deception is done, my main project is now Ghost in the Assembly and I am 36,000 words into it as of this recording, which puts me almost on Chapter 8 of 21. So I'm about one third of the way through the rough draft, give or take. If all goes well. I'm hoping that book will be out in March. My secondary project is Shield of Battle, which is the sequel to Shield of Deception and I am about 2,000 words into that. I'm also 50,000 words into what will be the third and final Stealth and Spells book, Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest. It was originally named Reactant, but I decided to change the name to Final Quest because that sounds better and if all goes well, that will probably be out in the middle of the year, give or take. In audiobook news, Cloak of Masks (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is now out at all audio stores, including Audible, so you can listen to that there. Work is almost done on Cloak of Dragonfire. It's being proof-listened to as I record this and hopefully that should be out before too much longer. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:02:19 Question of the Week Next up is Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's topic, which ties into our main topic: what was the favorite movie you saw in 2024? No wrong answers, obviously (including “I hate everything I saw in 2024”). We have a few responses for this. JD says: It was either Transformers One or Deadpool and Wolverine. Mary says: I didn't see any movies in 2024. Doug says: Dune was one of the books I read in the ‘70s. Like your books, I never got enough back then. I was buying Hardcovers. I still have six of them. I have seen the two versions of the books. Can't wait to see this version of the books. I have seen the first movies. Hope to see more. David says: Godzilla versus Kong was pretty much the only one from last year I saw. I just bought Gladiator 2 but haven't watched it yet. Davette says: I enjoyed both Dune 2 and The Fall Guy and Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine. My favorite was Wicked, mainly because I've been waiting on that movie for years. Bonnie says: I haven't seen any movies or watched TV in years. For myself, I think it would be a tie for my favorite movie of 2024 for between Dune 2 and The Fall Guy. The two Dune movies, for all the stuff they changed from the book, are probably the most faithful adaptation it was possible to make with that very dense and very weird book. I thought The Fall Guy was just hilarious and I had no idea it was based on TV series from the ‘80s until I read up about it on the Internet after I saw the movie. It was interesting that we didn't have very many responses to this question the week and of those responses, one third of them was “I didn't see any movies in 2024.” So if the movie industry is wondering why it's in so much trouble, I think we might have just found the answer here in that nobody wants to go to see movies in the theater anymore. 00:04:09 Ad Results for January 2025 Now onto our next topic, how my ads performed in January 2025. Now as usual for my books in January, I used Facebook ads, Amazon ads, and BookBub ads, so let's break them down by category- first, by Facebook ads. As usual, I advertised The Ghosts and Cloak Games/Cloak Mage. GHOSTS: $4.08 for every dollar, with 22% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. CLOAK GAMES/MAGE: $3.38 for every dollar, with 6% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. So that went pretty well. I’m hoping that percentage will go up once Cloak of Dragonfire is done and we can put together Cloak Mage Omnibus Three. I also did some Amazon ads – specifically for HALF-ELVEN THIEF, STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE: CREATION, and THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNERS GUIDE. Remember, for an Amazon ad to be effective, it usually needs to be generating at least one sale for every eight clicks on the ads. HALF-ELVEN THIEF: $4.65 for every dollar spent, 1.85 sales for every click. It’s just an amazing ratio-thank you for that. STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE: CREATION: Lost $0.15 for every dollar spent, 1 sale for every 4.76 clicks. THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNER’S GUIDE: $3.16 for every dollar spent, 33% of the profit from audio, 1.34 sales for every click. The standout was HALF-ELVEN THIEF, which actually had more sales than clicks on the ads. That hardly ever happens! You can see there’s a reason I’m going to conclude STEALTH & SPELLS with the third book, because it just doesn’t sell well. All of the advertising experiments I have tried to make it sell well have not responded to date. That said, we did improve from December, where I only got a sale for every 14 clicks. Additionally, Amazon ads work really well with nonfiction books, since they respond a lot better to keyword ads. Finally, I used Bookbub ads for THE GHOSTS on Apple. That went pretty well. THE GHOSTS: $4 for every $1 spent. So, all in all, a pretty good month for ads, though STEALTH & SPELLS remains the weak point. As always everyone, thank you for buying the books and listening to the audiobooks. 00:06:50 Main Topic: Movie/TV Show Reviews of Winter 2024/Early Winter 2025 Now onto our main topic, the movies and streaming shows I watched in Winter 2024 and early winter 2025. As always, my ratings are totally subjective and based on nothing more concrete than my own opinions. Our first one is Red One, which came out in 2024. This was a strange mashup of genres, a holiday movie, urban fantasy, a thriller, and just a little bit of existential horror. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays Callum Drift, who is the head of Santa Claus's security. Meanwhile, Chris Evans plays an unscrupulous hacker and thief named Jack O'Malley. Jack unwittingly helps unknown malefactors kidnap Santa Claus and so Callum and Jack have to team up to rescue Santa from his kidnappers. This sounds like a lighthearted holiday movie, but it really isn't. The movie is rather dour and takes itself very seriously. Callum acts like he's in a Jason Bourne movie and deals with various supernatural creatures like a special forces operator assessing targets. Additionally, there are some urban fantasy elements with the vast government agency dedicated to hiding the supernatural world from normal people. I don't think the dissonance really worked at all. It had pieces of a light holiday movie and pieces of a thriller and they really didn't mesh. It's not hard to see why this one didn't do well in the theaters, on top of its enormous budget. Overall Grade: D (In the spirit of Christmas generosity) Next up is Argylle, which came out in 2024. This was a dumb movie, but I enjoyed it, kind of like Murder Mystery with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston on Netflix. I mean that wasn't exactly Shakespeare or Milton, but I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy myself while watching it. Same thing applies to Argylle. The plot is that the protagonist Ellie Conway is a bestselling spy novelist. Ellie is a bit of an eccentric personality and travels everywhere with her cat in a backpack that has a window in it so the cat can see what's going on. However, it turns out that Ellie's novels are accurately predicting events in real life espionage, so several sinister spy agencies are hunting her down to learn her secret. A spy named Aidan saves Ellie, claiming that he's the only one she can trust. Of course, this is the kind of movie that has a shocking betrayal and plot twist every eight minutes or so, and the revelation of the central twist made me face palm a bit. There is a fight scene at the end involving colored smoke that's absolutely bonkers. It was on Apple Plus or Apple TV or whatever it's called, but that means all the characters did all their computing on shiny new Apple devices, which is always amusing. Overall Grade: D+ (but barely) Next up is Venom: The Last Dance, which came out in 2024. It wasn't as good as the first two since so many of the characters did not return, but it brought the Venom Trilogy to a mostly satisfying conclusion. Eddie Brock and Venom are on the run after the events of Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Unbeknownst to either of them, the US government has a secret facility holding captured symbiant aliens and the agency that runs the facility is hunting for them. Unbeknownst to the US government, the creator of the symbiotes, an evil entity named Knull is preparing to escape his prison and to do that, he needs Eddie/Venom delivered to him alive, so he dispatches his creatures to Earth hunt down Eddie and Venom, with disastrous results. The best part of the movie was the comedic duo of Eddie and Venom since the movie takes the absurdity of their situation and leans into it. Overall Grade: B- Next up is the Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, which came out in 2024. I read an interview with Brandon Sanderson where he said that a big part of the problem with movie adaptations of books is that the filmmakers often want to tell their own story, not the books’. So they basically used the book as a framework for telling their own story, which inevitably annoys the readers of the book. I suspect that was what happened with The War of the Rohirrim. This movie was a mixture of strong points and weaknesses. Apparently it only exists because New Line needed to put out something or they’d lose film rights to Tolkien’s stuff, and so The War of the Rohirrim was fast-tracked. The strong points: the animation looked pretty, the battle scenes were fun to watch, the voice performances were good, and the music was also good. The weak points: it felt too long and slow-paced. I think a good half-hour could have been cut of the characters looking pensive and thoughtful (and saved the animators a lot of work in the process). Additionally, I don’t think the changes to the plot quite worked. It’s based out of the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, specifically the history of Rohan. In the book, the plot is touched off when the corrupt Lord Freca demands that King Helm’s daughter Hera marry Freca’s son Wulf. Helm takes exception to this and ends up killing Freca. His son Wulf swears vengeance, gathers an army from Rohan’s enemies, and sets out to seize the crown for himself. In the book, Helm’s sons are killed, and Helm himself dies in the defense of the Hornburg (which later becomes known as Helm’s Deep), but his nephew Frealof gathers an army, kills Wulf, and becomes the new king of Rohan. That would have been perfectly good for the plot, but as we mentioned above, I think the screenwriters decided they wanted to write about a Strong Female Character, so they massively expanded Hera’s part and made her the protagonist. The problem with this as an adaptation is that Hera is only mentioned once in the book, so the script has to make up a lot of extra stuff to justify Hera’s presence, which always weakens an adaptation of a book. This version of Hera would have been in danger of becoming a stereotypical #girlboss character, but she acts more like a Japanese anime protagonist, which does work better in this sort of movie than an Americanized Strong Female Character. So, in the end, not a bad movie, but I think it would have worked better if they had stuck closer to the original plot in the book. Overall Grade: B- Next up is Golden Era, which came out in 2022. This is a documentary about the making of the classic Nintendo 64 game Goldeneye and the company behind it. Until I watched this, I never knew that Rare, the company that made Goldeneye, was based in the UK. I admit I really didn’t play Goldeneye back in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. I did a few times at various social events, but I never really got into it since I didn’t own a game console from 1998 to 2019. Nonetheless, Goldeneye was a very influential game that left its mark on all first-person shooter games since. The documentary interviews most of the people who were involved in the making of Goldeneye, and it was fascinating to see how they more or less accidentally created a genre-defining game. If you enjoyed Goldeneye or are interested in video game history at all, the documentary is worth watching. After many years of official unavailability, Goldeneye is now available on Nintendo Switch and Xbox, so I may have to give it a try. Overall grade: B Next up is Wonka, which came out in 2023. I didn’t really intend to watch this, but it was on in the background while I was playing Starfield…and Starfield has a lot of loading screens. This movie wasn’t made for me, not even remotely, but I thought it was a competently executed example of a movie musical. Anyway, the plot revolves around a young Willy Wonka coming to a city that seems like a weird hybrid between Paris and New York. Wonka sets out to start selling his innovative chocolates, but soon runs into stiff opposition from the corrupt local candy industry, the corrupt local police chief, and his equally corrupt landlady, who has somehow transitioned from hospitality to luring people into debt slavery. Wonka makes allies from his fellow indentured workers, and soon he is conducting local chocolate manufacturing like a heist. Like I said, this really wasn’t made for me, and I’m sure people who actually like musicals would have many more detailed opinions. But this had some genuinely funny bits. Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa was hilarious, and so was Rowan Atkinson as a corrupt bishop. The best line: “Judgment has come…in a most unexpected form!” Overall grade: B Next up is Man on the Inside, which came out in 2024, and this is a Netflix comedy series from Mike Schur, who created Parks and Recreation, The Good Place and Brooklyn 99. To describe this show, think of a meditation about accepting the inevitability of aging and death through Schur’s comedic style, and you’ll be there. Anyway, Ted Danson stars as a recently widowed retired professor of engineering named Charles. His daughter is worried that he’s not handling things well and becoming too isolated, so suggests that he find a hobby. Charles answers a classified ad for an “older man who can use technology” and finds himself recruited by a private investigator named Julie. Julie’s company has been hired to find a thief within a retirement home, and Julie is about 35 years too young to convincingly infiltrate a retirement home. Hence, Charles pretends to be a new resident, and finds himself befriending the residents he is supposed to investigate. All the while, he tries to deal with the remaining grief from his wife’s death, which he never got around to processing in the moment. In my opinion, The Good Place and Brooklyn 99 both kind of fell apart in their final seasons, but Man on the Inside avoids that in its final episodes, providing good resolution to both the conflict and the emotional stakes. I thought it was both bittersweet and quite funny, and I approve that there’s going to be a 2nd season. Overall grade: B Next up is Minted, which came out in 2023, and this was an interesting documentary about the rise in the fall of the NFT, which in the early 2020s we were assured was going to be the next big thing, but it just turned out to be yet another scam. The documentary follows an interesting course, first explaining what an NFT is, and then interviewing artists who made life-changing money from minting their early NFTS. But then the speculators arrived, and followed swiftly by the scammers. As of 2025, of course, NFTs are quite worthless, like so many much-vaunted Web 3.0 style technologies. I think the documentary’s biggest weakness was assuming that NFT technology was around to stay and would find a use that would help artists. I agree that it’s around to stay, but I don’t think it adds value to anything at all. Nevertheless, an interesting look into the NFT fad and the impact it had on artists. Overall grade: B Next up is Gladiator 2, which came out in 2024. This is basically the same movie as the original Gladiator, just reshuffled a bit and with twenty years of improved technology. The main character Hanno is a soldier in an African city that rebels against Rome. After the rebellion is inevitably crushed, he is taken as a slave and ends up as a gladiator in Rome, determined to take his vengeance on the Roman general who ordered the death of his wife. However, the general was only carrying out the orders of the insane twin emperors Geta and Caracalla. For that matter, Hanno’s owner, the charming and affable Macrinus, has his own agenda. As Hanno seeks revenge, he finds himself drawn into the deadly game of imperial politics and must confront the secrets of his own past. The movie is only very vaguely accurate in terms of history, but it does a good job of capturing the corruption and decadence of the Roman Empire at that time. The empire was in very bad shape, and in fact was only a few years from what historians call the Crisis of the Third Century, a fifty year period of continual civil war, assassination, usurpation, and economic meltdown that resulted in the empire breaking into three separate states for about fifteen years. Everyone knows that the Roman Empire fell in 476 AD, but it very nearly didn’t make it even to 300 AD. So the ending of Gladiator 2 is a total fantasy, like one of those alt-history books where the Roman Empire ends up conquering the Americas or expanding into outer space. That said, I enjoyed the movie. Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, and Connie Nielsen in particular gave very good performances, with Denzel Washington’s Macrinus as the standout. Overall grade: B Next up is High Sierra, which came out in 1941, and this is 1940s true crime grimdark. A common misconception is that black and white films are generally more sanitized and saccharine than modern fare. This definitely isn’t true – there... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/35192725

Episode 237: 5 Tips For Outlining Your Novel 02/03/2025

Episode 237: 5 Tips For Outlining Your Novel In this week's episode, we take a look at five tips for outlining your novel. I also take a look at audiobook sales for 2024. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of , Book #2 in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: WIZARD50 The coupon code is valid through February 21, 2025. So if you ! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 237 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January 31st, 2025, and today we're discussing five tips for outlining your novel. Before we get to that, we will have Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing projects, Question of the Week, and then a look at how my audiobooks performed in 2024. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Wizard Thief, Book Number Two in the Half-Eleven Thief series (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is WIZARD50. Both the coupon code and the link to the store will be in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through February the 21st, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook to get you through the February doldrums, we have got you covered. And now an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. I am very, very, very pleased to report that Shield of Deception, the fourth book in The Shield War series, is done. As soon as I am finished recording this episode, I'm going to start publishing it at all the stores. So by the time this episode goes live, you should be able to get it at your favorite ebook store. I'm very pleased this is done because I think this is the longest book I have written in the last four years, which of course I picked to do over the Christmas holiday and was in the process of switching over to a new desktop computer. Great planning on my part, but the book is done and hopefully you should be able to enjoy it soon at your favorite ebook store. Now that Shield of Deception is done, my next project will be Ghost in the Assembly and I'm pleased to report I'm 20,000 words into that. So I'm hopefully on track to have that come out sometime in March. My secondary project is also going to be Shield of Battle, the fifth book in the Shield War series, and hopefully that will be in April, if all goes well. In audiobook news, Cloak of Masks is now finally available at all audiobook stores: Audible, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Chirp, and all the others. A reminder that you can also get Ghost Armor Omnibus One, the combination of the first three Ghost Armor books (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy), at Audible, Apple, and Amazon. 00:02:15 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's topic: do you watch the special features on the DVD when you watch a movie? I'm talking about the making of and the director and cast and crew interviews and so forth. Not all DVDs have them of course, but some do. We have a few responses to this question. Justin says: It depends on the movie. The special features in Monty Python and the Holy Grail Special Edition are a must-see in my opinion. John says: I watched all the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition extras. Really great material. I know I've watched others, but I can't recall offhand. Definitely the gold standard. Tom says: My general pattern is to watch the trailer, then the movie, then the deleted scenes. Sometimes I'll watch parts of the special features if their name caches my eye, not often though. James says: With On-Demand through my cable provider, I just watch the movies. Being part of the PC Master Race, I've never had a gaming console to play DVDs on. I haven't bought a DVD in ages. I used to belong to Redbox, but they're not even in business anymore. Elizabeth says: Sometimes, or play in another language with English subtitles. Brandy says: Sometimes. I watched The Lord of the Rings special features and enjoyed it. I also watch historical extras or look them up. Bonnie says: I think I may have once? I usually just watch the movie, haven't watched anything in ages, though. Juana says: Yes. After the feature things are interesting! Tracy says: I do. For myself, the inspiration for this question was that I couldn't think of anything to watch, so I was watching the special features on The Lord of the Rings Extended Editions box set, which a few people have already mentioned. I really think those are the gold standard for DVD special features. Not too many special features have middle aged literature professors discussing the origins of the book that inspired the movie. There's like six discs worth of special features in the Extended Edition Lord of the Rings DVDs, and if you watch all of them, it's really a very interesting and comprehensive documentary on how those three movies were made. If you get the Oppenheimer Blu-ray, the special features that come with that are also quite interesting and worth watching in my opinion. 00:04:18 Audiobook Sales in 2024 Now let's talk a little bit about how my audiobooks did in 2024. Ebook sales were down a bit from 2023 to 2024, but my audiobook sales were up from 2023 to 2024. So here are my Top 10 bestselling audiobooks of 2024. It's nice to note that audio (at least for me) was up, in 2024 in a time of general economic contraction. So that's nice. Now my Top 10 audiobooks: The Ghosts: Omnibus One 2. Frostborn: The Gorgon Spirit 3. Frostborn: The Dark Warden 4. Frostborn: The Broken Mage 5. Frostborn: The World Gate 6. Frostborn: The False King 7. Frostborn: Excalibur 8. Frostborn: The Dwarven Prince 9. Dragonskull: Omnibus One 10. Frostborn: The High Lords So I have to admit, it's nice to see the Frostborn books still in the Top 10 there because they've long ago made back their production costs. So now it's just a pure profit at this point, which is nice. And it's also amusing that The Ghosts Omnibus One remains my bestselling audiobook of all time just because it's so long. Now let's see how those sales broke down by vendor because as you know, I sell my audiobooks through several different platforms. And so let's see how they did: ACX (Audible, Amazon, Apple): 76.54% 2. Google Play: 9.84% 3. Storytel: 5.08% 4. Hoopla: 2.73% 5. Spotify: 2.27% 6. Chirp: 1.05% 7. Under 1%: Kobo, Scribd, Audiobooks.com, Overdrive, TuneIn, Bibliotheca, Nook, and Anyplay So as we can see, Audible in the form of ACX is still pretty dominant, but there is growth on the other platforms, especially Google Play. I was not expecting Google Play to come in second. I would've thought it would've been Chirp or Spotify, but it seems Google Play did very well for me for audiobooks for 2024. So thanks for listening everyone, or at least listening to the audiobooks. We're not done with the podcast yet, so let's now move on to our main topic. 00:06:34 Main Topic: 5 Tips for Creating an Outline for Your Novel Now let's move on to our main topic, five tips for creating an outline for your novel. In the fiction writing community, there's generally two schools of thoughts, outliners (of which I am definitely one), and discovery writers, who feel that starting with outlines sort of drains the process of its fun and magic. Though I heard an interesting point from one of Brandon Sanderson's videos recently where he said that all outliners do have a little bit of discovery writer in them because if you look at your outline, it'll say something like “there is a chase scene.” Then when you get to that part of the book, you write out eight to ten pages of the chase scene or whatever that you come up with on the spot and then later refine and improve through editing. So that's a good point, but I do think outlining is more useful in general for writing than not outlining is. So why outline? As I mentioned, many writers do not outline, but I do think outlining does help, especially with beginning writers. For one, it saves time because if you follow the outline, you're less likely to go down a blind alley and realize you have to drop the last 10 or 20,000 words you wrote. It helps prevent getting stuck and not knowing what to write next. And it also really helps because it'll save you time in editing because you're less likely to have to rewrite large portions of the book. And it's also helpful for maintaining continuity as well. I found also that outlining in advance is good because it forces you to think about things before you start because we all know writers who get really excited about writing, get a third of the way through, and then don't know where to go next. It's because they haven't thought it through. Outlining forces you to really think through the middle, which is where a lot of writers get stuck, and it also forces you to think through the ending and make sure it properly resolves the conflicts and stakes raised in the story. As an example, I know a beginning writer who did not create an outline when setting out to write for the first time, although she had a strong setting and liked her characters, she realized about halfway through that the conflict wasn't enough to carry her whole story and that changing the conflict or raising the stakes would change the tone of the story too much. And unfortunately, she decided to abandon the draft. You could look at that one way, that it was months of wasted effort for her that could have been prevented with a couple hours of outlining, though I think it's better to look at it as a valuable learning experience where she learned that yes, outlining really will help me with my writing and just sort of had to learn that the hard way through attempting to write without an outline first. #1: So our first tip for outlining novels is to learn story structure. It's hard to write an outline without understanding good story structure, but the flip side is if you do understand story structure and put good story structure into your outline, it will be all the easier to write your novel. The basic story structure that everyone learns in English class when they're talking about short stories (or should learn an English class when they're talking about short stories), is introduction, conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution. That is essentially basic short story structure that's in short stories and in novels, however long. A longer novel of course we'll have subplots and sort of sub conflicts and maybe false ends and red herrings, but that basic story structure is there throughout. So our first tip for good outlining is to understand story structure. And if you try to hold to that basic five step story structure when you're first starting out, especially when you're first starting out, you'll probably find it a lot easier to go. #2: Start with the problem. What do we mean by that? First, think of the main conflicts and then start outlining to move the characters/locations around them accordingly. Work the hardest on understanding your central conflict. Your protagonist must have a problem that results in a serious conflict. Now, serious conflict doesn't necessarily imply violence, though in genres such as a thriller and mystery, it can. The conflict must be emotionally significant and serious for the protagonist where there are real stakes involved. The example I usually go to for this is the movie The King Speech, which is a highly fictionalized version of Britain's King George VI learning to overcome his stutter to speak in public. At no point in the movie is George VI in any physical danger. His wife and children love and respect him, and he's generally well regarded by everyone who knows him. However, the problem is he can't speak in public effectively, and this is a huge emotional problem for him. And frankly, one with serious stakes after his brother abdicates and he becomes king. He needs to be able to speak effectively in public or he won't be able to carry out his duties well. So this conflict of dealing with his stutter and his speech impediment is central to the movie. And even though he's not in any physical danger, it nonetheless has very high stakes for him, which is why I say that the problem has to be emotionally significant and have high stakes for the protagonist. And there are ways to do that without violence, though of course, if you're writing fantasy or a thriller, you can use all the violence you want. You can help create a significant conflict and problem for your character by asking yourself a few questions. What conflicts and actions lead up to it? What is causing this conflict to happen? What are the stakes? What will happen if it doesn't resolve favorably? And why is the character involved? What must they do to resolve the conflict? For an example from my own books, I'm going to talk about Half-Elven Thief, which is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited if you want to go read that. In Half-Elven Thief, the main character is Rivah, who is a member of a fantasy Thieves Guild in her city. She's massively in debt to her immediate superior in the Thieves Guild who hates her and has been using that debt to exploit work from her and considering selling her into slavery to recover the debt. However, a massive and very dangerous job comes to the Thieves Guild, and Rivah is the one assigned to take the job, and if she pulls off the job, her debt will be repaid and she doesn't have this debt hanging over her head anymore. But the job is to steal a spell book from a very dangerous and powerful wizard, so there's every chance she'll be killed in the process. So the central conflict of Half-Elven Thief, that Rivah needs to steal this spell book from this very dangerous wizard, and the stakes for that is so she can get out from under this debt her superior has been holding over her head for the last three years. So hopefully that is a helpful example of a conflict with serious stakes for the protagonist. #3: Our third tip is to start with simple. What is the book's blurb or elevator pitch for this story? Write that first. There's a couple different ways you can do that. I've sometimes described my Cloak Games/Cloak Mage series as Shadow Run meets The Dresden Files, which can be a starting point. I've heard people describe the Caina series as Black Widow meets Conan the Barbarian, which is another way to do it. To return to our previous two examples, in The King’s Speech, the precise pitch is “faced with becoming King George VI must overcome his speech/stutter and face his emotional problems in order to effectively exercise his office.” And with my book Half-Elven Thief, the elevator pitch was, “in order to escape a dangerous debt, a thief is forced to steal a spell book from a dangerous wizard.” So that is the one sentence starting point, and you can use that to build the conflict. Another potential way to do this is to write the blurb for your book and then build the conflict off that. For example, here is the blurb for another one of my books, Ghost in the Serpent, which is available at all ebook stores. Anyway, the blurb: “A deadly poison. A hidden cult of sorcerers. Only Caina can find the truth. Caina is a countess of the Empire, an advisor and friend of three powerful monarchs, but she was once a nightfighter with the Ghosts, the spies and assassins of the Emperor and faced lethal sorcerers and corrupt lords. And when a hidden cult of malevolent sorcerers emerges from the shadows, Caina will show them that she has forgotten none of her old skills.” So what is this blurb doing? It is introducing the setting and the characters, Caina and the Empire, focusing on the conflict and stakes and focusing on how they relate to Caina. And that allows us to sort of expand out into the conflict. If you read the book, you know that the plot is someone tries to poison Caina and fails. As she investigates what happened, she discovers that her husband had two children that he didn't know about, and for some reason this mysterious cult is trying to kill both Caina and these children, which pulls her deeper into the mystery. So that is the stakes and the conflict, and that is how I was able to build the book around them. #4: Our fourth tip is to just start. Just pick a time, grab your laptop or your notebook or whatever, and just start writing down an outline for your short story or a synopsis. Don't research things about your story while you're outlining. You can just write “TO BE RESEARCHED LATER” in capital letters, which is what I do sometimes. Don't research the perfect way to make an outline, just sit down and make an outline. How I outline personally is what I usually do is I have the central conflict in mind, like the example with Rivah, and then I sit down and write a synopsis of what I want to happen and then I chop up the synopsis into chapters and I go from there. My outlines tend to be about 1,000 to 2,000 words long, depending on the length of the book. For example, Shield of Deception, which I just published, was on the longer side. It came to about 120,000 words and the outline was about 2,000 words. And it basically started out as a long synopsis I wrote, and then I chopped up the synopsis into chapters and went from there. I included major story beats, where the characters were going to go, and what they did. It doesn't get too detailed. Each chapter…the book had 30 chapters. So each chapter generally was described with about 80 words in the outline, maybe a hundred words, depending on what goes on. The detail varies. Basically, like in a chapter outline, I'll say “Character X comes and confronts Character Y and then they fight.” Then I will extemporize and make up the conversation when I actually get to the writing. What I try to include in all the outlines is story beats that have to be in the story. The character has to be here or the plot doesn't make sense, or they have to go this location or it's a massive plot hole, or they have to think of this or it causes a plot hole, that kind of thing, which is part of the value of the outlining process is that it forces you to think of these things in advance. What I don't include is that I don't get too super detailed because to return to the Brandon Sanderson example from earlier in the show, when you get to the actual scene, there is a bit of discovery writing, like where I'll write where Character X confronts Character Y about whatever they're arguing about. Then the actual conversation I will just write when I arrive there. #5: And our fifth and final tip, try a different style of outlining if you're struggling. There are different outlining techniques and styles out there. Here are two examples. There's the Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson, which is where you start with a one sentence summary, build up to a paragraph, and continue to add detail in depth. There’s also Dean Koontz's story structure from his book, How to Write Bestselling Fiction. His story structure is: Get your character into trouble as quickly as possible Their plans backfire Things escalate until defeat seems inevitable Victory against all odds If you're having trouble starting an outline, that might be a good way to do it. That said, there is no magic bullet. There is not a magic outlining style or perfect outlining style that will guarantee success. So don't get lost in endless reading or studying different kinds of outlines. A finished outline is better than waiting for a perfect one. And in that vein, a book that you have actually written, even if it's not as cool as you want it to be, is still infinitely... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/35100070

Episode 236: 5 Ways To Market With Short Stories 01/27/2025

Episode 236: 5 Ways To Market With Short Stories In this week's episode, we take a look at five ways to use short stories to market your books. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of , Book #1 in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: HALF50 The coupon code is valid through February 14, 2025. So if you need a ! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 236 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 24th, 2025. Today we are discussing how to use short stories for marketing. Before we get into that, we'll start with Coupon of the Week. I have an update on my current writing projects and then do Question of the Week. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Half-Elven Thief, Book One in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store. That code is HALF50. You can find the link and the coupon code in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through February the 14th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for the January/February doldrums, we have got you covered. Now on to an update on my current writing projects. As of this recording, I am 56% of the way through the first round of edits on Shield of Deception. I am still hoping to have the book out early in February, if all goes well. Once that is out, my main project will be Ghost in the Assembly. I am 16,000 words into that. So that is good news there. In audiobook news, as I mentioned in the previous show, the audiobook of Ghost Armor Omnibus One (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) has come out and you can get that at Audible, Apple, and Amazon. Cloak of Masks should be coming soon and a recording for Cloak of Dragonfire is almost done, so we should have some more audiobook news coming pretty soon. 00:01:45 Question of the Week Now onto Question of the Week, which is designed for an enjoyable discussion of interesting topics. This week's question: what is your favorite kind of Italian food? No wrong answers, obviously, including not liking Italian food. We had quite a few responses on that. Justin says: Ah yes, pizza, the food of company team building exercises and RPG tabletop sessions. You can't go wrong with pizza. Another dish I adore would be Italian sausage and peppers with penne pasta. It goes together quickly, tastes great, and is easy to clean up afterwards. Alas, I can no longer partake- the green and red pepper has given me gas worse than any bean dish. Mary says: Ravioli! The right brands, because the cheese mixes vary. I like a number, but not all. Surabhi says: Pizza wins, without a doubt! Juana says: Pizza hits all the notes. Denny says: I love North American pizza. Italian pizza is its own thing and not something I enjoy. I've eaten very little actual Italian food, but generally I do enjoy pasta. John says: Definitely lasagna. There is a little place in Southern California where the chef makes a deconstructed lasagna that is out of this world. I have to admit, I didn't know there was such a thing as deconstructed lasagna. Jenny says: Fettuccine Alfredo and Chicken Parmesan are so good, but I love getting some of both so I get the red and white sauces blended and with tasty cheesy chicken. Brooks says: While I love a lot of Italian dishes, I really like a type of lasagna that is cream based versus marinara based. Usually it's considered a veggie type lasagna. It just adds a different twist. Basically alfredo meets lasagna. Olaf says: Any kind of pasta (linguini, tortiglioni, rigatoni, farfalle) or gnocchi with a slow cooked bolognaise. My self-made pizza, then of course lasagna and all kinds of pasta with salsicce and let not forget tiramisu and a latte macchiato. James says: It's funny what we call “foreign food.”” Your Taco Bell style taco originated in Texas. What Americans consider Chinese food originated in San Francisco and pizza as we know it originated in New York City. Bonnie says: Chicken parm and my husband's lasagna. A different John says: I love a really good risotto, specifically with porcini mushrooms and pancetta. Also the truffle pasta I had in Rome about 10 years ago, but the best pasta I had was rabbit ragout with handmade pappardelle (which I'm pretty sure I didn't say correctly) at a restaurant here in California. My family loves my homemade spaghetti with meatballs. My granddaughter's favorite is actually spaghetti with clams. Gary says: Almost anything with pesto. Andrew says: Cannoli. James says: Only reason I know this is because of the Food Network, but a true pizza (Italians in Italy don't have pizza) order in Italy doesn't sound appetizing to me. I want a supreme with everything but anchovies on it. While pizza, as we know it is an American invention, what an Italian in Italy would order has only tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and basil. Finally, Michael says: Spaghetti. For myself, I think my answer would be pizza, which I think as we just heard is true of many people, but pizza is kind of a category all its own, especially American pizza, which as we heard is American invention and not an Italian one. For non-pizza, I would say lasagna and spaghetti carbonara. 00:04:56 Main Topic of the Week: Using Short Stories for Marketing Now onto our main topic this week, how to use short stories for marketing. Many authors, myself included (which if you haven’t subscribed to my new release newsletter, which you should really do), create short stories for marketing. It can be an effective way to connect with your readers, but why do it? Two caveats I should get into before we get into why you should use short stories for marketing and the big one is if you don't actually enjoy writing short stories, you shouldn't do it. Marketing tactics work only if you actually enjoy doing it or you can find it at least tolerable. If you actively dislike writing short stories and prefer to write novels, then you should not try to write short stories unless you actively enjoy the process at least as much as you enjoy writing novels. The second caveat is to remember that short stories really don't sell well outside of certain very specific categories like erotica or anthologies (and even anthologies don't sell as well as full length novels). Recently I saw an interview with a longtime fantasy author who lamented because of TikTok and YouTube (and whatever) that young people nowadays prefer shorter books/quicker books and books will have to get shorter. I have to admit that has not been my experience at all. I think of the 158 books I've published, I've never had anyone write to me afterwards and say, hey, you know what? This book was too long and should have been shorter. No, they say the book should have been longer. So I think that might just be an illusion caused by that author in question being mostly traditionally published and having to deal with printing costs and the publishers being stingy on paper. But my own experience has been that readers really prefer longer works, which means that they don't want to pay for short stories and that therefore you're not going to make a lot of money from your short stories. That doesn't mean you can't use your short stories to make money, but the short stories themselves (if you sell them) are probably not going to make a lot of money and therefore giving them out for free is probably a good idea. Obviously, this is not a new idea. Nonfiction writers, especially in the self-help and business genres, have long given out charts, worksheets, and other bonus content to their newsletter subscribers. Short stories can work well as what's called a reader magnet in the indie author space. The reader magnet is where you give away something for free and hope that the people who pick it up like it enough to go on and try your paid content. I do this all the time myself with my free series starters like Cloak Games: Thief Trap or Child of the Ghosts or Sevenfold Sword: Champion, where if you read that book since it's free and enjoy it, hopefully you go on to purchase the rest of the books in the series. Short stories also generally don't sell for very much. I almost always sell mine for $0.99 USD when they're not free, so it's not a major loss of revenue or “devaluing the work” if you give it away for free, especially if it's only temporary. Another advantage is that people very obviously love free stuff, especially digital content that doesn't take up physical space. Whether you live in a one room efficiency apartment or a four bedroom house, there is only so much space to go around and you can only have so much stuff and in fact, people are always looking to declutter. This is not a problem with digital goods and if you're giving away the short stories for free in digital format, your readers can receive it whenever it's most convenient for them and it's not a burden for them to keep or maintain it like a pile of freebie clutter from a conference (like pens and tote bags, for example). Also, the idea that giving away something for free means that it is low quality is just not a value that most modern readers have. It is more a legacy of a tradpub/print books that is probably going to fade over time. Being the one to provide the free content directly to readers is a way to keep their interest and hopefully build enough of a relationship with the reader that they're willing to try out the non-free content. This is the concept of the loss leader, where you give away something for free and hopefully people will go on to buy the paid products that are connected to it. In marketing speak, this is called the Marketing Funnel, where the free thing you give away is the top of your funnel and hopefully people take the free thing and like it and they'll get drawn further into the funnel and will become paying customers. Giving away things for free also has the benefit of building up a positive association with you in the reader's mind. So hopefully when you send out a newsletter or they see that you have a new book available on Amazon or Kobo or Google Play or wherever, that they will have a positive reaction and then purchase the book. With all that in mind, and now that we've had our caveats and laid the groundwork, let us have five reasons to give away short stories. #1: It can keep people connected with the characters/world between books and keep up interest for the next book in the series. If there are gaps between the books in your series, new short stories keep people engaged with characters and help them to remember what happened in the previous books. A short story can also excite them for what comes next in the series, especially if it alludes to what's about to happen in the next book. I have found generally it's a good idea to avoid massive spoilers for things in the books in the short stories, though some of that may be unavoidable depending on where it's written and how it's set. #2: It gives readers insight into characters and events that don't fit into the larger narrative but are still fan favorites or interesting to fans. My main approach when I write short stories is I don't really want them to be standalone, but I don't really want them to be spoiler-y, so I tend to treat them as DVD extras or like bonus scenes on the DVD, like everyone knows that the Lord the Rings movies came out in the theaters 20 years ago in a specific form, but when the Lord the Rings Extended Editions came out in DVD, they had many extra scenes that had been cut from the movie for time or budgetary reasons or whatever. That is how I view the short stories I give away for free when I publish a new book. It is bonus content that gets included like bonus content from the DVD. A prominent example of that would be Trick or Treat and Blood Walk and Iron Drive short stories from the Cloak Mage series, all of which are written from the perspective of the character Casimir Volansko. These have proven to be very popular short stories for me because Casimir offers the chance to see Nadia's world from a more normal perspective because Nadia, by this point in the series, is a superpowered wizard with many responsibilities, whereas Casimir is a truck driver who just wants to retire. So that makes for an interesting contrast and looking at the world through Casimir’s eyes is not something I would probably do in a main book in the series but does make for a fun bonus in the short stories. You can also do the backstory of a character that isn't central to the narrative. A couple of times I've done that where in a short story I have fleshed out more of a character's backstory, especially with the Frostborn series where I had The Orc’s Tale, The Thief's Tale, The Assassin's Tale, The Soldier's Tale, and so forth where we delved into the backstory of some of the point of view characters in the series that we didn't have time to go through in the books. #3: It will give people a clear, easy to understand reason to sign up for your email newsletter. “Subscribe and receive two free short stories” is a more compelling argument than “subscribe to my newsletter.” If anyone subscribes to my newsletter, they get three free novels to start with: Frostborn: The Skull Quest, Blade of the Ghosts, and Malison: Dragon Curse, I believe are the three right now. But I also emphasize that if you do sign up for my new release newsletter, you do get free short stories on a fairly regular basis. If fact, I'm planning a newsletter for the 27th that will also give away more short stories. So I do send out a couple of newsletters a month whenever I have a new book come out, and there are short stories given away with all of those. So that is a good way to help build loyalty and reader engagement for your newsletter, which leads directly into reason number four. #4: It is a carrot, not a stick to motivate people to open and read your messages, which helps with your messages getting flagged as spam. As I've mentioned before, I do enjoy writing short stories. I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it, but the main marketing reason, the big one I write short stories for, is to drive engagement for my newsletter, which has a very practical benefit. Many of the anti-spam systems nowadays are very sophisticated and track a lot of what you do in the email and the more you interact with an email, the less likely it is to get classified by spam, so that way if people are clicking on links in the newsletter to get the free short story, that means they're interacting more with the newsletter and that the email is less likely to be classified as spam. For a while in 2018 and 2019, I thought writing short stories was too much work, so I decided to phase it out, but my newsletter engagement just dropped. I realized it was because so many fewer people were clicking on the links in the emails and therefore they're getting listed as spam. So I thought, you know what? I better get back to writing short stories. If your newsletter messages are just long diary style entries, people will at best skim them or start to tune out. Having reader magnets for the newsletter gets people used to thinking there is some incentive for them to personally keep checking your updates, which of course turns back to the original point, that this will also help drive engagement and meaning your newsletter is more likely to be opened and less likely to be classified as spam. #5: And finally, the fifth and final reason is making short stories free for a limited period of time instead of permafree gives subscribers and followers an incentive to read your posts and newsletters frequently and closely. Fear of missing out (or FOMO, as it's commonly known), is a powerful force. Having the item be free for limited time and exclusive for newsletter subscribers creates a sense of urgency to keep up with your updates. Exclusive content such as never selling the short story but only making it available to newsletter subscribers is also a big incentive for people to subscribe. Many readers (in fact, I would say most readers) are completionists and don't want to miss out on anything in a series, even for just a single short story in that series. So those are five reasons to use short stories in your marketing to give them away for free. But there are a couple of caveats I want to add. First, free content is part of the marketing plan and not the entire marketing plan. After being an indie author for almost 13 years now (wow, that's a long time), I've come to realize there is no single magic silver bullet for marketing, but if you do a lot of different things that have a little effect on their own, that does add up over time. Second, free content should be in line with reader expectations/interests. For example, I'm writing epic fantasy with the Shield War series, so the short story that comes out with Shield of Deception should really be epic fantasy as well. A mystery writer who gives away romance short stories would probably baffle the reader. Likewise, if I published a Caina book and then gave away a short story that was totally unrelated to the Caina series, or indeed not even in the fantasy genre at all, that would probably confuse and annoy readers. The third caveat is that content besides short stories can also work, such as deleted scenes and alternative point of view chapters or preview chapters. I know writers who have done that, but it needs to be substantial. For example, subscribing to a newsletter and finding out that the special preview is only a paragraph is not going to create goodwill with new subscribers and you're probably going to get a lot of immediate unsubscribes. And fourth, and finally, the story you're giving away needs to feel professional. It needs to be formatted and edited and put together properly and the cover needs to look good. That is something I struggled with for a long time because at the start, I would hire out my novel covers and do the short story covers myself, but I didn't really know what I was doing, and eventually I learned to use Photoshop and got better at that so I could have better looking short story covers, which paid off in the long run, but it was a lot of work to get there. So that is something to consider if you're giving away short stories, is how much you want to spend on the cover image for it. It might be a good idea to just do something simple for a short story you're giving away for free, like finding an appropriate stock image and then putting some appropriate typography on it. It doesn't have to look amazing. It just has to look good and professional enough. Those are four caveats to our five previous thoughts. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/34997465

Episode 235: 5 Reasons To Buy Direct From Authors 01/20/2025

Episode 235: 5 Reasons To Buy Direct From Authors In this week's episode, we take a look at five reasons to buy direct from authors through platforms such as Shopify and Payhip. We also take a look at my choice of computing platforms for 2025. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of , Book #3 in the Ghost Armor series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: TOMBS50 The coupon code is valid through February 7, 2025. So if you ! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 235 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 17th, 2025 and today we are discussing the advantages of buying direct from the author. I will also share an update on what I've done for my writing computers this year and we also have Coupon of the Week, Question of the Week, and an update on my current writing projects. So let's get right to it. Let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Tombs, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. That is Book Three of the Ghost Armor series, and this coupon will get you 50% off the audiobook at my Payhip store: TOMBS50. This coupon code will be valid through February 7, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for next week's cold weather, we have got you covered. Now let's share an update on my current writing projects. As of this recording, I am 116,000 words into Shield of Deception, which puts me on chapter 28 of 31. So I'm hoping before too much longer I will be able to be done with the rough draft, which I think I'm hoping I'm going to be able to finish it on Monday the 20th if all goes well, but we'll see how things work out. I think it's going to end up being around 125,000 words, which will make it the longest book in the Shield War series and probably the longest book I've written since the end of my Dragontiarna series back in 2021. I kind of wanted a break from really long, complex epic fantasy, but I had my break. I'm rested and now we're doing it again. I'm also 13,000 words into Ghost in the Tombs, which will be the fourth book in the Ghost Armor series, and I'm hoping to have that out in March and Shield Deception out in February. In audiobook news, Cloak of Masks is entirely done and working its way through processing. As I mentioned last week, it should be up on a couple of the stores like Google Play, Kobo, and Chirp, though it is not up on Audible yet. On Audible, though, is Ghost Armor Omnibus One (again narrated by Hollis McCarthy). That is an omnibus bundle of the first three books in the Ghost Armor series. That is available in audio at Audible, Amazon, and Apple. If you're on Audible, it is 31 hours of listening for just one credit, which in my opinion is a pretty good deal. That is where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:02:32 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended for enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question: what is your favorite Mexican dish? No wrong answers, including not enjoying Mexican food. A little bit about semantics. I'm aware that Mexican food is a very broad net and like all such definitions is prone to a substantial bit of haziness. Mexican cuisine is not the same as Tex-Mex, which is not the same as Puerto Rican cuisine, which is not the same as Guatemalan cuisine and so on. And the various regions of Mexico itself all have their own distinct culinary traditions. But this is true of all cuisines. By Mexican food, I mean Mexican food as it is generally defined in the United States, which tends to be an assemblage of various foods from the American Southwest, Mexico, and Latin America. And as you might expect, we had numerous responses. Our first response is from Justin who says: We have taco night here once a week or so, but no actual tacos are used. A pan of seasoned crumbled hamburger meat along with standard toppings is available for folks to make what they want. That generally becomes beef and cheese burritos and taco salad (regular bowl, corn chips added as desired). Hollis (who narrates the Ghost and Cloak audiobooks as we as mentioned) says: Quesadillas. Taste decadent but can pack in healthy spinach and peppers and whole wheat tortillas with decadent meat and cheese. Juana says: burritos, loaded! Tracy says: chicken and guacamole with roasted veggies. Becca says: Chile en nogada, basically a meat stuffed grilled chili. I have had it with chicken and beef, usually comes with pomegranate or other fruit containing sauce. John says: Three barbacoa tacos with cilantro, onion and the green salsa and three beef fajita tacos the same way. With large horchata from a sketchy food truck usually found in front of the local tire shop. I have to say some of the best Mexican food I've had has come from somewhat sketchy food trucks in front of local tire shops. Bob says: Any kind of mole. One nearby restaurant had a duck mole that was excellent. A different John says: I'm always searching for a great cheese enchilada. At least three, please. Cheryl says: Never had Mexican, so can't comment. Jenny says: Queso dip, especially when it's got beef and chili seasoning (not like chili peppers, but the southwest chili seasoning and beef). Scott says: Anything Al Pastor (burritos taco, et cetera). Steve says: Fish tacos, any way I can get them. Yet another John says: Brisket quesadillas. I've actually had those and they're very good. Andrew Abbott says: Quesadilla. Gary says: Al pastor. Mandy says: Carnitas. For myself, I think my favorite would be arroz con pollo with mushrooms. Tasty, very filling, and so long as you don't go too heavy on the cheese, it's not too terribly bad for you. I've had a couple of different variations of it, including one that had carrots and I admit I was dubious when it came out with carrots in the arroz con pollo, but it was really good. Steak fajitas would be a close second in my Mexican food preference list. The inspiration for this question was that I made homemade nachos for dinner twice this week and I also made tacos twice for dinner this week because if you make up enough taco mix, you can get a couple of meals out of it. So that's it for Question of the Week. 00:05:37 Work Computers/Writing Computer for 2025 Now I thought I'd talk a little bit about what I'm going to use for a computer in 2025. The reason for this is a couple of weeks ago, I posted a meme about choosing a new computer on Facebook and promptly forgot I had done so, but then I looked back a week and a half later to see it had gone viral and people are still arguing about the best computer in the comments, which is good summary of social media, isn't it? You can carefully consider a 1,500 word post that will get like three likes at the most but toss a meme up and forget about it and you'll come back in a week to see it had thousands of views and almost 300 comments, all of them arguing for or against specific computing platforms. So that is the reason I thought I would share what I actually picked for my computing needs in 2025. Three caveats: One, for your own computing requirements, pick whatever meets your needs and that your budget will allow. Windows, Mac OS, Linux, a tablet, whatever. It doesn't really matter. Honestly, I think 90% of people can do 95% of what they need in a web browser nowadays anyway and maybe use a cheap laser printer to print something out like every other month or so. I recently helped an elderly relative with a computer problem and she does about 95% of her computer needs on her Kindle Fire tablet and only breaks out her laptop when a webpage doesn't render properly on mobile. She can even print from her Kindle Fire. That said, I definitely fall into that 10% that cannot use a web browser for everything. Caveat two, my objective isn't to have the best computer or the most powerful computer, it's to have the computer that will be the most efficient in helping me write and publish books. And finally, caveat three. I worked for a long, long time in IT support and I did in fact write an internationally bestselling book about the Linux command line. I have done tech support for operating systems that no longer exist. Remember Windows CE on phones, Palm OS, Windows Phone, getting Mac OSX to talk to Windows Print Services, getting Mac OSX to talk to Active Directory, and Windows Millennium Edition (ugh)? I remember them and none too fondly. That means whatever objection you may have to Windows, Mac OS, Linux, or any other operating system, I probably know about it already have personally experienced it and have in fact tried to fix it while on the phone with someone having a panic attack about that particular problem. So with all that in mind, this is what I will use for computers in 2025 and hopefully for several years longer than that. For my writing/editing computer, I have picked a Mac mini M4. I've mentioned before that I'm increasingly unhappy with Windows 11 because of Microsoft's turn towards AI. I thought long and hard about either Linux or Mac OS and in the end, I decided on Mac OS because I have several subcontractors who all use Excel. Granted, you can install Excel on a Linux system with an emulation layer, but it never works 100% right. Some of the more advanced Excel stuff, which I do use, freaks out with it. There are a number of excellent spreadsheet programs available for Linux as well, but none of them have 100% compatibility with Excel, which is what I need. Additionally for ebook and paperback formatting, I use Vellum, which is Mac only. I have been very happy with Vellum since 2018, which means I've it to format around 60 different eBooks and paperbacks. So based on all that, I chose the Mac mini M4. I've been reasonably happy with it so far, since I've written about half of Shield of Deception on it. It's quite fast, which shows there are some advantages to the same company producing the CPU and the operating system. Microsoft Word is definitely faster on the M4 and the M Series Macs than it was on the Intel based Macs. I wasn't expecting this, but the overall lack of distraction in Mac OS is nice. It's very unobtrusive. Windows 11 is a very cluttered environment by default with lots of distractions and it is very annoying how Microsoft has been encrusting ads throughout the operating system. You can turn on quiet mode of course, but it's pleasant to have the overall lack of distraction be the default. So the Mac mini M4 will be the computer I use for writing, editing and book layout, but that's not all I do. My everything else computer will be a Windows 11 Intel Core I7 desktop. My previous computer before the Mac mini, a Windows 11 box with Intel Core I7, will also remain in use. The thing about being an indie publisher is that writing and editing isn't all I do. I do my own covers now, which means Photoshop and DAZ3D. Both of those applications are big, fat memory hogs. I definitely did not want to shell out the money for a Mac with that much memory. There's also advertising, which means a lot of spreadsheets and using Photoshop to make those ad images and other miscellaneous tasks like recording expenses, web design, audio proofing, podcast recording, and so forth. In fact, I'm recording this podcast on that computer right now, so my Windows 11 box is now my everything else computer. It doesn't have an NPU chip, which means that Windows 11’s more odious features like Recall won't work on it, therefore I plan to nurse it along as long as possible. I have to admit there was an unanticipated pleasant psychological effect to this. When I write, I go to my writing computer and when I need to do something else, I use my everything else computer, so it's easier to avoid getting distracted by something else I need to do while I'm writing. I should mention gaming. I don't really use desktop computers for gaming any longer. They’re for work. If there's a PC game I want to play, it needs to be able to run on my laptop while I sit on my couch. Otherwise, it's not going to happen. In the past five years, I spent more time playing games on the Switch and the Xbox than on desktop PC. So that is my computer plan for 2025, write on the Mac, do everything else on the PC. I should mention that the day before I started recording this, Microsoft pushed out an update that added this big ugly Copilot AI button to Word and Excel. So while I'm going to finish Shield of Deception in Microsoft Word, I am probably going to write Ghost in the Assembly in either Libre Office Writer or maybe MobiOffice. I need something that's cross compatible between Windows and Mac, so I'll be investigating other word processor options with all this Copilot stuff they're jamming into Word, but in the end, I'm grateful I'm able to use two different desktop computers and hopefully I will use these computers to produce many good books for you to read in 2025. 00:12:00 Main Topic of the Week: 5 Reasons You Should Buy Direct from Authors Now on to our main topic, five reasons you should buy direct from authors. What do we mean by selling direct? It's when the author has his or her own store hosted on a site like Shopify or Payhip that allows the author to sell eBooks, audiobooks, and sometimes paperbacks direct to readers. I should mention this is not intended in any way to be shaming or bullying. If you are most comfortable buying your eBooks from Amazon or Kobo or Apple Books or Google or any other platform, that is what you should do. This is just to talk about the advantages for both readers and writers for buying direct from authors. Payhip and Shopify are the two most popular platforms for selling direct to readers. I use Payhip since I'm mostly interested in selling eBooks and audiobooks direct and not paperbacks. You can actually look at my Payhip store, which is . The links are also available on my website and indeed in the show notes for the show for Coupon of the Week. So why even bother with direct sales when most people are now locked into a platform like Amazon or Kobo and their libraries? Why take the time to convince readers to buy directly from the author? What are the advantages to the author and more importantly, what are the advantages to the reader? And there are five of them, which we'll discuss now. #1: Faster access to new releases. The reason Payhip is always the first platform to become available for one of my new books by about a day or so is that when a new title releases, it's because I'm uploading it myself. With Amazon or other sites, my books are essentially put into a line with many, many other titles and I can't control or predict when it will become available for customers. Various stores can take longer to process or be unavailable/down when a new book releases. Kobo glitched quite badly at various points throughout 2024. In 2021, Barnes and Noble suffered a ransomware attack that blocked the ability to upload new books to the platform for about a month, and all the other stores have had various technical glitches throughout time. That's just the nature of running a large website, but having a site like Payhip gives me a place where people can turn to when it happens. Quite a few people bought Cloak of Illusion from Payhip because Kobo was down for a week when I was trying to upload the book to the site. #2: The second reason, which is a big advantage for both readers and writers, is that I can control discounts and permafree so it's easier to get discounts from an author's store. It's easier to provide discounts on Payhip because I'm getting a higher profit margin. Even with the 50% discount on Ghost in the Tombs we mentioned this week, I still would make from that discounted audiobook more than on Audible and pretty close to what I get from some of the more generous sites like Chirp or Google Play or Kobo. Just like with the uploads, I also have complete control over when the discounts happen on Payhip. Otherwise, as I mentioned earlier, I'm at the mercy of when the uploaded book processes on various stores, just like with release dates. It's hard to promote discounts or short-term freebies on those other platforms because the price change move slowly (and often unreliably) there, whereas they're instant on Payhip. Payhip is also my hub for providing free content to my readers beyond my Permafree series starters. Keep an eye on my blog and Facebook page for Coupon of the Week, where as I mentioned earlier in the show, I give out codes with steep discounts for my Payhip store. I also provide free short stories on my Payhip store for a limited time when new books release. Subscribe to my newsletter if you'd like to know when those free short stories become available. I also make a dozen older short stories (both ebook and audiobook) free on my Payhip at the end of each year, an event called 12 Days of Short Story Christmas. If you follow my website and blog, you might remember that from recently. It would take too much time away from writing to do all these things on all the other platforms, and it often isn't technically possible. Using Payhip frees up my time to do more writing instead of trying to work with the tech support of six different vendors when something doesn't switch price in time to run a specific promotion. #3: A third advantage, and that is a big advantage for readers, is I am not interested in your data and I am not spying on you the way that a large e-commerce site might be. Payhip basically just shows me the buyer's email for an individual’s data. I can't see any other purchases you make. I can't see any individual demographic data and I can't see anything that would be uncomfortable for me to know. Basically all I see is your email address and your geographic location (your rough geographic location), which obviously the store needs in order to calculate sales tax liability. I intentionally set up the Payhip store so that you don't need a user account to buy books or audiobooks there. We also try and turn off the more annoying site settings like follow up emails that request reviews. Even the aggregate data on the Payhip app dashboard is extremely limited compared to other platforms. I can see a map shaded in with countries of visitors, which isn't accurate or useful in an age where you can use a VPN to switch your location with the click of a button. [We can see] if users are accessing the link directly from a Google search and the raw number of clicks on the page. Compared to the amount of data collected by other sites, [that is very minimal]. For example, other sites can show that men ages 23 to 28 who like Taylor Swift, own a cat, and live in Canada are looking at your page at midnight on Tuesday. That is much less data than Payhip collects, so therefore, if you're concerned about data privacy, Payhip is a stronger choice than most other ebook and audiobook platforms. For details about what Payhip tracks separate from what the individual author does, check out their privacy policy. #4: The fourth advantage is the reader gets a choice of file formats and you can send files to another ebook library. With Amazon or indeed any of the other ebook stores, you get your chosen format for an ebook and can't switch that format without using third party software. At my Payhip store, you get three ebook formats: epub, PDF, and when possible, the ancient .mobi format (which is kinda depreciated and gradually going away). I've noticed that people who like PDFs really like PDFs, and so if you want your ebook in PDF form, you can get them in PDF form from my Payhip store. Having a choice of different file formats allows you to more easily import the books into the... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/34898240

Episode 234: Writer Development 01/13/2025

Episode 234: Writer Development In this week's episode, we take a look at why it is good for writers to read outside their genre, and consider how writers develop with experience. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of , Book #2 in the Ghost Armor Series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: VEILS50 The coupon code is valid through January 31, 2025. So if you ! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 234 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 10th, 2025. I have just finished shoveling some snow and today we are going to discuss how writers develop. Before we get to our main topic, we will do Coupon of the Week, an update my current writing projects, and then Question of the Week. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Veils, book number two in the Ghost Armor series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy), on my Payhip store. That coupon code is VEILS50 and that is VEILS50. The coupon code and the link will be in the show notes. The coupon code is valid through January 31st, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook for the chilly January weather, we have got you covered. Now let's take a look at where I'm at with my current ebook writing and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am 82,000 words into Shield of Deception, which puts me on chapter 19 of 31. As I've said before, this is going to be a long one. I think the rough draft is going to end up around 110 to 115,000 words long. We'll see when I get there. I was hoping to have it out in January, but now I am definitely planning that it's going to slip until February just because it's so long. My secondary project is Ghost in the Tombs and I am now 10,000 words into that, I'm pleased to say, and that should be out in March. I'm also 37,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: Reactant, but that won't be out until this summer. In audiobook news, recording and proofing is done for Cloak of Masks, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. If all goes well, that should be out on all the audiobook stories before too much longer. And in fact, I think it's already shown up on Chirp and Kobo and few of the other ones, but it's not up on Audible or Apple yet. Hollis has now started work on Cloak of Dragonfire, so that will be the next audiobook out once Cloak of Masks comes out. Leanne Woodward is working on Orc-Hoard, which would be the fourth book in the Rivah Half-Elven series and hopefully that should be out sometime in February, if all goes well. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:02:19 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. It's time for Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question: what game are you playing in 2025 so far? No wrong answers obviously, including not playing games at all. The inspiration for this question was of course the fact that 2025 is a new year. Surabhi says: I've never been much of a gamer myself. The farthest I got was playing Subway surfers on my phone, but apart from that, I don't really get an appeal to play. Some video games are more complex and thoughtful and they can even prompt new writing ideas. It's something that's been on my mind for a while as an aspiring author and I think I give some games a try just in case they give me plot or vibe ideas. Wondering what you think about that. That is in fact an interesting thought and one I've thought about before, and I will probably go into that in future blog posts and podcast episodes, just not on Question of the Week. Michael says: I have been continuing my long play through Horizon Forbidden West (which is epic), also dipped into Path of Exile 2, which makes my brain hurt with all the character build options. Ioana says: Does Words of Wonders on my phone count? Yes. Yes, it does. A different Michael says: I've been playing Final Fantasy 14 for the last 11 years. It's a great game, but I am taking a break. At the moment, I am playing the newest version of 7 Days to Die on PlayStation 5. Now that it has been upgraded to the latest version available on PC, it's an awesome game. It has its glitches, but that's okay. I enjoy it. Juana says: PlayStation 5 Diablo 2 Reforged. Adeline says: Still playing Overwatch on the PC but also branched into a virtual jigsaw puzzle. On the phone, it's mostly word/puzzle games, Word Collect, Blockudoku, Sudoku, Traffic Escape, and Cryptogram. Scott says: I'm playing my second play through of the new Dragon Age. Indiana Jones is next or another run of Dragon Age. Becca says: Right now, the yearly replay of the Mass Effect series. Cole says: I've been playing Civilization 6 and New World: Aeternum. Both I've played in the past and just got back into them again. A different Scott says: I got hooked on Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I also play some second edition and fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons games that have been going on for years now. JKM says: Path of Exile 2 and Discovering the Galaxy and Elite Dangerous. Ann-Marie says: PC -Minecraft and World of Warcraft. On phone/tablet, Fallout Shelter and Mob Control. For myself, I have been playing Iratus: Lord of the Dead and enjoying it. It's a roguelike and it's basically reverse darkest dungeon. In darkest dungeon, you need to send your adventurers deeper and deeper into the dungeon until you get to the final dungeon (the darkest dungeon) and fight the evil boss. Iratus is the opposite. You play as the sinister necromancer at the bottom of the dungeon and you send your minions higher and higher into the dungeon fighting heroes and harvesting the remains to build your undead minions. I enjoy it partly because it's easy to play it in bite-sized pieces, which works well with my schedule. Darkest Dungeon was a great game, but honestly the save structure wasn't all that great, and if you were doing a large dungeon and you had to save and quit, you could lose a lot of progress on the run. By contrast, you can do one battle in Iratus, save your game, and then get on with your day. On my phone, I mostly play chess.com. In fact, the other day I was just waiting in my car to pick someone up, had nothing else to do, so I pulled up my phone and did chess puzzles on chess.com until the person I was there to pick up arrived. So that is what I've been playing so far as we are 10 days into 2025. 00:05:51 Main Topic: Development as a Writer Now let's move on to our main topic, which was inspired by a question Michael (in fact, the first Michael from Question of the Week), who wrote in to say, “in a post or podcast months ago when talking on a similar theme, he gave some advice that authors should read outside of their genre and said something like, “you can tell when a sci-fi author has only ever read sci-fi.” I was pondering this to work out what you meant. Have you ever elaborated on that in another podcast somewhere?” I have not elaborated on that on the podcast, but let's do so now. Having read only inside one genre is a problem that tends to be faced by newer or younger writers who haven't read very much outside of their favorite genre and haven't really developed their own voice yet. There are generally two signs of this problem, one heavy over-reliance on the cliches of a specific genre and two, real world things that intrude on the book tend to be outlandish and not developed very well. Now, what do I mean by this? #1: Over-reliance on genre cliches. What do I mean by that? Think of a science fiction novel that's very obviously a pastiche of Star Trek and Star Wars or a fantasy novel that's clearly The Lord of Rings with a lot more romance or in the romance genre, you have a heroine who's adorable, clumsy, and describes herself as average, yet draws the attention of the brooding troubled billionaire with stormy eyes and tragic backstory, who somehow has time to maintain six pack abs while running the largest corporate conglomerate in the history of the world. In mystery, you have the divorced alcoholic detective whose superiors want him off the case, and it turns out the case goes all the way to the top. In Young Adult, the main character is the chosen one who will overthrow the dystopia or is the most special student ever at an incompetently run wizard school. (I'm just imagining the education accreditation inspectors I've met in previous careers reacting with horror to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.) In literary fiction, the protagonist is a middle aged alcoholic creative writing professor who is having an affair with a graduate student or students. The characters themselves will be exaggerated. The villains will be really villainous and the protagonists really heroic. Now, this can actually work because a significant number of readers love genre cliches and don't like to read outside them. Very famously, there have been successful romance novels that started off as either Twilight fan fiction or Kylo Ren/Rey Star Wars romance fan fiction, and then the writers changed all the character names and removed the trademark material and were able to sell them. However, these writers often tend to struggle to write more books after that because it becomes sort of locked within their genre and therefore have a hard time writing outside those genre cliches. #2: Real world things that intrude on the book tend to be outlandish, not developed very well, or hand waved away causing a lack of verisimilitude. This I think tends to be simply a function of insufficient life experience, which usually resolves itself over time or failing to recognize that a little research is necessary at times. Like I once read a book where a protagonist’s elderly relative had to pay her property taxes to the city government in two weeks (despite never having missed a payment before) or she would be immediately kicked out of her house and become homeless. Now, that's a good setup that makes for a dramatic tension in the plot, but it's not at all how property taxes usually work in the United States. First, in the US, property taxes are usually paid at the county level, not the municipal. Though, to be fair to the writers, there are exceptions and the United States has this variance in local governments that you can't always 100% generalize. Second, you have to be behind on payments for several years, normally two, and then the local county issues a notice of foreclosure and then the county will sell the house and you get evicted. This, however, tends to be a long process with a lot of lawyers and court summons and a lot of potential off-ramps and compromises before an actual seizure and eviction happens. Additionally, returning to our theme of variation in localisms, some states and local areas may have laws that specifically govern or restrict home evictions. It's usually easier to foreclose on a commercial or industrial property than a residence where someone is actually living. (As is often the case throughout history, in foreclosures the poor and those unable to navigate bureaucracy are more likely to get the short end of the stick than the wealthy and those who understand which forms to file and who to talk to.) But the writer in question overlooked all those facts and set up the situation where the sheriff was waiting to shove the elderly relative on the street within two weeks. It was clear from the text that the writer didn't actually know how property taxes worked and more to the point, didn't actually know she could have done research to find out. I've written before how you need verisimilitude in fiction, just enough details that it feels real, and a small rewrite could have improved the situation quite a bit. The protagonist could have realized that her elderly relative had been behind on property taxes for years and had been lying about it out of embarrassment and been hiding the notices from the county on the topic. This would have added quite a bit verisimilitude to the situation. Another possibility would've been that the local sheriff was corrupt in taking kickbacks from a bank that wanted to buy the house (sadly, there have been cases similar to this in real life), but that wasn't what was happening in the book. The problem with the lack of verisimilitude is that you can shatter the reader's suspension of disbelief. It's not possible to maintain suspension of disbelief for all the readers all the time, but you do want it as much as possible. There are some readers who would not have their suspension of disbelief broken by the example we've just discussed, but quite a few would. So I think those are the two tells for writers who are just starting out and haven't read very much outside their favorite genre, an over-reliance on genre cliches and real life situations that don't make sense or not very well researched, but all that is fine. It's just part of the development process of a writer or another creative person, in my opinion, anyway. I suspect that writers and other creatives go through a five-step process in their development. #1: They're inspired to create you or read something amazing, the Lord, the Rings, Star Wars, Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, The Bourne Identity, whatever, and have the urge to create your own version of the thing that you thought was amazing. #2: You practice and fail. You try to create something amazing and similar to the thing you like, but it doesn't go very well, like you can never quite finish or you realize you're only writing fan fiction of the thing you like. Many people get stuck at phase two and give up. Those who keep trying will eventually improve and jump to the next step, which is step three, realizing that you can do better than something you've read. #3: A major milestone in the development of any creative person is when they read a book, see a painting or watch a TV show that is successful and yet think to themselves, this is no good and I can do better than that. This is a necessary step in building confidence. #4: Struggle to assimilate influences. Any writer or artist is going to have influences, and it's often a struggle to integrate them. Like you can tell when a beginning fantasy writer is heavily influenced by Tolkien or Martin or Robert Jordan or whoever. Again, there's nothing wrong with this, and it is a necessary step. Eventually, you can be inspired by something without having it dominate your style. #5: You settle on your own style. Finally, if you persist long enough, you settle on your own style and voice. That's where you have your own voice but are confident enough to assimilate influences without being dominated by them. The only way to reach this final step, I'm afraid, is through time and practice. Now, where does reading outside your genre help with this? It allows you to draw in other influences that will strengthen your writing within your chosen genre. For example, I don't usually write mystery novels, but I've read a lot of them. I think that has strengthened both the Ghosts and Cloak Games/Cloak Mage series quite a bit since every other book seems to be Caina or Nadia have to solve a mystery for somebody. Ghosts is epic fantasy/ sword and sorcery and Cloak Mage is primarily urban fantasy, but by adding mystery elements into the series, I think the books are strengthened for it. If you read widely enough, you could also approach genre cliches from a fresh direction or with a twist, like the brooding billionaire is an actor hired by the actual billionaire to provide a public front while the actual billionaire gets on with the business of making money, or a Star Wars pastiche with space wizards who are less illogical than the Jedi, or a brooding alcoholic genius detective who suddenly becomes a lot better at his job once he gives up alcohol and cigarettes. So these five steps of writer evolution are only a theory of mine, but I do think this is something that has some truth to it and is my current theory of development for writers. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/34807790

Episode 233: Anatomy of a 10,000 Word Writing Day 01/06/2025

Episode 233: Anatomy of a 10,000 Word Writing Day In this week's episode, I take a look at what goes into writing 10,000 words of a rough draft in a single day. Coupon of the Week returns! This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of , Book #1 in the Ghost Armor series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: SERPENT50 The coupon code is valid through January 24, 2025. So if you need a ! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 233 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January 3, 2025, making this the first episode of 2025, and we are a quarter of the way through the 21st Century. Today we are looking into what goes into a 10,000 word writing day and how I managed to do ten 10,000 writing word days in 2024. We’ll also do Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing projects, and Question of the Week. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. As you might remember from last year, I did do Coupon of the Week for the blog last year, but I sort of fell off doing it in June and never got back around to it. But the new year is time for new endeavors, so we're doing Coupon of the Week again (hopefully in a more organized and sustainable way this time). So this week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Serpent, Book One in the Ghost Armor series, as excellent narrated by Hollis McCarthy at my Payhip store. The coupon code is SERPENT50, and that is SERPENT50 (all in caps). Again, that is SERPENT50. The coupon code is valid through January 24th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for the new year, we've got you covered. The coupon code and the store link will be in the show notes below. So that is this week's Coupon of the Week. Now let's move on to my current writing projects. Every year for the past couple of years, I've published a short collection with all the short stories I published in the previous year, and I'm pleased to report that 2024: The complete Short Stories is available now and you can get it for $0.99 USD at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play Apple Books, Payhip, and Smashwords. It's only going to be 99 cents for the month of January, so now would be a good time to get that. I'm surprised how many people buy the anthology because I give away the short stories for free with all my newsletters throughout the year, but people have told me it's more convenient to have one bundle of the short stories that they just get for $0.99. So that's what we're going to do. You can get that for $0.99 through January 31st. In writing progress, I am now currently 50,000 words into Shield of Deception, which puts me on chapter 12 of 31. So I think I'm between 35 and 40% of the way through the rough draft. It depends on how long the book's going to end up being, but I think it's going to be around 110 to 120,000 words. I'm also about 7,000 words into Ghost in the Assembly, and if all goes well, I'm hoping Shield of Deception will come out this month and Ghost in the Assembly will come out in February, but that may slip by a month because as I said, Shield of Deception is going to be a very long book. In audiobook news, proofing is underway for Cloak of Masks, so I'm confident that will be out in January and that is excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. Leanne Woodward is currently recording Orc-Hoard, the fourth book in the Rivah Half-Elven series. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:03:06 Question of the Week Now let's do Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question: do you make New Year's Resolutions? No wrong answers, obviously. The inspiration for the question was the fact that I posted this on New Year's Day. I had a few responses to this. Mary says: No, I did do a few things getting cleaned up on the day and switched the calendars at midnight. Bob says: Never have. I feel it's best to resolve problems as they occur. Cheryl says: Not anymore. I never kept them, so I gave up making them. Gary says: Not resolutions per se. It is a good time though, to take stock and evaluate whether I'm doing the things I should be doing to get where I would like to be. Tracy says: Nope, roll the dice and go! LOL. Jean says: I'm just good with making it through the year. Still intact, LOL. I can't argue with that. Venus says: The last resolution I made, many years ago, was to never make another New Year's Resolution. For myself, no, I don't really do New Year's Resolutions. I suppose my writing goals for 2025 might qualify, but I have enough books that I essentially own a small publisher now, so it's just sensible to make good business goals for the year. In my personal life, if I need to make some kind of change, I try to do it at once. The most successful personal changes I've made throughout my life usually tend to be in late spring or summer, not at New Year's Eve. What I actually did on New Year's Eve instead of making resolutions was eat mozzarella sticks, watch a movie, and play video games, which made for a pretty enjoyable New Year's Eve. I wonder if New Year's Resolutions are kind of a zombie cultural artifact since it seems like not too many people actually make them anymore, but that would be beyond the scope of this podcast episode. 00:04:51 Main Topic of the Week: Anatomy of a 10,000 Word Day (side note: all times are based on a 12 hour, not 24 hour clock) Now let's move on to our main topic for the week, the anatomy of a 10,000 word day. On December 2nd, 2024, I wrote 10,000 words of Orc-Hoard in one day. It was my ninth 10,000 word day of 2024. A few people who are interested in writing asked about the logistics of it, like how did I actually pull it off, that kind of thing. That seems like a reasonable question since not too many people have 10,000 word days. So let's discuss this a bit. I think for myself, the main two components of a 10,000 word day are one, I don't have anything else I absolutely have to do that day. Two, I don't have any unexpected interruptions that require time and attention. Since I had a grand total of ten 10,000 word days in 2024, you can see how rare these two circumstances are. If there are 365 days between January 1st and December 31st, then the conditions for a 10,000 word day only happen 2% of the time. First, let's take a look at precisely what I actually did on December 2nd, 2024. I should note this is lightly censored to protect family details, but overall, it is accurate for my schedule on December 2nd. At 6:45 AM, I woke up. At 7:10, I made coffee, checked various accounts to make sure nothing got hacked overnight, checked and answered email, set up social media posts for the day, and wrote 250 words of Shield of Deception because that was my secondary project at the time. At 8:30, I proceeded to the gym and spent an hour exercising. At 9:30, I returned from the gym, showered, and cleaned up. At 9:45, I used the electric leaf blower to get some light snow off the sidewalk and porch. Thankfully, this did not take very long because if there had been enough snow that I would need to break out the shovel and the snow blower, then there wouldn't have been a 10,000 word day. At 10:00, I started writing and I did absolutely nothing else but write for the next several hours. At 12:00 PM I stopped for lunch, and at that point in the day I had written 2,700 words of Orc-Hoard so far. At 12:45, I finished lunch and returned to writing and did nothing else until 2:00. At 2:00, I made some coffee and paused to answer some texts and emails that had come in, and at that point I had written 5,100 words of Orc-Hoard for the day. At 2:20, I resumed writing, did nothing else but write for the next several hours, and by 4:45, I reached the 10,000 word mark of Orc-Hoard. At 5:00, I made dinner and cleaned up afterwards. At 6:00, I wrote another 250 words of Shield of Deception and I set up social media and blog posts for the next day. I answered a few emails and texts and I checked various ad platforms to see how they were performing. At 7:00, I stopped doing writing and work-related things for the day. As you can see on December 2nd, I didn't have any unexpected interruptions that demanded attention, and I didn't have anything else that I had to do that day, which as I've mentioned before, is really rare. So I'm pleased that I made the most of it. By contrast, let's look at the next day, December 3rd. I only wrote 6,500 words that day, which is still a good number, but I had numerous other things I had to do and there were several interruptions. I needed to email some people with tax questions. I needed to fill out a fair bit of paperwork for tax compliance related to those questions. I had to make several changes to my ads, and I also needed to go grocery shopping. Additionally, several people came to the front door and a couple of packages were delivered, and therefore I had to stop writing and go answer the door a bunch of times. Obviously, none of these things were bad or particularly onerous. Even the tax paperwork wasn't all that bad as these things go, but they still took up time and had to be done. Additionally, interruptions are sometimes tricky because in all honesty, I'm not as mentally agile as I used to be when I was younger, and I have a harder time switching tasks abruptly. Like 14 years ago, I could go on my lunch break, slam out 2,000 words, and then go back to work without missing a beat. But that was 14 years ago/15 years ago now. Nowadays, I find it harder to get back to what I was doing before I was interrupted. So the fewer interruptions I have, whether planned or unplanned, the more I will write. When I say do nothing else but write for the next two hours, that is exactly what I meant. No internet browsing, no social media, no playing with my phone, no Photoshop, no checking one thing quickly, just a word processor and a lot of typing. For those long stretches, I typically use what's called the Pomodoro Method, 25 minutes of uninterrupted activity followed by five minute break before doing it again. I used to check email during those five minute breaks, but that can quickly get out of control. So instead I started playing classic Super Mario Brothers on the Switch during those five minute breaks. That is different enough from writing that makes for a good mental reset and the game loads quickly so I don't waste my break time waiting for the game to load. Similar vintage platform games also make for good Pomodoro breaks. For the actual timer part, I just use the timer app on my phone since that's good enough for what I need it to do. I've had a couple days where I was at like 8,000 words by 3:30 PM and something came up, so then I powered through an extra 2,000 words at night. I try to avoid writing a lot at night because it's good to give the brain rest, but I will if I decide it's necessary. I should note that I've been a full-time writer for nearly a decade now, so that means I have the time to do a 10,000 word day when the circumstances are right, and indeed it's in my best interest to do so. Back when I had a full-time job, I think I only had one 10,000 word day ever. I was snowed in on a Saturday and there was nothing else to do, so I wrote 10,000 words that day. I think it was for Frostborn: The Master Thief, if I remember right, specifically the part with the wyvern. But since I am now a full-time writer, obviously it is in everyone's best interest if I get as many words down as possible every day when I'm working on a rough draft. I should also note that I don't really think this kind of workflow, the one that I've been using for years, is mentally right for most people. If I'm really interested in something like writing, I focus on it to an intense degree that I think most people would find unsustainable and mentally unhealthy if they tried to do it. So if you're a writer and a 10,000 word day sounds unimaginable, I really don't think you should beat yourself up about it. So that is how I do a 10,000 word day. Circumstances have to be just right, which is why it doesn't happen all that often, but it's probably for the best. A 10,000 word day is, I have to admit, a lot of mental effort, which is why I very rarely have them back to back. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you listen to all the back episodes on , often with transcripts. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we'll see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/34711180

Episode 232: Writing Goals For 2025 12/23/2024

Episode 232: Writing Goals For 2025 In this week's episode, I take a look back at my writing goals for 2024 and see how many I met, and look ahead to my writing goals for 2025. 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 232 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December the 20th, 2024 and today we're looking back to see if I met my writing goals for 2024 and looking ahead to see what my writing goals will be in 2025. This will also be the last episode of 2024 so I can take a few days off for Christmas and New Year's, so tune back in 2025 for some more exciting episodes. In the meantime, we'll start with an update on my current writing projects and then do Question of the Week. My main project right now is Shield of Deception, the fourth book in the Shield War series. I am at 33,000 words into it as of this recording, which if my math is right means I'm about 24% of the way through the rough draft. I’m hoping that will come out in January, but there's good chance it will slip to February because I'm think it's going to be pretty long. My secondary project right now is Ghost in the Assembly and I am 2,000 words into that and I'm hoping to have that out in February, but if Shield of Deception slips to February, then it'll probably be out in March. In audio news, recording for Cloak of Masks, the eighth Cloak Mage book, is nearly done and I expect to have some files to proof for that before much longer. That will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy. Leanne Woodward has started working on the audiobook version of Orc Hoard, so both of those should be coming along shortly in 2025. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:01:34 Question of the Week And now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question: what is your favorite movie or TV version of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens? No wrong answers, obviously. The inspiration for this question was I was scrolling through movies on various streaming services and of course this time of year you can watch a billion different versions of A Christmas Carol. Todd says: my personal favorite of A Christmas Carol is from 1971. This animated classic had the original Scrooge and Marley actors voice the respective characters. Another Christmas television program would also have to be Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas. It's got Frank Oz! I have to admit, I have never heard of Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas before this comment. Justin says: I would have to say the 1951 version with Alastair Sim, although the Muppets are a close second. Bonnie says: This is one of my hubby's favorite Christmas traditions. Unsure of how many different versions we have. His two are American Christmas Carol with Henry Winkler and the George C. Scott one. I like the Albert Finney musical version and the Alastair Sim one. Paul says: Yes, sentimental favorite is the George C. Scott version from 1984. I like the version with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge as well. We'll watch many versions through the season if I see them on. The Muppet version is great as well. Not a fan of the Jim Carey cartoon version. It is okay, but prefer the first three mentioned. Andrew says: The Muppet version is the best. Randy says: Another vote for Kermit here! “Light the lamp, not the rat!” Jenny says: OMG Yes, the Muppet's version! Jeremiah says: Alastair Sim version for classic and modern, the Patrick Stewart version. Catriona says: The Muppets- just iconic! Gary says: The Muppets. Tom says: Yes, A Muppet’s Christmas Carol, nothing else comes close. Becca says: Muppets Tracy says: I like the one with Patrick Stewart. For myself, I pretty much closely agree with the commenters here. I think my sentimental favorite is the George C. Scott version from 1984, since that's the one I used to watch when I was younger. Rewatching it as an adult, it's impressive how Scott doesn't even attempt a British accent. It's actually rather surprising that his version of Scrooge is actually pretty funny, with a dry wit. That said, as many of the commentators here already said, I think the best overall best version of A Christmas Carol is Muppet Christmas Carol from 1992. It works because Michael Caine plays it stone dead serious even when he is sharing the screen with a bunch of Muppets. Caine famously said that he played against the Muppets like he was playing against the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the contrast with Caine’s serious performance against the silliness of the Muppets creates a sort of alchemy that works really well. Also, The Man Who Invented Christmas from 2017, a highly fictionalized version of Charles Dickens writing a Christmas Carol, is definitely worth watching even though it takes a few, well, more than a few creative liberties with the facts. So that is it for Question of the Week this week. 00:04:26 Writing Goals 2024/2025 Now let's look back at my writing goals for 2024, see if I was able to meet them or not, and then look ahead to my writing goals for this coming year of 2025. First of all, I would like to very much thank everyone who bought one of my books or audiobooks this year. I am glad you enjoyed them. I would also like to thank the narrators I worked with this year, C.J. McCallister, Hollis McCarthy, Brad Wills, and Leanne Woodward, who actually did the work of creating amazing audiobooks. Additionally, I would also like to thank my podcast transcriptionist, my Excel bookkeeper, and my audiobook proof listener (all three of whom wished to remain anonymous), who really helped out and took a lot of work off my plate this year so I could focus on writing. 2024 for me on a personal level was a pretty good year. However, I admit it was a rough year for book sales. I was down about 12% overall. This came from two causes. One, a significant portion of the book reading American public disappeared into doomscrolling their news and social media apps from July to about November. Two, I scattered my attention too much across too many series. I think in 2025, I'm going to focus up and do an Andomhaim book every other month like I did from oh, 2013 to 2023 or so. But all that is to come. Let's first look back and see if I met 2024’s writing goals. #1: Write as many words as possible while trying to hit 1 million new words. I did it! I am very pleased to report that I published 1 million words of new fiction in 2024, for the first time since 2020. In 2021, I only published 971,000 words. I figured I had slipped and would get to it the next year. In 2022, however, I only published 814,000 words. This happened due to a combination of a lot of travel and various real-life stresses. In 2023, I published 935,000 words, a significant improvement over the previous year, but I had COVID twice pretty close together in the early spring/summer of that year and that really messed me up for a couple months. But in 2024 (as of Orc-Hoard), I published 1,490,000 new words of fiction for the year. My ten 10,000 word days for 2024 probably helped with that a great deal. I am very happy about this since I tried to hit a million words in 2021, 2022, and 2023 but just couldn't quite get there. So it is very satisfying (after four years of not quite making it) to have finally published a million words of new fiction in 2024. Naturally, I hope to repeat this feat in 2025, but more on that in a little bit. #2: Start The Shield War. I did that as well, publishing Shield of Storms, Shield of Darkness, and Shield of Conquest all in 2024, and they're even all in audiobook (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills). #3: Continue Cloak Mage. I did that as well with Cloak of Titans and Cloak of Illusion. Both books were interesting challenges to write, since Titans burned up a lot of the ongoing subplots for the series. No spoilers. Cloak of Illusion had to work with a new game board, so to speak since so much had changed in the previous book. #4: Continue Ghost Armor. I did that as well with Ghosts in the Veils and Ghost in the Tombs and both of them are in audiobook (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy). #5: Continue Half-Elven Thief. I was able to do that as well with Wizard Thief, Half-Orc Paladin, and Orc-Hoard. Half-Elven Thief, Wizard Thief, and Half-Orc Paladin are in audiobook, as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward. #6: Continue Sevenfold Sword Online. Around June, I renamed this series to Stealth and Spells Online since so many people were getting confused with Sevenfold Sword. I did release Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling in February. Both books in the series are in audio, as excellently narrated by C.J. McAllister. #7: New audiobooks for new books. There's only so much time, energy, and especially budget for audiobooks, so I decided that I was only going to do audiobooks in new series going forward rather than trying to have old books recorded. I think this worked out pretty well, all told, because 2024 will be the best year so far for my self-published audiobooks. We did end up recording some of the older Cloak Mage audiobooks because I promised Hollis McCarthy a recording spot in April for Ghost in the Veils, but I just couldn't finish that book in time. So we did Cloak Mage #7 instead, with #8 and #9 to come in 2025. So I'm pleased I met all my writing goals for 2024. As might have guessed, I'm especially pleased about the million words, since I had been trying to reach that in a year for the last four years and we finally managed to do it in 2024. Very satisfying, lemme tell you. Now let's look ahead to my writing goals for 2025. Here is what I would like to do, in order of priority. #1: Write as many words as possible, hopefully hitting 1 million words of new fiction. As I mentioned above, it was enormously satisfying to hit a million new words in a year after failing to do so since 2020. So I would like to do that again if possible, though of course circumstances may be out of my control. Regardless, I definitely want to write as much as possible in 2025. #2: Finish The Shield War. I am exactly halfway through The Shield War, which as I mentioned earlier in the show, puts me on book four of six. I am planning to write a Shield War book every other month in 2025 until the series is complete. #3: Finish Ghost Armor. I'm also exactly halfway through the Ghost Armor series, which puts me on book four of six. Like with Shield War, I'm planning to write a Ghost Armor book every other month until the series is complete. #4: Continue Cloak Mage. Once The Shield War and Ghost Armor are complete, I plan to continue Cloak Mage, though I will probably start Cloak of Worlds a little earlier as a secondary project. I was originally planning for 15 books in Cloak Mage, but I realized I have way too much story to fit into the remaining three books. So it's going to be 18 in total (not 15), with a suitably epic conclusion once I get to the 18th and final book. #5: Continue Half-Elven Thief. I also want to continue Half-Elven Thief because of the three new things I've tried in the last four years, this one has worked the best. I had originally planned for six books, but as with Cloak Mage, there's too much story to fit in six, so it's going to be nine instead. #6: Conclude Stealth and Spells Online. As of this recording, I am 29,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: Reactant, which will be the third and very definitely final book in the series (or trilogy, technically, since it's only three). I would very much like to thank everyone who read the first two books or listened to the first two audiobooks. Stealth and Spells Online, I admit, didn't perform as well as I had hoped. I was just crunching some numbers to get ready for tax time, which means also looking at my bestselling books of 2024. I have published 158 novels, but my top 10 in any given year are usually books I published in that year. My top five bestselling books in 2024 (unless something drastically changes in the next 10 days) are Shield of Storms, Shield of Darkness, Cloak of Titans, Shield of Conquest, and Ghost in the Veils. All five of them came out in 2024, so that's not a big surprise. Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling came out in February, 2024, so logically you would expect it to be in the top 10. Nope. Top 20? Still nope. Top 30? Got to keep going. It was the 41st bestselling book of 2024. It came out in February, which means it had abundant chances to place in the top 10, but sadly it did not. The Dragonskull and Sevenfold Sword series, both of which have been done for a while, both outsold Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling by a significant margin. I think the problem is that I wanted to write a LitRPG book, but what I ended up with was a high concept science fiction espionage thriller with some LitRPG elements to it. Maybe I should have written it so the protagonist Noah Carver had a harem of anime monster girls or something. That always seems to be popular in LitRPG. The initial confusion with Sevenfold Sword probably didn't help matters, either. I honestly thought about abandoning the series, but if I left it unfinished, it would nag at me forever like a permanent pebble in my shoe. So I've been working on the third book as a secondary project and will hopefully publish it around this summer or so. It will wrap up the story with no unfinished threads while hopefully providing a satisfactory ending to the readers. That will be the definitive end of my foray into the world of LitRPG, then it will be time to turn to my next focus. #7: A new epic fantasy series in the Andomhaim setting. I will start on this after The Shield War is done and it will be my main focus for a while, with books coming ideally every other month. I'm still working on the concept, but all I'll say so far is that we'll be set in Owyllain, which we haven't visited in any depth since Sevenfold Sword finished back in 2019. Even back in Sevenfold Sword, we didn't really see all that much of Owyllain, mainly the cities Aenesium and Trojas. So there's a lot of potential for story ideas there. #8: My eighth and final goal for 2025: new audiobooks as time, budget, and narrator availability allow. My self-published audiobooks did a bit better in 2024 than they did in 2023, so I think I'm going to continue with focusing on new releases rather than trying to bring older series into audio. I would like to do as many new releases in audio as possible, though of course this depends on budget, narrator availability, and a few other factors. So those are my writing goals for 2025. Hopefully I shall have some excellent new books for you very soon, though there's always a quote from the Book of James that I like to remember when I'm making long-term plans: “Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.” So if the Lord wills it, that is what I'm hoping to do in 2025. So that is it for this week and indeed for 2024. I'd just like to take a moment to thank everyone who has listened to the podcast this year. I hope you have found it enjoyable and at times a profitable experience to do so. And also once again, I’d like to thank my podcast transcriptionist. Without her help, the podcast would not have its own dedicated website and there would definitely not be transcripts for the podcast. So thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on , often with transcripts (added note: transcriptions are available for Episode 140 onward). If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next year and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/34552300

Episode 231: Six Tips For Writing While Traveling 12/16/2024

Episode 231: Six Tips For Writing While Traveling In this week's episode, we share six tips and tricks for writing while traveling. 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 231 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December the 13th, 2024, and today we're discussing tips for writing while traveling, which seems a timely topic as the Christmas holiday is coming up. First, we'll have an update on my current writing projects and do Question of the Week. For my current writing projects, I'm very pleased to report that Orc-Hoard, the fourth book in the Rivah Half-Elven series is now out. You can get it at Amazon US, UK, Australia, Canada, and in Kindle Unlimited. I am also very pleased to report that I have now published a million new words of fiction for 2024, which is the first time I've been able to do that in a year since 2020. I will probably talk more about that in an upcoming episode. Now that Orc-Hoard is done, my main project is Shield of Deception, the fourth book in the Shield War series. I'm 11,000 words into that and I'm hoping to have that out in January 2025, if all goes well. My secondary project will be Ghost in the Assembly. I haven't actually started that. I'm still in the outline writing phase, but I'm hoping that will be out in February or potentially March, depending on how long it takes to write Shield of Deception. In audiobook news, Ghost in the Tombs is now out in audiobook (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) and you can get it at Audible, Chirp, and most of the usual other audiobook stores. She's also recording Cloak of Masks for us right now, and that should be out in January, if all goes well. 00:01:29 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question: where do you obtain free media like free ebooks, free audiobooks, free movies, and so forth? There are no wrong answers though for obvious reasons please keep answers limited to legal media sources. No piracy, please. The inspiration for this question was our 12 Days of Short Story Christmas, during which I’ll give away a new free short story every business day until December 23rd. If you want some of those free short stories, head to my website now. They will remain free at my Payhip store until December 31st. Now on to answers from Question of the Week. Our first response is from Grimlar who says: Well, it's not exactly free, but I do find myself buying books from LMBPN publishing every Saturday for $1 each (their new releases from earlier in the week, usually Thursday or earlier). They drop the price of new books for Saturday as a loyalty bonus for their readers. Also, when a series has been completed, they tend to release a box set (or several for a long series), also priced at a dollar per box. They tend to release several books a week, which is handy, provided you like their stuff, which is mostly urban fantasy with some fantasy and some sci-fi. As I said, not free, but does make reading a much more budget friendly pastime. I should note that LMBPN publishing also puts nearly all their stuff in Kindle Unlimited so if you're paying for a Kindle Unlimited subscription already, that is an easy way to check out their books. David says: Some places I buy ebooks and audiobooks from offer some free material from time to time. So when I’m looking for something new I stumble across the odd book that is free that I am interested in, when I do stumble across these free offerings, I sometimes look to see if these authors have other free books. I don't bother with free movies. Jeanne says: I get emails from BookBub, which sometimes has free ebooks, but most of the ebooks are between $0.99 and $2.99. That's probably actually how I came across you (you being Jonathan Moeller in this case). Otherwise, Kobo has a selection of free ebooks, if small. Jenny says: I love Libby, and back when it was available, Axis 360 and Hoopla. I'm not sure if they've just gone from my library or gone forever. (Side note from transcriptionist: Axis 360 changed names to Boundless in 2023. Hoopla is still in business.) Adeline says: The only time I ever received free items is when they're directly given away by the owner. Downloading virtual freebies from somewhere just seems wrong since they would still belong to someone. Although I don't have any movie subscription services myself, I still don't download free movies. Bonnie says: I use Amazon for ebooks. I usually pay quite often though. I get a free town newspaper every two weeks. I don't watch TV anymore, so that isn't an issue. Rob says: Amazon (you can search and order by cost) and authors do free downloads with their newsletter, not just Jonathan Moeller, but PA Mason, Kelly Armstrong, etc. Chris says: Kindle Library, following you online gets me updates. For myself, I get free ebooks through Libby (the local library system’s ebook app) and very rarely audiobooks as well. I also, if I see something I like on the Kindle store that's free, I will download that right away. For free and legal movies and TV shows, I usually go to Tubi, which is free but ad supported and has a surprisingly large collection of stuff. So that's it for Question of the Week. 00:04:38 Main Topic of the Week: Writing While Traveling Now onto our main topic this week, tips and tricks for writing while traveling, since of course many people travel over the Christmas holidays, so this seems like a timely topic. Two principles to start with: First, think of why you are trying to write while you're traveling. Is this something you really need to be doing and more to the point, is this really something you should be doing? This obviously depends on the nature of your trip. If you are traveling for business reasons and you're sitting in an airport for four hours waiting for your flight and then you have a five hour flight, that would be an excellent time to get some writing done since otherwise, you would just be like everyone else in the airport paying too much for coffee and staring at your phone. If you are on the kind of trip that is a vacation, it might be a good idea to put aside writing while you are doing that just for the sake of your own mental health. If you are on a trip that involves a lot of family obligations, like for example, a funeral, then it might be a good idea just to set aside writing for that time, focus on the emotional needs of the moment and then pick it back up once the trip is over. The other thing to keep in mind if why you are writing is if you have a deadline. That sort of focuses the mind quite a bit and if you have a deadline, you're going to have to plan accordingly. The other thing to keep in mind is flexibility, why you are writing and flexibility because as we know, modern travel is utter chaos. I mean, it was worse in the past. I mean, Odysseus tried to get home from the Siege of Troy and got lost for 10 years, which is less likely nowadays, but travel is still unpleasant and a lot of things can go wrong, and you have to be flexible and seize the moment when you can and accept that sometimes things are beyond your control. If you are working on a deadline while you are traveling, then you'll have to treat it like any other remote work job while you are traveling. Having a true external writing deadline means you need to plan your vacation or trip differently and in a more structured way if possible. You absolutely need to plan this with your traveling companions in advance (if you're traveling with people), so everyone's prepared for this and pick your destination based on internet access instead of relying on standard hotel Wi-Fi because as we all know if you travel, standard hotel Wi-Fi generally is pretty terrible. You may need to bring some sort of mobile hotspot with you or pay extra to use your phone as a mobile hotspot while you are traveling. If you are genuinely on a deadline and don't want to burn through your mobile data, check the internet setup of your destination before you arrive. It might also be wise to check on guest internet use policies at nearby libraries or universities if your destination does not have reliable internet and you'll need to use the internet for a significant amount of time. Many of these places require registration or a fee for non-residents/non-students but tend to have far more reliable internet than coffee shops or hotels. Also, if you're in the phase of writing where you're writing your rough draft, if you're not editing and relying on an online editing tool like Grammarly or Pro Writing Aid, then you can probably do without internet if you absolutely have to. If you're just writing, just open up your laptop, sit down and write, it actually might be beneficial to have the internet off if you are prone to being distracted by the internet, but if you do need internet, bear that in mind. For the next part of this episode, we're going to focus on the second type of writing while traveling, the feeling that many writers have that they should be writing while traveling or on vacation and fear of missing progress or falling out of their hard-won routine. I'll also provide some suggestions if you decide you want to write while traveling in spite of the various obstacles you might face. If you don't have a deadline and this isn't a necessity for you and you really want to get some writing done while you're traveling, you need to ask yourself why. Writing because you want to means you can be flexible, but you still want to plan your expectations in advance to make the trip smoother and to deal with things in accordance with reality (always a good idea). If you're not on a deadline and you don't have to be doing this, why do you want to write while traveling? Do you just want to keep the streak going by at least writing something? Do you want to keep your normal writing routine exactly? Are the reasons why you want to write more important than the personal, work, or family obligations on this trip? Like I said before, there are some trips where it's really in the best interest if you put aside any writing or work for the time and focus on the needs of the trip, whether that's a vacation by yourself or a family vacation, a family gathering such as a holiday or a funeral or another family gathering that's a bit happier than a funeral, like a graduation or a wedding or a baptism, that kind of thing. Do you want a soothing writing retreat at a lakeside cabin, but really you're spending a week with ten relatives in a cabin that you just rented? Then you might need to rethink your expectations for writing during that week. Now onto some tips for writing while traveling. #1: If possible, plan the time. Note that this may not always be possible. You may have to carve out your own time to get writing done because it's definitely not a group activity, especially if you are on vacation with friends or family or something of that nature. Are you going to be able to sneak in half an hour of writing while everyone else is off on the boat or going to town for ice cream? That's a far more realistic of a goal in that circumstance than an imagined weeklong writing retreat. Here's a recent example for myself. Over Thanksgiving before dinner, I was the only one who was not taking a nap in the house. I was the only one who was awake. I could have used that time to read or play video games, but instead I pulled out my computer and wrote a thousand words of Orc-Hoard. Now obviously there is nothing wrong with playing video games or reading or quietly browsing the internet in that circumstance, but I felt like what I really wanted to do in that moment while everyone else was taking their naps was to get a thousand words down. So that's what I did, and that's also a good example of a flexibility of seizing the moment when it presents itself. I should also note that traveling is definitely not the time to start a radical new habit. If you can't get out of bed before 07:00 during a normal day, getting up to write at 04:30 while traveling is unrealistic, especially if you're staying up later, dealing with jet lag, or not sleeping well as usual, since it's often difficult to get a decent night's sleep in a hotel or somebody's guest room. One long block of writing time may be more realistic than every day of the trip, especially if you're traveling with groups or with small children. Maybe you use the train ride or flight (or better yet, the seemingly endless wait for a delayed flight) as your writing time for the trip, and don't worry about the days at your destination. Like I mentioned before, if you're stuck at the airport waiting four hours before a flight will take you on a three-day trip and you get 3,000 words written during those four hours, you've probably got your trip writing covered. #2: If possible, minimize distractions/create a working setup. Find a low traffic area if you're going to write such as the guest bedroom or your hotel room or something. Some hotels have work areas or lounges that are more tucked away from the lobby because hotel lobbies can get pretty noisy, especially nowadays when people seem compelled to bring their dogs with them into hotels. We also cover how to minimize distractions pretty extensively in our November Writing Challenge episodes, specifically Episodes 225 and 226, so you can listen to those tips there. #3: I think this might be the most important tip: find small windows of opportunity. In other words, be flexible. Find short bursts of opportunities to write such as when you're in line for the rental car or waiting for your coffee at a busy coffee shop. These short bursts of two to three minutes might be the most realistic goal for traveling while writing, especially if you can teach yourself to write on your phone with your thumbs. This might sound a bit outlandish, but I do know people who do this and have written entire books thumb typing on their phones on their commute from rural Britain to London every day. Then you will give yourself a big leg up because there are small, modern laptops you can use pretty effectively in small moments and carry with you, but everyone carries their phones with them most of the time nowadays, so you can whip out your phone and thumb type out a few paragraphs while you're waiting in line. That would be to your advantage, and honestly, it's probably a better use of your time in line than idly browsing social media or the internet on your phone. #4: Find a way to store ideas on the fly (especially important for short bursts of writing). You can use the Notes app or voice memos on your phone. Test this before the trip so it feels like instinct to do, to write down things quickly or to record paragraphs or carry a small pocket notebook with a pen. I should note for that myself, I only very rarely write ideas down because I have lots of ideas and I've always figured that if the idea is good, it'll come back to me when I think about it later, and if it's no good, I'll forget about it. I's sort of a survival of the fittest for ideas inside my head, but a lot of people's brains don't work that way, so it's a good idea if your brain doesn't work that way to write down ideas as they come to you. #5: Be realistic about your goal, and this also ties into being flexible and having a realistic idea of what's going to happen on your trip. Is it worth pausing writing to have undivided time with family/ friends on this trip or is it worth pausing writing so you can relax (for example, if you're going on vacation or if you are visiting family, whether for a happy occasion like a wedding or a graduation or for a sad occasion like a funeral)? Believe it or not, coming from me who was just boasting about publishing a million new words of fiction this year, there are some advantages to pausing writing for a while when you're compelled to do so by something like a trip. The potential positives: you can come back fresh to your work and your progress, especially after seeing lots of new things. That can work well with some people and help someone out of a rut. Another advantage is if you're traveling, you don't have to deal with traveling with your laptop or additional tech equipment just for writing purposes or risk getting them damaged or lost. It's a lot easier to travel with a modern smartphone than it is with a modern laptop. This can also give you more enjoyable and focused time with family on vacation, which will help if you need to focus on writing instead of them at some later point, like for example, not making your second cousin's play because of a later deadline won't feel like a pattern of neglect if you just spent a week visiting them at the lake. This can also believe it or not, help with family strife because if you are frustrated with not meeting your writing goals while on your vacation, but if you give yourself permission to take a break, you won't be frustrated and you will probably be better company for any people you are visiting. The advantage is you can enjoy your vacation and spend time with your family or friends being fully present in the moment and not being distracted by what you have to do. For myself, I've been publishing for…in the coming April, I will have been self-publishing for 14 years and I've veered back and forth at different times over this over the years. There are some trips I've gone on where I've done a significant bit of writing at the time, and there are other trips I've gone on where I haven't done any writing at all and focused on the moment. Again, it really depends on the circumstances of the trip. If, for example, I'm visiting family and everyone's taking naps in the afternoon, why not whip out my laptop and start typing and see if I can get out a thousand words before everyone wakes up and it's time for dinner? But other trips, for example, I've spent all day in the car driving from various national monuments and landmarks, and if you're doing that, that is really not a good time to attempt any writing for those kinds of trips, and so I did not do any writing on those kinds of trips. Let me use myself as an example here. This coming Christmas holiday between Christmas Eve and about December 29th/December 30th, I'm not planning on doing any writing at all. I might do some writing if, for example, everyone's taking a nap or everyone's out doing errands or on phone calls or something and I have nothing else to do, so I might as well whip out my laptop and see if I can squeeze out a thousand words, but for the most part, I'm planning to focus on the holiday and not do any writing or very much writing between Christmas Eve and the 29th and the 30th or thereabouts. Then usually if I do that kind of thing where I have to take a couple days off or a weekend off or that kind of thing, I feel pretty refreshed and eager to get back at it once I am done with the trip and the vacation or the holiday is over. Additionally, is it more realistic to use the trip for inspiration instead of getting writing done? You could visit museums related to what you're writing about, historical sites or buildings, or visit new cities. If you're planning to set a book there someday. Thinking of it as a research/inspiration trip may help with a feeling of guilt from not writing and make the trip more enjoyable. What I've been doing lately is, as I've mentioned before frequently on this podcast, I usually do my own covers now, and that requires, of course, a steady supply of stock photos. So when I'm on a trip lately, if I see something scenic, it's time to whip out the camera and take a few pictures because modern... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/34437210

Episode 230: Autumn 2024 Movie/TV Show Roundup 12/09/2024

Episode 230: Autumn 2024 Movie/TV Show Roundup In this week's episode, I take a look back at the movies and TV shows I watched in Autumn 2024, and rate them from my least favorite to my favorite. TRANSCRIPT Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 230 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December the Sixth, 2024, and today we are looking at my movie/TV show roundup for Fall 2024. Before we get to that, we'll have an update on my current writing projects and then we will do Question of the Week. First up, I'm pleased to report that the rough draft of Orc Hoard is done at 78,000 words, so it'll probably end up being about exactly the same length as Half-Orc Paladin, the previous book in the series. I've also written a short story called Commander's Wrath that newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of when Orc Hoard comes out and hopefully we're on track to have that out before Christmas. I'm also 7,000 words into Shield of Deception, which will be the fourth book in The Shield War series and if all goes well, I'm hoping to have that out in January or February. In audiobook news, recording is currently underway for Cloak of Masks and that will probably be out towards the end of January or perhaps February, depending on how long processing takes. 00:01:02 Question of the Week Question of the Week is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what do you listen to while working: genre of music, audiobooks, podcast, nothing else so you can concentrate, et cetera. No wrong answers obviously, and we had quite a few answers. David says: I listen to audiobooks and music. Music ranges from classical to country to pop, bands and soul artists to instrumental. No rap or heavy metal or dance music or I listen to music from YouTube channels. If I have to really focus on what I'm doing, I'll turn it low so it doesn't distract. Justin says: video game music is my first choice. It can help you grind in real life just like it does in the game. If that isn't working for me, then rock or classical music with movie soundtracks at third. Brooks says: I tend to gravitate towards hard rock/punk rock. I have to stay adrenalized. Outside work, I'll listen to almost anything. Michael says: I find I can't listen to words or lyrics without getting distracted by them, so instrumental music is the way to go. Usually video game music too (the Stelara soundtrack is particularly epic), movie scores (Kingdom of Heaven is one of my favorites), or Dungeon Synth, an amazing music genre I only discovered recently. Barbara says: sometimes I play music while writing, but most of the time I prefer the silence so I can better hear the voices in my head. Of course, I prefer very specific types of music that always end up coming back no matter how much I try to stray. Jenny says: lots of EDM and techno if words would distract me or my solid nineties pop punk angsty mix. I also have a giant one I called “I heard it in a video game” for background music. John says: When I did/could work, I enjoyed outlaw country music, particularly that from Texas. Put me in a kick butt and take names kind of mood. When you're a plumber who gets paid by the work done, not the hour, that's where one wants to be. (A different) John says: I only listen to music when I'm working in the kitchen. I'm eclectic. Sometimes classical music, sometimes ‘80s prog rock with Hawaiian music and occasionally jazz tossed in. Juana says: I like rock and roll from many eras. I put my eclectic music on shuffle. I also listen to movie soundtracks: Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Animal House, et al. Brandy says: If I'm cooking, I listen to Pandora. There's a pop ‘90s - ‘20s station. I do have a few that are specifically listed, angry or sad, one more angry German metal or Mongolian throat metal, the other more goth and industrial. I read books instead of listening. If I'm proofing, I usually have something on in the background. Today it's Sanctuary Season One. Morgan says: ADHD means I jump around a lot on what I'm listening to depending on the day, but audiobooks- usually fantasy or horror. Podcasts- Pathfinder actual play podcasts, horror podcasts, and wrestling/gaming news podcasts. Music, whatever artist/album I'm obsessing over at the time, but usually prog rock, metal, or rap. Matthew says: I always have my iPad for background noise. If I'm particularly invested in getting chapters done, I'll put on something largely audible. Gary says: audiobooks, podcasts, worship music, Christian hard rock. Bob says: Retired now, but when I was working I didn't listen to anything-needed to concentrate on what I was doing. When paying bills, I sometimes have some Morse Code on in the background (one of my previous means of paying the bills). On long car trips, it's nice to have some distraction -whatever radio station I can find, preferably one with a story. In truck stops, we used to find some stories on disc that had the actors doing the voice of the characters and some of them were pretty good. For myself, I almost always listen to music while I'm working and that genre is usually soundtracks and video games, movies, and TV shows (in that order) that I liked, which makes it difficult to discuss music with people, I have to admit. I do listen to podcasts when I'm working outside, so long as I'm not using a power tool that requires earplugs for safe operation (which sadly seems to be most of the time). 00:04:42 Main Topic: Autumn 2024 Movie/TV Review Roundup Now on to our main topic, the review roundup of the movies and streaming shows I watched in Autumn 2024. I was going to do a combined Autumn/Winter 2024 one, but it was getting a bit too long, so Winter 2024/2025 will be its own post in a few months. I seemed to watch a lot of time travel movies this time around and quite a few with Space Magic. As ever, the grades are totally subjective and based on nothing more than my own thoughts and opinions. Now let's take a look at the movies and streaming shows from least favorite to most favorite. First up is Escanaba in Da Moonlight, which came out in 2001 and it is a surrealist comedy about hunting traditions set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. 42-year-old Reuben Sodi is the only man in his family who has never shot a buck, so when he complains about this to his Native American wife, she casts a spell to help Ruben bag his first buck, which results in a very bizarre nighttime journey/vision quest. This includes UFOs, visitations by nighttime spirits, and a Department of Natural Resources officer having a mental breakdown. This was a funny movie, but it was definitely very weird and even more specific. If you're at all familiar with the hunting culture of Upper American Midwest, you'll get the humor. If you're not familiar with it, this will be like watching a movie from another planet. Overall grade: C. Next up is Looper, which came out in 2012. I didn't actually like this movie very much, but I respect how well done it was. Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Joe and is a type of assassin called a looper living in the US in 2044. About 30 years after 2044, time travel is invented but immediately outlawed. Since it's difficult to get away with murder in 2074 due to advanced technology, crime syndicates have taken to sending people they want eliminated back in time to 2044 where the loopers immediately execute the target in exchange for a big fat payout. Loopers can live like kings, but there's a price. Eventually the loop is closed and the looper’s future self is sent back to be killed by his past self. Failure to comply results in an extremely grisly fate at the hands of the syndicate. Joe, being a hardened killer and drug addict, is fine with all this and even helps turn in a fellow looper who failed to close his own loop. Then Joe's future self arrives. Joe is about to kill Future Joe (played by Bruce Willis), but Future Joe escapes and Present Joe has to hunt down and kill Future Joe if he wants to survive. In the process, Present Joe stumbles across the farm of a woman named Sarah (played by Emily Blunt) and her young son Sid. Present Joe realizes that future Joe has traveled back to kill the child, Sid, who will be responsible for the death of Future Joe's wife in the future. Despite everything he's done, Present Joe is not okay with this and gears up to help Sarah defend Sid from Future Joe. This movie was on the very dark side of noir filmmaking: no good characters, essentially only various degrees of bad people trying to navigate their way through the maze of time crimes. I did strongly dislike how fundamentally nihilistic the movie was and the addition of telekinesis did seem like kind of a plot crutch. There is also some unnecessary nudity. Rian Johnson is actually an excellent filmmaker. Knives Out and Glass Onion were both very good, but I cannot imagine how someone will watch Looper and think, hey, this guy is a good choice for a Star Wars movie. Overall Grade: B- Next up is Agatha All Along, which came out in 2024. It was extremely well written and well-acted. You almost have to watch it twice just to admire how well put together the plot was. I wasn't expecting to like Agatha All Along, but it is an excellent example of writing a show with a villain protagonist and actually pulling it off. The show is also a good example of something I've talked about before on the podcast and the blog: characters can be likable, emotionally sympathetic, or both. It's sometimes tricky to write a character who's both, unlikable but emotionally sympathetic. By contrast, Agatha Harkness is an excellent example of a character who's both likable and highly, highly unsympathetic. Agatha All Along is indeed a show with a villain protagonist, but Agatha is charismatic enough to remain likable even though she's unquestionably an absolute monster who deserves every bit of suffering she endures. Actress Kathryn Hahn deserves major credit for making someone as evil as Agatha so charismatic. Agatha retains just enough of a sliver of sympathy to keep the audience from turning on her, but even when she shows flashes of humanity, beneath that there are even more layers of monster. She also does a very sort of a modern Doctor Who/ Sherlock thing where she talks very fast and puts up a flippant and silly facade, but she's actually calculating things several steps in advance and manipulating everyone around her to her final goal. Anyway, the plot of Agatha All Along is that Agatha finally breaks free from the spell of the Scarlet Witch placed on here at the end of Wandavision. However, Agatha doesn't have any magic left, which is a major problem for her because she has very many enemies who very much want to see her dead as soon as possible, but then a mysterious teenager turns up and asks for Agatha's help. He wants to walk the legendary Witches’ Road and it has said that someone who walks the road and survives to the end will receive their heart's desire. Since Agatha doesn't have any other options and she has some major enemies, she agrees. Agatha, the teenager, and the Witches’ Road itself all have very dark secrets and their reveal makes for some major drama. As I mentioned, the show was very well written and acted. I suspect that may be the secret for movie or TV success in the 2020s economic climate: good actors, an excellent script, and keep your costs down. Overall grade: B Our next movie is Field of Dreams, which came out in 1989. An Iowa farmer discovers he’s a very specific kind of necromancer, like how sports medicine is a specific field of study. Maybe sports necromancy is a specific subclass for evil wizards or something. All joking aside, the main character is Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) and he's walking his cornfield one day and he hears a mysterious voice tell him “If you build it, he will come.” Ray builds a baseball field in one of his cornfields and began speaking to the ghost of Shoeless Joe, a popular baseball player who died in 1951. Soon a lot of other ghosts arrive and start playing baseball as well. The mysterious voice starts urging Ray to “ease his pain” and Ray concludes this must means Terrance Mann (played by James Earl Jones), an activist writer from the sixties who dropped out of the public eye and is living in seclusion. So Ray starts on a cross country trip to persuade Mann to come to his baseball field. This movie is really perhaps the ur-example of the Feel-Good Eighties Movies and maybe a Baby Boomer movie. The characters speak with near religious reverence for the ‘60s, baseball is the Great American Pastime, and Ray really wants to heal his relationship with the father he rebelled against back in the ‘60s. The best part of the movie was unquestionably James Earl Jones' character and his performance as he resigns himself to Ray’s craziness and then starts to believe in it was pretty great. Overall grade: B Next up is Holiday, which came out in 1938. Holiday is a romantic comedy from the 1930s. Cary Grant plays Johnny Case, who has fallen in love with Julia Seton, the daughter of a wealthy New York banking family. However, his more individualistic outlook soon puts him at odds with Julia's more traditionalist family, though this draws the attention of Julia's elder sister Linda (played by Katharine Hepburn). It felt a bit like watching a play and a little research revealed that it was indeed based on a play from 1928, which may be why the film didn't do so well when it originally came out, though it is regarded as a classic today. Viewers in the Great Depression era would probably find it difficult to sympathize with a man who wanted to turn down a well-paying job at a bank, not out of moral objections to the bank's business practices, but because he would feel constrained. The Seton family is played as eccentric and somewhat troubled, but not as buffoons or villains as rich people were often portrayed in other 1930s movies. Good performances and worth watching as a classic, though sound technology has improved quite a bit in the last 90 years, so you probably will want to watch it with the captions on. Overall grade: B Next movie is Twisters, which came out in 2024. This is basically the same movie as Twister from back in 1995, but with some of the plot of Pride and Prejudice bolted on. Kate Carter (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones) is an Oklahoma storm chaser with her boyfriend and best friends. One day, one of their storm chases goes horribly wrong, killing Kate's boyfriend and most of their friends. Five years later, Kate is working for the National Weather Service in New York when her old friend Javi, the other survivor of that storm, asks for her help testing a new radar tracking system. Kate reluctantly agrees and they return to Oklahoma and crosses horns with storm YouTuber Tyler Owens (played by Glenn Powell) who makes videos of his truck shooting fireworks into tornadoes. Naturally, Kate and Tyler immediately misunderstand each other in the same way as in Pride and Prejudice but are forced to work together when it turns out that Javi's company might have ulterior motives. I thought this was a thoroughly enjoyable summer popcorn flick. Given how both Covid and the 2023 writers’ strike hit this movie's production like two successive freight trains, it's astonishing it turned out so well. Overall grade: A- Next up is The Rings of Power Season 2, which came out in 2024. I have the same attitude towards this as I do with Starfield. I really like it. In fact, my Xbox told me I played Starfield for 270 hours in 2024, but I get why some people do not. This show is essentially very elaborate fan fiction. The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, despite the changes from the book, was still recognizably The Lord of the Rings. The Rings of Power is almost entirely its own thing. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this for a couple of reasons and hope it continues. First, it's nice to have an epic fantasy TV series that's not a nihilistic pornographic torture fest like Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon and is more competently executed than Disney's ill-fated Willow Series. Second, all things must be taken in their context. What do I mean by this? Perhaps a food comparison will illustrate the point. The book the Lord of the Rings is like Kobe beef prepared by the finest chefs in the world, the sort of experience you get maybe once or twice in your life if fortune smiles upon you. The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is like a high-quality supermarket steak grilled in the backyard by someone who's pretty good at it. The Rings of Power is like McDonald's, but there are times when you really want some McDonald's. In fact, I kind of want a Big Mac after saying all of that, but The Rings of Power is really good McDonald's, the kind of McDonald's you have after driving the car for 250 miles without stopping across one of America's flatter and less populous states. The only place to eat for like a hundred miles in any direction is this McDonald's in the same building as a gas station, so you stop and don't expect very much, but it turns out the fries are crispy and salty and the nuggets are just right. I don't think it's surprising that The Rings of Power has had such a mixed reception. The Venn diagram of “enjoys Lord of the Rings” has some wildly divergent circles to it and that is a testament to the fact that the Lord of the Rings is such a great work of literature that so many people from so many very different ideological identity groups enjoy and identify with the book. Even ideological identity groups that are mortal foes agree on their approval of the Lord the Rings. So naturally each different group has its own strong opinion of what an adaptation should look like. With that very long-winded introduction out of the way, I liked season two and I thought it was an improvement over Season One, a lot more narrative tension. Season One perhaps spent too much time setting the table and building context, but Season Two works well in making Season One better in hindsight. The Rings of Power version of Galadriel is improved in Season Two because she was one of the few characters in Season One able to throw off Sauron's mental domination and seduction. The highlight of the season was the toxic dynamic between Sauron and Celebrimbor. Actors Charlie Vickers and Charles Edwards did an amazing job portraying the slow-moving disaster that Sauron and Celebrimbor’s collaboration would create, two intellectual equals working together to create something great, but nonetheless, Sauron twists everything to his own ends. Their final scene together was just astonishingly good. The portrayal of Sauron is both very modern and true to Tolkien, a destructive narcissist who actually believes whatever lies he's speaking at any given moment. He really, truly believes he's going to heal Middle Earth, no matter how many people he has to kill to do it. The scenes with Prince Durin, his father, and one of the dwarven rings of power were great as well. It had the same sort of feel to it as an adult child watching with horror as a beloved parent succumbs to a drug addiction. The best new character the show created (in my opinion) is Adar, one of the progenitors of the orcs. Tolkien himself could never really decide on the origin of the orcs and came up with different thoughts throughout his lifetime. When editing The Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien settled on the corrupted former elves version, which seems to be what his father had been leaning towards anyway. Rings of Power takes that to its logical conclusion. Adar wants his orcish progeny to live free of the dark lords Morgoth and Sauron, which makes sense because in the books, the orcs hated... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/34318135

Episode 229: November Writing Challenge, Part V - A Look At The Five Principles Of Writing 12/02/2024

Episode 229: November Writing Challenge, Part V - A Look At The Five Principles Of Writing In this week's episode, we wrap up the November Writing Challenge by taking a look back at the Five Iron Laws Of Storytelling, which have often been discussed on this show before. Be sure to get your free copy of . The book will remain free until December 9th: https://payhip.com/b/JPDoT TRANSCRIPT Note: Spoiler alert at 3:35. Please check this section of the podcast before proceeding if you are concerned about spoilers for several older television shows, movies, video games, and books. 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 229 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November 26th, 2024, and today we are wrapping up our November Writing Challenge with a look back at The Five Iron Laws of Storytelling. You may note that I am recording this a bit earlier than I usually do, but that is because I want to take a couple days off for Thanksgiving. To celebrate the end of our November Writing Challenge and to congratulate you all for listening to these shows, I am giving away free copies of my nonfiction book, Storytelling: How to Write a Novel on my Payhip Store. The link will be in the show notes, and if you follow that link, you can get a free copy of Storytelling: How to Write a Novel from my Payhip Store until December 9th. So follow that link in the show notes to my Payhip store and you can get a free copy of Storytelling: How to Write a Novel until December 9th. Before we get to our main topic, let's have a look at my current writing projects. My main project right now is Orc Hoard, the fourth book in the Rivah Half-Elven series, and that puts me at 55,000 words into it and that puts me on chapter 11 of 18. So I think the final draft will be around 85,000 words or so, which will make it the longest book in the series to date. And if all goes well, I very, very, very much want to have that out before Christmas. I'm also about 4,000 words into Shield of Deception, which will be the fourth book in my Shield War series and if all goes well, I am hoping that will be the first book I publish in 2025. In audiobook news, the audiobook of Cloak of Spears, as excellent narrated by Hollis McCarthy, is now available at all the usual ebook stores. I will include a short preview of the audiobook of Cloak of Spears at the end of this episode, so you can listen to that then. And that is where I'm at with my current writing projects as we wrap up November and head into December. 00:01:57 Main Topic: The Five Iron Laws of Storytelling So now let's go right into our main topic, The Five Iron Laws of Storytelling. I figured this would be a good main topic to wrap up our November Writing Challenge with as it is a good reminder and a good summation of many of the things we talked about in the past month. The Five Iron Laws of Storytelling is a concept I first talked about on my website like 10 years ago now. The name Iron Law is sort of a tongue in cheek joke because I got the idea from a science fiction author Jerry Pournelle, who termed what he called Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, where describing that after a certain amount of time, a bureaucracy will cease to attend to the function to which it was created and instead devote its attention to sustaining and perpetuating the bureaucracy. And I'm sure we can all think of examples of that, so that's where I took the name from, but it's not so much Iron Laws as these are useful principles to guide you while you are writing a fictional story, whether it's a short story, a screenplay, or a novel. I would say it's fair to argue that storytelling does have some laws you can follow (or at least if you don't like the term laws, best practices) and a writer will ignore those best practices to his peril. When people get ticked off about the ending of a story like the ending of The Sopranos or the ending to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, if they simply don't like a novel or a TV show, it’s usually because the writer ignored one of more of these Iron Laws that we're going to talk about. These then are what I believe to be The Five Iron Laws of Storytelling. When discussing them, I will cite five examples that I think to be excellent examples of the craft of storytelling: the movie the King’s Speech, the movie Wreck-It Ralph, the movie Gravity, the novel Pride and Prejudice, and the TV series Breaking Bad. I should note that I did not personally care for Breaking Bad because it was too nihilistic for my taste, but nonetheless, it was an excellently crafted example of a well-written story. I'll also cite four things I believe to be examples of bad storytelling: the final two volumes of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, the Dragon Age 2 computer game, the original ending of the Mass Effect 3 computer game, and the ending of the Sopranos TV series. So note that there will be spoilers for all of these shows, films, books, and games. Now onto the five laws. #1: The protagonist must have a problem that results in a conflict because if there is no problem, there is no story. Conflict and problems are engines that drive the story. A happy life with minimal conflicts and problems might be the ideal that we all want in real life, but it does make for an exceedingly dull story. The main character of his story needs to have a problem that results in some kind of conflict. Note that this conflict doesn't necessarily have to have an actual villain, it just needs a problem to solve. The movie The King's Speech doesn't have a villain (though the future and former King Edward VII is kind of a jerk) but instead revolves around George VI’s efforts to deal with his speech impediment. Gravity likewise has no villain but centers around Dr. Stone's efforts to survive in the harsh environment of space. So the protagonist must have a problem. The story is about how he or she deals with said problem, which leads us on to number two. #2: The protagonist’s problem and conflict must be consequential to the protagonist and have real stakes for the protagonist. The problem has to be serious because if it is not, there are no real stakes, the reader will get bored and cease to care about the character. The worst of all worlds is an unlikeable character with a trivial problem. Walter White in Breaking Bad is a thoroughly unlikable character, but he becomes sympathetic to the audience because of the nature of his problem. He's dying of cancer and so he turns to meth production to ensure his family's security after his death. Walter's problem, of course, has very real stakes, his own mortality and his family's future, but the stakes need not be life and death, but nonetheless, they need to be emotionally serious and significant to the protagonist. In the King's Speech, at no point in the movie is George VI in any kind of physical danger. He is wealthy and respected, his wife and children love him, and he does not have the self-destructive impulses and nature of his brother. Nevertheless, his problem is real. It is emotionally painful and opposes a risk to both himself and his sense of duty to the monarchy and the country. Likewise, Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice is in no physical danger throughout the book. Nonetheless, the stakes of her problem and her feelings for Mr. Darcy are consequential. If she does not secure a good marriage when her father dies, there is a very real possibility she'll be impoverished. Or if she marries an unsuitable man like Mr. Wickham, her life will be miserable. So while a young woman dealing with her feelings seems like a trivial problem, it will nonetheless have potentially dire consequences for Elizabeth and her family if she chooses wrongly. Physical danger is likewise an easy way to introduce high stakes to a story. In Gravity, Dr. Stone faces constant risk of death in a variety of agonizing ways due to the harsh nature of space. Wreck-It Ralph faces the prospect of non-existence if he dies outside his game. In Breaking Bad, other than the inevitable death from cancer, Walter White faces increasingly high odds of getting shot in the head by his business partners and customers, since crystal meth is clearly not a business for conservative-minded investors. Regardless of the nature of the problem and the conflict, it must be consequential and carry high risks and dangers for the protagonist. That said, the problem must be something the protagonist can conceivably deal with. Too vague of a problem or too powerful of a problem, and the story goes off the rails. When I'm recording this in November of 2024, it's a few months since the fourth Dragon Age video game came out, and if you look at the internet at all, there are of course frequent debates about which Dragon Age game was the best and which one was the worst. But in my opinion, Dragon Age 2 is the weakest of them because it runs smack dab into the problem we've been talking about. The central conflict in the game was strife between the mages and the Templars who are supposed to police the mages. The Templars claim that the mages are demon worshiping abominations while the mages claim that Templars are arbitrary and brutal. As it turns out both sides are right, regardless of which faction the protagonist chooses to aid, making the conflict of Dragon Age 2 to be human nature/social injustice. Regardless, it's not a problem that can be resolved within the game and in the ending, the Templars and the mages go to war no matter what decisions the player actually makes, so I'm afraid that the story falls flat. #3: The protagonist must take action and struggle to resolve his or her conflict and problem. A common failure in storytelling is a protagonist who has a serious problem but does nothing about it. We've all read stories with a passive protagonist, or even worse, a protagonist who does nothing but whine about his difficulties or thinks that by feeling bad about his or her problems, they will somehow magically get better. Worst of all is when a protagonist does nothing but whine or complain for two hours or 300 pages and somehow does solve all of his or her problems. This is apparently a common problem in the genre of romance novels. The opposite of this problem is the boring invincible hero. This is common in science fiction or fantasy series where towards the end of the series, the hero is so powerful that he or she can defeat all his problems using magic or a blast from a particle cannon. Struggle is necessary for a story. If the protagonist does not struggle, the story will probably be boring. No, the protagonist has to take action, actual active action to resolve the problem, but he or she must struggle while doing so. In Breaking Bad, Walter White sets out to solve his family's impending financial ruin by brewing up some crystal meth for sale. In Wreck-it Ralph, Ralph wants respect from the other denizens of his game, so he jumps to another game to win a medal and therefore prestige. In Gravity, Dr. Stone struggles to stay alive the entire time in the face of the indifferent hostility of outer space to human life. If these characters did nothing to surmount their problems, we would have boring stories. #4: The protagonist must face challenges and setbacks and his or her efforts to resolve the problem that may even backfire. This is a good antidote to the boring invincible hero problem we just mentioned. Think of this as the unexpected complications ensue rule. You see this all the time in real life, it matters both serious and trivial. Like say you need to mail your rent check but you're out of stamps, so you drive to the post office, but there's an accident in the intersection and you have to take a different route. As you take a different route, your car breaks down. All these new problems need to be dealt with and you still have to mail the check. We've all had days like that, and fictional protagonists should be no different in the pursuit of their goals. Additionally, it's possible for a protagonist to inadvertently make things worse through his or her actions. Like in Wreck-It Ralph, Ralph sets off for his medal of heroism, but in doing so, accidentally puts his own game out of order and inadvertently unleashes the virus like cy-bugs in the Sugar Rush game. Walter White in Breaking Bad is a textbook example of this. In the course of attempting to solve his problems, he makes a number of extremely bad decisions that estrange him from his family and sent his business partners gunning for his head. In the King's Speech, George VI gives up in despair believing he'll never overcome his speech impediment. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth torpedoes her relationship with Mr. Darcy because of her misunderstanding of his motives. And if you've seen Gravity, you know that Dr. Stone's situation frequently goes from bad to worse. #5: The ending must provide satisfactory emotional resolution to the problems raised in the story. Of all the Five Iron Laws of Storytelling, this one is undeniably the most important. Screw this one up and readers will be ticked and talk about on the Internet for years. Whatever crisis comes up in the story, whatever conflict or difficulties, it must be resolved in an emotionally satisfying manner by the end of the story. It can be a happy ending or a sad ending or a mixture of the two, but it must be emotionally satisfying. Let's look at some bad examples first. Stephen King is an excellent writer. If you've read his book 11/22/63, you know that's a great book. But when he's written as much as he has, not everything is going to be good, of course. And Stephen King's The Dark Tower series is a good example of a weak ending. After 22 years and seven books, the protagonist Roland learns that he has repeated his quest to the Dark Tower over and over again for thousands of years, forgetting every time, which makes everything that happened in the previous seven books utterly meaningless since the events happened before and will happen again. Therefore, there is no emotional resolution to the story or Roland's quest for the Dark Tower. The computer game Mass Effect 3 is another example of how not to end a story. In the case of Mass Effect 3, the original ending is simply too abbreviated. Commander Shepherd sacrifices himself or herself. A weird light shoots out of the Citadel. The Normandy crash lands on an alien planet, and that's it. Considering the hundreds of hours of gameplay involved and the intricate network of emotional relationships between Shepherd's companion and the dozens of subplots over the three games, the ending was too short to provide adequate emotional resolution. It felt a bit like a cop out as if the writers had simply said, okay, we're done, stop here, and had given up before attempting the necessary ending. The ending of Dragon Age: Origins by contrast was an excellent example of a well done ending. The ending of the Sopranos is an even more extreme version of this. Infamously, the series simply ends with a cut to black in the middle of Tony Soprano and his family eating dinner. Many viewers thought their televisions had failed. This is the ultimate example of a story of failing to provide emotional resolution. The final episode does not even attempt to do so. I suspect these problems arise when a writer tries to be realistic, which is what happens when a writer mistakes verisimilitude (a story feeling realistic) for realism. A story requires suspension of disbelief and attempting phony realism can cause the story to break down. But let's move from the negative to the positive and look at some good examples of endings. The ending of Breaking Bad was well executed, since it resolved the story's emotional conflicts. Walter White does not escape punishment for as many crimes since he's shot to death in the end. Additionally, he dies in the act of resolving some of the conflicts that he helped create. His meth empire has been taken over by his enemies and his former partner has been forced to prepare meth for them. Walter tries to provide for his family, free his partner, and defeat his rivals and dies at the end, killed not by his cancer, but by finally facing the consequences of his many bad decisions. Note that this is by no means a happy ending, but it is a satisfying ending, which is more important. The King's Speech ends well, with George VI addressing the nation over the radio without melting down due to his speech impediment, simultaneously resolving the conflicts over his stammer and his fear of accepting his duties as king. This is an ambivalently happy ending. George VI has overcome his conflicts, but the viewers know that the United Kingdom is about to go through World War II and George himself will die prematurely of lung cancer and heart disease in 1952. Nevertheless, the conflicts within the story have been resolved. Wreck-It Ralph has a more straightforwardly happy ending. Every single conflict raised within the story is resolved. Ralph accepts his role as villain in the game, realizing he is a vital part of the team. He gains the respect of his neighbors, and the villainous King Candy and the cy-bugs are defeated. Additionally, even when the side conflicts are resolved: Fix It Felix marries Sergeant Calhoun, King Candy's malevolent influence over the racing game has ended, and the homeless video game characters are able to set up inside Ralph's game. To sum up, stories have a sort of irresistible logic to them. Much like a properly balanced equation. a writer should set out to create a story that follows this logic, which will result in a far more enjoyable experience for the reader. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. Don't forget to get your free book copy of Storytelling, how to Write a Novel from my Payhip store. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/34160770

Episode 228: November Writing Challenge, Part IV - Questions From Beginner Writers 11/25/2024

Episode 228: November Writing Challenge, Part IV - Questions From Beginner Writers In this week's episode, we conclude our November Writing Challenge with questions from beginner writers. We also check in with our transcriptionist and see how she did with the challenge. Bonus! The transcriptionist's official Writing Playlist: Now I’m in It-HAIM Build Me Up From Bones- Sarah Jarosz Outnumbered- Dermot Kennedy Pain is Cold Water- Noah Kahan Orpheus- Vincent Lima Flight Risk- Tommy Lefroy If I Don’t See You Again- Wyatt Flores Brink of Love- Teddy Thompson The Wire- Patrick Droney Coming Home- Leon Bridges More Love- Sara Bareilles White Flag-JOSEPH TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 228th of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November the 22nd, 2024, and today we are discussing the fourth and final part of our November Writing Challenge, which will answer questions from beginning writers. Before getting into that, we will have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects and our Question of the Week. First up, Cloak of Illusion, as I mentioned last week, is now out. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip Store. There was a bit of a processing glitch on Kobo that slowed it down this week, but now the book should be available at Kobo, so if you're a Kobo reader, you can buy it for your Kobo reader or read it in Kobo Plus without any difficulty. Now that Cloak of Illusion is out (and selling very well, thank you all for that), my next project is Orc Hoard. That will be the fourth Rivah Half-Elven Thief book and I am 44,000 words into it (on chapter 10 of 18, which means I'm over halfway through). I very, very much want to have this book out before Christmas and I will be doing my best to make that happen. I am also about 2,000 words into Shield of Deception, which will be the fourth Shield War book (and hopefully will be my first book in 2025). The outline has 31 chapters, which means this will be the longest book I have tackled in a while, so I'm glad I'm getting kind of a head start on it as the secondary project while I work on Orc Hoard. In audiobook news, as we mentioned last week, Shield of Conquest is out at all the audiobook stores (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), and you can get that at your favorite audiobook store. In other good audiobook news, Cloak of Spears (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is now out at all the audiobook stores and if you are looking for something to listen to on your long Thanksgiving drive or plane trip, I should mention that Cloak of Spears is about 12 hours long, so it will have you covered. 00:02:01: Question of the Week So that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects and let's move on now to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics and this week's question ties directly into what we just talked about: what do you do for entertainment while traveling (whether by car, plane, train or otherwise- podcasts, audiobooks, portable games, that kind of thing)? No wrong answers, obviously. The inspiration for this question, as you might guess, was the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, which for many people was a great deal of travel and finding ways to amuse yourself while traveling. So in answer to this question, Justin says: music- classical, rock, movie scores, and video game tunes. If I'm traveling, I'm almost always driving. Music helps relax and entertain without demanding my attention. Brett says: I read- very often one of your books. You've published 100+ books, but because I've read them multiple times, I may be at 1,000 plus reads of your books. (I got to say Brett has a good taste here.) If I'm driving, I don't usually have any entertainment. Surabhi says: I love reading while traveling. Kindle is a nice advantage, being easy to carry, and I usually have easy to read books to read for traveling, which of course is why I have so many of your books in my Kindle Library. They're simple yet enjoyable to read. I got to say Kindle does make traveling with books a lot easier. I remember in the old days all I had was space for two books to bring on a trip, and so I was trying to pick out which two books to bring. Venus says: Reading and geocaching. Bonnie says: about all the traveling I've done recently is to work and back, usually local radio station and ‘80s music. Juana says: so my dad drove like he was in NASCAR. Consequently, I read books, because I was not brave enough to watch death coming for us. The habit is still with me. Darla says: riding in car listening to Sirius XM, looking at scenery or talking to the driver, driving by myself- listening to radio or CD music and singing. On an airplane, I read hard copy books or ebooks on my tablet, maybe try to sleep. Cheryl says: read the Kindle, but mainly keep an eye on the road, even as a passenger. You never know what is going to jump out into a country highway here in Australia. Ashley says: I listen to audiobooks while driving and that has made working overnights more bearable. Adeline says: Apple's Books app on my phone has been my best friend while on the move for years-planes, trains, London's public transportation. MW says: while driving, I listen to either music or a podcast. When I'm being a passenger, I love to read or draw. I'm always carrying my Kindle and my sketchbook everywhere, or I try to catch some sleep. I generally avoid conversing unless I'm actually traveling with someone, but even then I reserve some time for myself. John says: audiobooks while driving, Kindle on my phone while flying or lounging around, physical books while camping, though I use the phone at night. I like to hang out in restaurants and pubs at the bar, reading books and talking to strangers. If there's a beach or river, occasionally fish and walk around either the city, beach, or trail. Jenny says: all the books or podcasts/radio shows. BBC has a fun one I have on CD called Cabin Pressure. It's hilarious. And if I'm alone in the car, singing along at full volume with my singalong playlist. Just a comment quick, I did listen to all of Cabin Pressure in 2022 and early 2023, and it is indeed hilarious and I recommend listening to it if you get the chance. JT says: when I travel, I generally intend to read and thus take several books. Instead, I listen to YouTube videos, audiobooks, music, play games, or nap. It is rather frustrating. Brandy says: I haven't been able to drive myself since 2010, so I generally read books, coordinate meds, snacks, and travel stops since my partner is diabetic and I am epileptic. I navigate, take pictures of interesting scenery for attempted art later, bug people through texts, and Facebook. Barbara says: if I'm not driving, I usually just watch the traffic and scenery. Of course, depending on whom the driver is, I may just close my eyes so I don't panic. Unfortunately, I have to board an airplane in a couple of weeks for an out-of-state wedding. I'll distract myself from the agony of the flight by reading. Morgan says: I don't travel much, but I'm a delivery driver for work and I do a lot of audiobooks and podcasts, especially tabletop RPG actual play podcasts. And Rob says: usually talk to the driver/navigate. If it's by bus or train. I read. For myself, whenever I travel, most of the time I'm the one who's doing the driving, which obviously narrows down the entertainment options. So when I travel any long distances, I'm usually listening to audio books. A quirk I have with that is that I prefer to listen to audiobooks of books I've already read. So if I need to tune out the audiobook and focus on heavy traffic for a while, which happens often, then I don't feel like I'm missing anything. 00:06:30 Main Topic of the Week: November Writing Challenge Week 4 Now it's onto our main topic, the fourth and final week of our November Writing Challenge. As you know, if you've listened to the previous three episodes, our November Writing Challenge is sort of a let's call a low stress way to build a writing habit and get into writing and do writing because the traditional way of getting into writing in November, NaNoWriMo, may be a bit overwhelming for some people. If you feel like you're missing out when others are working on a bigger writing challenge this month, and if you want to start writing but feel overwhelmed, a smaller writing challenge for the absolute beginner- 300 words a day or some other small number of your choosing. The key is that it should be small and something you can manage daily. Follow along with our podcast transcriptionist who has never finished writing a book and feels overwhelmed at the idea of starting one. Follow her progress and see what advice I have for her and other beginner writers. So with that in mind, let's start with our transcriptionist update for the fourth and final week of the challenge. She says, “I completed another week of the challenge. I averaged 355 words per day, taking an average of 14 minutes per day. It's getting easier as the challenge goes on this month. For my overall challenge, I averaged 363 words per day, taking an average of 14 minutes per day to finish my daily word count. I finished three chapters of a rough draft even in a month where a lot of things happened in real life that ordinarily would've kept me from trying. I plan to keep going with the challenge in December since it feels like a habit at this point.” So as we can see, our transcriptionist had good results from the challenge and feels like she's gone a long way to build a consistent writing habit. As I've said before many times on the podcast, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the possible and the achievable. And if a 1,000 words or 1,600 words a day just seems overwhelming, 300 words a day might be far more achievable. So that might be something worth looking into. So now onto the questions I've been sent about writing from beginning writers. So we're going to go through these questions one by one. #1: Do you listen to music while you write? Yes, I do. My preferred genre is soundtracks from movies, TV shows, and computer games that I like. And my listening habits tend to be a bit eclectic and not transferable to other people because if I talk to other people about my age, they prefer listening to bands they remember from their teenage years or their twenties. It’s true for everyone, whatever the music you were listening to when you were a teenager and in your early twenties becomes the gold standard for music for the rest of your life, and nothing else can quite live into that. But for me, I prefer listening to soundtracks from movies, TV shows, and especially computer games I enjoy. For example, yesterday I was working on chapters 9 and 10 of Orc Hoard, and during that time I listened to the main theme from Dragon Age: The Veilguard like 15 times in a row. Am I going to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard? No, I don't have time for another computer game of that size, but I like Han Zimmer's music and have many of his soundtracks and I like the main theme to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, so I listen to it like 15 times in a row. #2: Our next question: is writing fun for you most of the time? I would say it is fun for me most of the time. It's always an expenditure of energy, however. I mean there's always this temptation in the back of your mind or in my mind that I could knock off for the day and play Starfield all day, but then the words wouldn't get done, the books wouldn't get done, and then the books wouldn't sell, so I would have no money to pay my bills. So that is pretty good motivation to write for me. But we're talking about beginning writers here and I'd say it's important to recognize that writing should usually be fun, but it's not always going to be fun. Creating anything, whether writing a book or writing a song or painting a picture or building a cabinet, whatever it is, is always going to take an expenditure of energy and it is a form of work. Even if it's not as difficult as compared to say digging ditches or doing open heart surgery, it is still a kind of work and therefore there are times when it will feel like work and you have to make yourself do it. If you absolutely hate writing and don't enjoy doing it at all, then by all means you should not be doing it. Go find something else to do that you enjoy and you'll be happier and healthier for it, but if you do enjoy writing most of the time, then that is probably a good place to be. #3: Our next question: how do you know how much worldbuilding is too little or too much? That is a good question because worldbuilding is definitely one of those writing adjacent tasks that can really be something of a rabbit hole that writers go down and then don't actually get writing any writing done. And I would say the answer is simple. You need to do whatever the right amount of world building is just enough, which I realize is very glib and pat answer, but it's true. You just need to do just enough worldbuilding that the story will be interesting, so that there may be mysteries for the character to solve. Worldbuilding is a bigger deal in fantasy obviously, especially fantasy that deals entirely with secondary worlds where you've made up the entire world and the history and so forth. What you want to do is avoid info dumping. I did an earlier episode about that where the joke was that if contemporary novels written the way that a fantasy novel is written, when someone went to an American airport for the first time and they encountered the security checkpoint, one of the characters would stop and deliver a three page history of the TSA and airplane security procedures in the United States over the last 30 years, which is what you want to avoid. You want to do just enough world building that the story moves forward. You don't want to get bogged down into it. And depending on the nature of your story, you may want to keep some of the world building secret in order to help create a mystery that will hold the reader's interest and drive the plot forward. For fantasy novels, Brandon Sanderson is notoriously good at this where he'll design an elaborate magic system and keep part of it concealed from the reader, and then the reveal about the magic system or the nature of the world is part of the climax of the book. Even in contemporary novels like mysteries or thrillers, you can do that with world building since obviously mysteries and thrillers have their own fictional parts of the world that you construct as part of the world building and so you can have reveals about your fictional police department or fictional spy agency be part of the world building. So to sum up, just do enough world building that you can tell your story, but don't get bogged down in it. #4: Our next question: what's something no one told you about writing but you wish they had? Well, that's a good question. I think the biggest thing that I wish someone had told me, but it turns out I probably would've had to learn it myself, is the extreme value of persistence plus time plus experience. I saw an interesting Tweet the other day that said that your twenties are basically like being a level one character in an RPG where you have no skills, no experience, and you need to spend all your time level grinding on boring and repetitive tasks in order to acquire the experience and skills that will carry you through your thirties, forties, fifties, and hopefully onward. That struck me as very true because in my case, I started self-publishing when I was about 30 and I obviously spent all of my twenties essentially learning how to self-publish even though I didn't know that what is what I was doing at the time because self-publishing in this current form hadn't come along yet. So as I was teaching myself to write novels and with my technology blog, teaching myself about how to write for the internet and search engines and so forth, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was acquiring these skills that would be very valuable to me in my thirties and forties as I continue self-publishing. So to sum up that question, I would say what I wish I had been told and really understood in my twenties when I was starting out was the value of persistence over time. Because if you look at it, the Grand Canyon is essentially water exercising persistence over time. #5: Our next question: should I tell people I'm writing a book? Well, that is a tricky question and I would say the answer boils down to it depends, which again is a pat and glib answer, but it really does depend on your personal circumstances and your relationship with your family and friends as well. For one thing, a lot of people say they're going to do things and never do them. In fact, I'd say a lot of people who announced very loudly that they're going to lose weight or learn to draw or learn to write a book or learn to program, never actually get very far or give up on it. So there's something to be said for remaining quiet and just doing things and letting the results speak for themselves once they can no longer be kept quiet. I would also say it really does depend on your relationship with your family, friends, and spouse and/or life partner. If you have a spouse or life partner who is very supportive of your goals and is willing to encourage you, then it's a good idea to tell them. It's not a good idea to keep secrets in that kind of relationship. But if you suspect your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, or life partner is going to belittle and mock you, it might be a good idea to keep this to yourself. For your family and friends, it might, again, it really depends on the individual personalities involved in your relationship with them. Some friend groups and families have this very bad habit of crab bucket syndrome or tall poppy syndrome where if someone tries to exceed the overall average of the group, they try to pull them back down to their level. That's why you occasionally hear stories of someone who gives up drinking or loses a lot of weight ends up losing their friend group in their process because it turns out their friend group was based on excessive consumption of alcohol or excessive consumption of food and something like that might occur with your friends and family as well. So I would say, on balance, it probably would be best to keep it to yourself unless you think your friends, family, and a significant other would be encouraging and welcoming of your efforts in this endeavor. But as always, it depends and your mileage may vary. #6: Our next question is a pretty interesting one that people ask frequently: how long until I can become a full-time author? Now this is again a very complicated question that boils down to your circumstances, and once again, the answer is it depends. Terry Brooks, when he wrote a writing advice book about 20 years ago, said that his editor, Lester del Rey, advised him not to go full-time until he had a year's salary in the bank, and that was 40 years ago. Nowadays, I would say at the bare minimum of going full time is you want to have a year's full salary in the bank and you would want to be making at least 40% more than you would be from your day job. Why 40%? Because once you are self-employed, especially in the US, you are responsible for paying a lot of things that your employer usually does, such as a variety of taxes and insurance costs. Also it's a very good idea, especially in the US, to have some sort of savings for retirement such as a 401K or something similar because there's absolutely no guarantee Social Security is going to be around by the time you retire. So I would say those are the... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/34109326

Episode 227: November Writing Challenge, Part III - Overcoming Roadblocks 11/18/2024

Episode 227: November Writing Challenge, Part III - Overcoming Roadblocks In this week's episode, we continue our November Writing Challenge, and take a look at the most common roadblocks writers face. We also check in with our transcriptionist, and see how she is progressing in our November Writing Challenge. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 227 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November the 15th, 2024, and today we are discussing part three of our November Writing Challenge, which will deal with overcoming roadblocks in your writing progress. First we'll have an update on my current writing projects and then we will have Question of the Week, and then we'll get to our main topic of overcoming roadblocks. First up, writing projects. I am almost/very nearly done with Cloak of Illusion. In fact, I would have finished completely yesterday, but I had some unexpected home repairs come up and now that those are resolved, as soon as this podcast recording is completed, I'm hoping to finish up completely on Cloak of Illusion and publish it this weekend. So hopefully when this show comes out on Monday the 18th, the book should be showing up on the various ebook stores. Be sure to subscribe to my new release newsletter as well and you will get a free Nadia short story called Trick or Treat in ebook form. I am 24,000 words into Orc Hoard, which will be the next Rivah book, and I'm hoping to have that out in December as my final book of 2024. My secondary project while I'm working on that will also be Shield of Deception because I am hoping to have that out as my first book in 2025. Hard to believe we're about halfway through the 2020s already. In audiobook news, Shield of Conquest came out this week and you should be able to get it at all the usual audiobook stores, and that is excellently narrated by Brad Wills. Cloak of Spears, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy, should be out before too much longer as well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:01:36 Question of the Week Now on to Question of the Week, which had a lot of responses this week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week’s question: do you buy any hardback books? No wrong answers, obviously. I asked this question because I was reading an article about for many traditionally published authors, hardbacks used to be the primary source of royalties. Nowadays, for many authors, that has been superseded by audiobooks. Since I’m indie, my main source of revenue has always been ebooks. We had many different responses to this question. JL says: I only read ebooks now. I have not bought a physical book in over a decade. Surabhi says: Hardcovers, being very expensive, are a big no-no for me. I’d love to be able to afford hardcovers, it’s always either paperbacks or ebooks. Justin says: If I’m getting paper, I will do my best to make it hardback. Paperback books have a limited lifespan and number of readings in them compared to hardback books. Most of my book purchasing is ebooks but reference works and great stories get the hardback treatment. Mary says: Only if there’s no paperback. Dave says: Ebooks and audiobooks all the way. They’re generally cheaper or easier to read, or with audiobooks I can do other things while I listen. Also as I get older, being able to increase the font size makes it easier to read. I definitely agree with Dave on that, let me tell ya. Jenny says: Can’t afford it usually. My hardcover budget goes to RPG books. I myself do have quite a few RPG books, which is amusing because I don’t actually play the game but I just like looking at the artwork. Juana says: Yes. I have 60+ signed editions of authors I like. Some paperbacks of the Frostborn series (Wonder who wrote those?). That is indeed a mystery. Catriona says: I used to collect hardbacks of favorite authors- buy each new release e.g. Terry Pratchett. But when I moved from Hong Kong to Thailand I got rid of most of my fiction books and bought the Kindle versions. Shipping after COVID was just extortionate! Morgan says: I don’t really buy physical books anymore. My brain is too fried to read so I mostly do audiobooks while I work. I only have so much money, so it is hard to justify buying a physical copy of a book I already have the audio copy for when I know I probably won’t physically read it. Gary says: I prefer hardbacks. When buying new though, I generally buy paperbacks unless it is for reference or one of my favorite authors. I always check though because now the hardbacks are often not much more. Jeanne says: Depends on the book. I would totally invest in hardcover copies of Lord of the Rings, for example. I am currently investing in leatherbound versions of the Word on Fire Bible, which is a step up from the hardcover. Authors I don’t know or who I read for light fun, I’ll get as ebooks. Marilyn says: No, but used to buy only hardback books. Ran out of room on my bookshelves and didn’t like to get rid of my books. I ended up buying an ereader. I have 1,729 books. I do have a few hardbacks but not many. Not everything is in an electronic format. When I used to travel, my suitcase would be full of books. Now I have room for clothes. That is one nice advantage of the ebook revolution. Back in the day when I would pack for a trip, I would have to choose which books I would bring but now you can just bring your phone and you’re set. MG says: If I can get a hardback I do, but I haven’t bought any recently. Barbara says: I purchase very few print books these days and those I do purchase tend to be theology related. Whether I purchase hard or soft bound print books will depend on the availability and price. And since I’m no longer in seminary (I graduated in 2021), my theology books tend to be digital because that’s what I read. If I purchase print books, I’d run out of room to store them. Especially since I’m already out of bookshelf space. Michael says: Not really, not anymore. They take up too much space. I might buy a very posh one if it looks amazing (stuff from the Folio Society perhaps) but that’s it. Bonnie says: I mainly read ebooks now. I think the last hardcover I bought was Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon. Jeff says: Since I got a Kindle in 2010, I haven’t bought a physical book. I am approaching 500 ebooks. I was a SF Book Club member for many, many years so I do have hundreds of hardcover books. A lot of them are stored in totes because of lack of room. Juan says: Used to. Space is a factor now. So now only for my son because I don’t want him to have an electronic device in his face so much, but usually the first thing I do at a bookstore when I see a good book is look for it on Apple Books. Usually half the price or so. Always less expensive as well. Barbara says: Used to buy lots of books, got at least 3,00 but with arthritis in my hands, I’m now stuck with ebooks. Got at least 3,000 of them, too. I’ve got to get rid of some of my physical books, but I’ll still keep the ones that aren’t replaceable. John says: I only buy collectible editions at this point, or if there isn’t an ebook for something I want to reread (but then it’s usually paperback). Sometimes old hardbacks have been cheaper than the Kindle versions. When I reread Wheel of Time a few years ago in anticipation of the Amazon series that was the case. Ended up just donating the books just a couple of years later. Carol says: I do love the feel of a hardcover book, the smell, the sound of pages turning, but I’m fully converted to ebooks. So convenient, can read anywhere, carry everywhere, so sadly I haven’t bought a physical book for years. Cheryl says: I only have hardbacks of the “classics” as collections to hand down to my grandchildren. Haven’t bought any paper versions of books for a few years now and they were paperbacks. Most were on Kindle. Venus says: I will buy certain books in hardcover but only the ones I wish to have available after a collapse of society. David says: I have always preferred hardback, but space constraints have left only those of my favorite authors. I have over 2,000 books on my Kindle. Michael says: I do. For myself, I do buy hardbacks but still very, very selectively. If Timothy Zahn, Jim Butcher, and a few other select authors I’ve been reading for decades have a new hardcover, I’ll buy it. Otherwise, it’s ebooks or paperbacks. For nonfiction books, I’m a bit less choosy. If I read say, a historical ebook and liked it, I might get the hardback or possibly the paperback to keep as a reference book. It’s interesting from the general consensus of the comments that it seems like ebooks are the dominant format for books now and that if you really want to know if you’re someone’s favorite author or not, see if they buy your hardbacks. Given the expense and space premium of hardbacks, that’s how you know they really like your book. 00:07:43: Main Topic of the Week: November Writing Challenge Now on our main topic of the week, week three of our November Writing Challenge. The topic we are discussing this week is overcoming roadblocks. If you're not familiar with our podcast series for November, you can listen to the previous two episodes, and we have a short summary here. If you feel like you're missing out when others are working on bigger writing challenges this month and you want to start writing but not to feel overwhelmed, a smaller writing challenge for the absolute beginner, 300 words a day (or some other small number of your choosing). The key is that it should be small and something you can manage daily. As I mentioned on previous episodes with this topic, I wonder if National Novel of Writing Month is akin do a sort of crash diet for people where you can lose weight very quickly, let's say like five pounds in a month, but then once you do that, you go back to your old habits. In fact, you go back to your old habits with as much force as before and you end up gaining 10 pounds and you're worse off than you were before. I think a more gradual writing challenge might be akin to losing one pound a month, but you keep it off and that adds up over time. So follow along with our podcast transcriptionist who has never finished writing a book and feels overwhelmed at the ideas of starting one. We can follow her progress and see what advice I have for her as she faces writing challenges. So week three, overcoming roadblocks. If you've ever done any writing or you've ever had anything to write, as you know, there are many roadblocks that can come up to impede your writing progress. The first ones we'll address are logistical roadblocks and we'll recap some points from Episode 220: 8 Tips For Finishing Your Rough Draft. Perhaps one of the biggest roadblocks is time. It's trying to find the time to write. I found is a good idea to schedule your writing time and take advantage of smaller moments of opportunity to write. There is a difference between the perfect time to write and the available time to write. As I've said many times before, the perfect is the enemy of the possible or even the achievable. You might have in your head the image of the perfect time to write and the perfect environment. That may take a lot of work to achieve and be difficult to find. Additionally, I found that many people in their days have what tend to be wasted chunks of time that you kind of have to waste based on the circumstances, like you're in a waiting room, you're on hold, or you are sitting in a room with nothing to do. You have to watch for somebody to arrive or wait for the phone to ring, that kind of thing. There are a lot of ways to pass the time that way. If you're in, for example, the doctor's waiting room, you see everyone sitting on there on their phones reading the news or whatever, but that could be an excellent time to get some writing done. You could obtain a cheap laptop like a netbook type laptop or you could even teach yourself to write on your phone with your thumbs. Those kind of chunks of wasted time throughout the day are an excellent time to squeeze out a couple hundred words and if you can squeeze out a couple hundred words every day, that will add up very quickly. The biggest enemy of finding writing time I found are the many distractions we have in our day-to-day lives. And in fact, I was just talking about your phone. If you have your phone with you, that's a built-in distraction machine where you could maybe write 15 words and then reward yourself by checking your email or your Facebook or whatever. And then before you know it, you've been on your phone for 20 minutes and your writing time has disappeared. The same thing obviously can happen if you're writing on a laptop or a desktop computer or whatever. To manage these distractions, there's a couple of different tricks. You could just shut off the internet on your phone for a while and not turn it on again until you've reached your writing goal. If you find being distracted on your phone or your computer is a consistent problem, you could use apps or browser extensions to manage digital distractions that will prevent, say notifications from interrupting you, whether from email or turning off the internet and keeping from getting into it until a set period of time has passed. For environmental distractions (and what I mean by environmental distractions are noise, people interrupting you and so forth), it can be a good idea to find a place where you'll face fewer interruptions. At various times, I have written in a school or a university or a public library where people tend not to bother strangers too much and therefore, if you sit quietly and get on with your typing, no one's going to bother you. Some people enjoy writing in a coffee shop. I've never really found that to be an enjoyable experience. I have done that many times based on what the circumstances were at the time, but if it was up to me, my favorite writing place would be in my office with the door shut and headphones on and music playing and I'm just writing away. But life doesn't always give us that luxury, so I have written in other locations, but if you can figure out the best way to give yourself a distraction free writing environment, even if it's just noise canceling headphones, that might be the way to go. Another thing to watch out for that can eat up your time is writing adjacent tasks, things that are connected to writing but not actually writing itself, such as researching, outlining, reading about writing, listening to podcasts about writing, et cetera. These are all keeping you from the goal of getting your words down, which is and the ultimate purpose of our November Writing Challenge, to get your words done every day. Some of these things may be necessary, but you can do them later and some of them are not necessary and not helpful to your productivity, like reading about writing or social media relating to writing or authors is only giving you the illusion of productivity rather than actual productivity. There may be value in these activities, but they are not helping you get the words down on the page. So let's move on to what could be a more difficult type of roadblocks, the mental roadblocks, roadblocks where you just don't feel confident or you don't feel like you want to write or you don't even feel like you're good at writing and you're wasting your time by writing. So motivation is a thing to consider. It's like you might want to write down a few reasons why you started a writing challenge in November. Why do you want to write? Why is this important to you? Do you want to be able to finish a novel and say that you finished a novel? Do you want to create something cool that's similar to the vision of the creative things you see in your head when you think about it? And what's the best outcome of you writing each day and what's the best-case scenario of what will happen if you keep writing? It might be a good idea to consider all of these things. If you feel bad at writing or feel that you're not good enough, that seems to be a bigger problem for many people. There are a couple tips and tricks that you can use to work around that. The first thing is to don't revise as you go. Don't revise, don't look back. Just keep going. Get it all down on page as fast as you can and then keep going. And the secret is if you're writing a rough draft, you can ignore your inner critic because the point of the rough draft is to get all the words on the page and then you fix them later in editing. An amusing anecdote about that-one of my audiobook narrators wanted to get caught up on projects and he asked if I could send him the rough draft chapters and then as I was writing the book and then he could narrate the rough draft chapters and then he could make any changes I made in editing later. I had to turn him down because the truth is I do a lot of editing on my rough drafts, like Cloak of Illusion was originally 96,000 words, and I think when all the editing is done, it'll be like 94,000 words, maybe 93,500. So that's a lot of things eliminated. I moved around a lot of scenes. I changed a character's name six times, which is one of the reasons why I had to turn down that idea from the narrator because when I introduced a new character, sometimes I change the character's name four or five times during the course of writing until I'm finally satisfied that this is what the character's name should be. So imagine having to go back and rerecord that all the time, but that returns to my original point, where it's best to just ignore your inner critic while you are writing and just get all the words down on page and you can sort them through later. I found editing to be something of a less harrowing process than writing the rough draft. A metaphor I've used before is that a couple years ago, actually, well more than a couple years now, I moved into a third-floor apartment with no elevator, and so I had to carry all my books up those stairs to the new apartment, which since I had a lot of books at the time, was a lot of work (this was before ebooks). Once all the books were carried upstairs to the apartment, only then could I take them out of the boxes and put them on the shelves. That was a lot easier than carrying all those books up three flights of stairs, let me tell you. But I use that as a metaphor to compare the writing process, the first draft is carrying all the books up the stairs and then arranging them on the library shelves as the editing process. Another metaphor that people have found helpful is that the rough draft is like building a sand castle. You first have to drag all the sand to your sandbox and only then is it time to start building the sandcastle. You got to fill up that sandbox first. Now what to do if you hate what you're writing, you absolutely hate it. You don't like what you're doing and you're dragging yourself to the word processor every day. It might be time to ask yourself a couple of hard questions. And the hardest one is, is this really what you want to write? Are you writing something that you want to write or are you trying to write something that you think would sell well or market well to the audience? I talked a bit about this way back in Episode 191: The Worst Writing Advice, about writing to market. Writing to market, if you go too far with it, is a bad idea because by the time you finish and the book is ready to sell, the market may have already grown tired of the trend and moved on to dystopian mermaid stories or something else. Readers also have a sense of when a story is rushed or written in a way that the author hates, not always but very often sort of picked up that the writer hated what they were writing and didn't want to be doing it. It's much better to write something that you're excited to write. You can do a... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/33946687

Episode 226: November Writing Challenge, Part II - Outlining 11/11/2024

Episode 226: November Writing Challenge, Part II - Outlining In this week's episode, we continue with our November Writing Challenge, and discuss how outlining can be a helpful tool in writing your novel and building a writing habit. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 226 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November the 8th, 2024 and today we are discussing Part 2 of our November Writing Challenge and that will mostly discuss the usefulness of making outlines. Before we get into that, we will have an update on my current writing projects and Question of the Week. We will also close out the episode with a preview of the upcoming audiobook Cloak of Spears, as narrated by Hollis McCarthy. First up, writing progress. The rough draft of Cloak of Illusion is done at about 96,000 words, and I'm about 25% of the way through the first editing pass. I also wrote a short story called Trick or Treat that will be a companion to the book. Newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of that short story when Cloak of Illusion comes out, hopefully before the end of November. So now would be an excellent time to subscribe to my new release newsletter. After Cloak of Illusion is published, my next project will be Orc Hoard, the 4th book in the Rivah Half-Elven series, and I'm about 21,000 words into that. In audiobook news, as you may have already heard, Cloak of Spears is done. That will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy and it is working its way through processing right now. Shield of Conquest narrated by Brad Wills is also still working its way through processing on the various audiobook platforms. So you can get both audiobooks on my Payhip store right now if you don't want to wait. So that is where I met with my writing projects. 00:01:25 Question of the Week Now let's talk about Question of the Week. It's time for Question of the Week, designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is your favorite book cover (like in terms of the artwork, the design, etcetera)? No wrong answers, obviously. We had a few answers this week. Justin says: For that, I go back to the guilty pleasures of my youth, a teenager on a Burroughs kick at the time, digging for paperbacks in a secondhand bookstore. Savage Pellucidar, cover by Frank Franzetta (the 1974 Ace edition reprint), which I still have stashed away. Franzetta was an incredible artist. I love his Sea Witch and Death Dealer, but we’re talking about book covers here. Savage Pellucidar was the one for me. Mary says: Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon. Then, that cover was a work of art with three detachable bands. Surabhi says: Hard to choose one. I personally love those young adult “Book Tok” book covers: Shadow and Bone, Six of Crows, The Cruel Prince. I don't know. Something about such covers immediately sparks interest in me. Randy says he always liked the Heinlein juvenile covers. Gary S. says: This was difficult for me because I like hardcovers, but I like to take the jacket off while I read so it doesn't get torn. Consequently, I seldom look at the covers. Gary B says: Anne McCaffrey’s The White Dragon. I’ve got a poster/artwork of it and pretty much anything by Michael Whelan. Becca says: Stoner by Tad Williams, pretty much tops my list of favorite covers, then maybe The Dragonstone by McKiernan. Catriona says: Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic. MG says: That's quite difficult to answer, but I have a Return of the King copy with this Alan Lee cover, going to have to go with this. For myself, I think I would go with a hardback edition of The Silmarillion from the late 1990s. I think it was published in ‘99. It was illustrated by Ted Nasmith and the cover image shows Maglor throwing the final Silmaril into the sea in despair for his deeds. If you know the context of that scene, it's an amazingly powerful cover. So that is it for Question of the Week and tune in again for next week's Question of the Week. 00:03:22 Main Topic of the Week Now it's time to our main topic for our second week of our November Writing Challenge. This week we're going to talk about building story structure and how outlining can help with this. If you haven't heard of my November Writing Challenge, the idea is that you write 300 words or a similarly small number every day in hopes of building up a small but sustainable writing habit. I was thinking of NaNoWriMo, where you write 1600 words a day in an effort to get to 50,000 words a month, is well and good for someone like me, where I essentially write a book every month unless something comes up. But for someone starting out, it can be a bit like the sort of crash diet where you lose 5 pounds in a month and then gain 10 back over the next two months as your habits snap back. That’s because you didn't lose the weight through sustainable means, so that is the goal with the November writing challenge: to build the base of a sustainable writing habit. So let's talk about how story structure can help you do that. In last week's episode, I mentioned that making the outline of your story can help with the process of writing. In this week's episode, we're going to go into more detail about story structure and conflict. Knowing how these work in your stories is essential to building an outline. You will find that having a proper structure to your story makes it easier to write, in the same way that having a proper foundation for your house makes it easier to construct. We'll talk about what I call the five iron laws of storytelling and the importance of your story having conflict and at the end of the episode, we will get a quick update from my podcast transcriptionist, who is following along with the November Writing Challenge. We will see how that is working out for her so far. So first, why write an outline? I think the main value of writing an outline, especially for beginning writers, is that it forces you to think about the story in advance and forces you to work out any potential plot holes in advance, since it's very easy to find yourself writing yourself into a corner and not knowing how to proceed. Obviously, writing an outline is not for everyone, and some writers say it impairs their creativity and they can't write with an outline. And that's fine, if you know that about yourself. But if you're just starting out, you may not be experienced enough to realize that about your writing style, and you may in fact benefit quite a bit from having written an outline in advance. So with that in mind, what does an outline need? First thing you need to understand is the shape of the story. Who is the protagonist? What is the protagonist’s goal? What is the conflict, and what will the protagonist have to do to resolve that conflict? You can, if you want, put in the number of chapters in the outline. The way I usually do it is I write a 2,000 word or so synopsis of the book, and then I chop it up into chapters, though lately my final drafts don't have the same number of chapters as the outline because as I go through, I'll think of things to improve or scenes to move around and so forth. You may find a similar experience when writing from an outline yourself. It is nothing to worry about and can happen. It's also important to keep in mind that the conflict does need to escalate, and you do need to have a strong central conflict. So what do I mean by having a protagonist with the conflict that escalates and he takes action to it? This is something I actually have talked about in this podcast quite a bit, and in my nonfiction book Storytelling: How to Write a Novel. I have something I (rather tongue in cheek) call the five iron laws of storytelling, where if you want to write a good, compelling story, you need to have these five rules you should follow. Now, this is not, you know, true at all times in all places. But I do think you will probably get good results by following these five rules. Now what are these five rules, the five iron laws of storytelling? #1: The protagonist must have a problem that results in a conflict. #2: The protagonist’s problem and conflict must be consequential and have real stakes. #3 The protagonist must take action and struggle to resolve his or her conflict and problem. #4 The protagonist must face challenges and setbacks, and his or her efforts to resolve the problem may even backfire. #5, The ending must absolutely provide satisfactory emotional resolution to the problems raised in the story. That might be the most important one of all. Where outlining can help you with this is if you see the story laid out in an outline as in a chart in something like Plottr or something like that, you can look it over and see- do I have a protagonist who has a interesting problem? Is the problem consequential for the protagonist? Is the protagonist trying to resolve the conflict? Is the protagonist experiencing setbacks and challenges, and perhaps even unintended consequences as he or she tries to resolve the problem? And finally, is the resolution emotionally satisfying? It doesn't have to be a happy ending. It doesn't have to be a totally sad ending. It can be a bittersweet ending. But whatever the ending, it has to resolve the conflict of the story in an emotionally satisfactory manner. Anything else can be absolutely disastrous. So if you are writing an outline for your novel or story, and you follow these five iron laws of storytelling, then I think you are on good track to have a good, well written story with a conflict and a protagonist that readers will find enjoyable and interesting. It is important to have a good conflict in the story. You can jump back to Episode 222 of the podcast, in which we talked about story conflicts, which offered much valuable advice on introducing conflicts. Some of the key points of that episode are there are many different types of conflict the story can have. The word conflict by its very nature seems to pull up images of like, violent conflict. That's often the word we use to describe conflict, to describe violence as conflict, but it doesn't have to be a violent conflict at all. It can be, you know, certain types of legal thrillers. There's no violence at all. It can be, you know, conflict between a man and a woman who are romantically attracted to each other but are unable to resolve these feelings, which can, you know, that kind of conflict drives a significant portion of the entire publishing industry. Ideally, a story should have multiple conflicts and even different types of conflict. There are numerous ways to add conflict into a story. They include putting characters into an unfamiliar environment, forcing your characters into making decisions, and having different characters face the same conflict in different ways. For more details on that, you can check out Episode 222 of this podcast. For tips and tricks on introducing more conflicts into your novel, I would recommend Episode 110 of this podcast, Three Techniques for Starting Your Novel and Introducing Conflict. In Episode 110, I said that there are lots of fun and exciting ways to introduce the conflict. I say fun and exciting because this is often where the story starts getting quite energetic. In a fantasy novel, it might be when the hero’s village is attacked by orcs. In a mystery story, it's when someone stumbles across a dead body. In a thriller novel, perhaps the hero finds that a sinister terror plot is already well underway. The conflict can also be introduced more sedately. In an action-themed book, it is easy to introduce the conflict via sudden violence, the attack of orcs, or a surprise murder. Other kinds of stories may not involve so much physical danger. The central conflict of most romance novels, for example, is whether or not in the heroine and the love interest will get together and whether or not they can overcome the assorted obstacles preventing them from having a relationship. Romance novels might introduce conflict by having the love interest antagonize the heroine in some way, which is a common trope. Perhaps the love interest is a lawyer who represents the heroine's business rival, or the heroine is a local law enforcement official and the love interest is an FBI agent who threatens to take over her case. Regardless of how the conflict is introduced, the most important part of the conflict is that it must compel the protagonist to take action. If the conflict or the antagonist isn't serious enough to force the protagonist to act, then nothing happens and you don't have a story, so that perhaps is the main take away from conflict. The conflict has to be emotionally significant for the protagonist, and the protagonist has to take action to resolve it, even if the action makes things worse or causes setbacks. If you have a passive protagonist, that will very quickly turn off quite a few readers. So to sum up, the advantage of outlining is that it lets you work through potential problems in advance, and what you want in the outline is a protagonist with an emotionally relatable problem, a protagonist who takes action to resolve the problem, and a resolution to the story that is emotionally satisfying in terms of the conflict being resolved. The five iron laws of storytelling are a good checklist to look over your outline and make sure that you have a good, solid story structure. You can use them in fact as a checklist to see whether you think your outline is going to work and whether or not you can write a, you know, satisfying novel off it. So now we come to the update from my transcriptionist. As I mentioned, she was doing our November Writing Challenge and as part of our series of shows on that, she will send in weekly updates with her progress. Here is how she did this past week. “My goal for the challenge is 300 words a day. I picked a number that felt really low to help with the problem I have of not starting something when the goal is too undefined or too big. I also tend to do something intensely or not at all, with most days tending to the latter when in real life or obstacles get in the way. 300 words a day felt like something I could commit to without any worry, provided nothing really major comes up this month. So far I'm averaging 484 words per day and it’s taking me an average of 15 minutes per day. I picked a specific chapter from my outline that was not the introduction I've been stuck on and a specific time of day to write. Doing both has made the process easier. In that vein, my questions for you are: do you write chapters or any pieces of the story out of order, or do you stick to the outline order when writing? Do you recommend people try writing out of order if they feel stuck?” So those are both interesting questions. For the first one, do you write chapters or any pieces of the story out of order, or do you stick to outline order when writing? I almost always write in the order of my outline. What changes is that when editing, I will very often split chapters up and move them around because I tend to write long chapters. In the editing for Cloak of Illusion so far, one chapter was like 10,000 words and another was 7,000 words, both of which are too long to be chapters. So the 10,000 word chapter got split up into three smaller ones and rearranged. The 7,000 word one got split into two chapters and moved around. So to give a shorter answer to that question, the answer would be no. When writing I tend to stick to the outline, but during editing I do tend to move things around as I think works best for the story. But editing is a different topic entirely. The second question: do you recommend people try writing it out of order if they feel stuck? You can try that. The pros are if you feel stuck on a particular scene, you can go ahead and write a different scene and then come back to that scene later. Or maybe it will turn out that the reason you're stuck is because the story didn't need the scene. You know, I do know some people who do write from an outline, but then tend to write out of order. The downside of that is if you're not careful, you can get your story’s internal continuity mixed up a bit, but then that is another problem to fix in editing once the rough draft is finished, since right now we're at the stage where you get all the words down on the page or the word processor and then worry about fixing them later. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and that you are finding our November Writing Challenge series to be useful as well. A reminder that you that you can listen to all the back episodes at . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. 00:15:45 Audio excerpt from Cloak of Spears, as narrated by Hollis McCarthy /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/33851007

Episode 225: November Writing Challenge, Part I 11/04/2024

Episode 225: November Writing Challenge, Part I In this week's episode we take a look at a November Writing Challenge and offer tips for new writers to develop a sustainable writing habit. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 225 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November the 1st 2024 and today we are discussing part one of our November Writing Challenge. Before we get into that, we will talk about my current writing projects- we’ll see where I'm at with that and do Question of the Week (because we did have time for Question of the Week this week). First up, writing progress. I am 85,000 words into Cloak of Illusion, and I am hoping to finish the rough draft next week, if all goes well. I think we'll end up about in the neighborhood of 100,000 words for the rough draft (with possibly 5,000 words either way, see how it goes). I'm also 17,000 words into Orc Hoard. That will be the 4th Rivah Half-Elven book, and I'm hoping to have that out in December before the end of the calendar year. In audiobook news, production on Shield of Conquest is done. It's all paid for and ready, and it's just working its way through processing on various platforms, so it should be available soon. And you get it on my Payhip store right now, if you don't want to wait for the other platforms. Audio for Cloak of Spears is almost done. I should have a file to proof soon, which is very exciting. And then Hollis McCarthy, who did Cloak of Spears, is also going to be working on Ghost in the Tombs and that should be out before too much longer and also Shield of Conquest was excellently narrated by Brad Wills. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:01:30 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: do you keep a record of the books you have read? Obviously Goodreads is a giant website designed to do just that, but there are other methods, obviously. This question was inspired by one of those other methods. I was at a Barnes and Noble the other day and was bemused by the giant wall of reading journals that you can use to keep track of the books you have read. This elicited quite a few responses, this Question of the Week. They tend to fall into one of two camps, as we shall soon see. Joaquim says: No. No time, at least not for the physical books, even an app supporting barcodes was not successful and was later discontinued. For ebooks it’s different because all your books are available on a list in Kindle/Digital Editions/Calibre (depending on their type). Justin says: No, it would look like bragging. I am a speed reader and don't watch TV. Reading is my primary mode of leisure. JD says: I have never even considered making a reading log. Surely that would be time better used for reading. AM says: I use a dot grid journal to make my own reading log and enjoy customizing what I track and adding some artistic embellishments. It's just a fun offline project for me and it made me self-conscious of what I read when I tracked on Goodreads. Adeline says: not keeping track at all. Doing that at the rate I go through books would just be a loss of a lot of time which could be spent reading. Barbara says: No, I don't keep any record of the books I read. I've been a voracious reader since I figured out what the alphabet was for back in first grade, used to get in trouble in class for reading ahead. I read fiction and nonfiction, although not equally. I have favorite authors, some of whose books I reread regularly. My digital library contains over 2,000 books, most of which I've read and while I think I don't read all that fast, in reality I read something over 700 words per minute. What's worse, I retain most of what I read, but if someone wants to keep track of what he or she reads, that doesn’t bother me at all. Different strokes for different folks, as the song says. Jesse says: If I pick one up I have already read and don't immediately recognize it within a paragraph or two, it is probably time for a reread. Roger says: I buy a book before I read it, so my record is either on my bookshelves or on the Kindle. Kim says: I used to note in each paper version when I read/reread the books. Since ebooks, I keep a spreadsheet of book title and series, author, date read, major characters, reading order, my own personal ranking. Helps me keep track of authors, their series, crossovers, same-universe stories, and when the next books are coming out. I track all of that. Brandy says: It's impossible for me to do so. I reread whole series each time the new book comes out (yes, from the beginning). I’ll often proofread, read for review, read for pleasure, reference, and beta. I'm also a foreign language and capture reader for translation of books. It was recommended therapy to help with linear retention after seizures and was always my main hobby. Jenny says: I use Goodreads but wish there was a better alternative. Tracy says: I just use Goodreads. Becca says: Since I started reading so much on Kindle, I've been letting it keep track of which books I've read. Me by myself, never kept track except in grade school when we had reading achievements. So it looks like the common options were either nothing or Goodreads, but one other person did what I did, which is I've kept a spreadsheet of every book I've read since 2010, since it felt like I was reading less than I used to, and I wanted to keep track of it quantifiably, since hard data is better than feelings. So I think in the last 14 years, the most books I've read in a single year is around 110 and the lowest would be a little over 40, though I think this year I will probably end up around somewhere around 75. My spreadsheets are not as detailed as Kim's. I just keep track of the day I started, the day I finished the title, the author’s name, the genre, and whether or not it is an ebook or a paperback book. 00:05:12 Main Topic: Week 1 of November Writing Challenge So on to our main topic of the week: week one of our November Writing Challenge. What do I mean by that? I talked a little bit about it last week, but what I mean is that I do get lots of questions about how to start writing or questions about whether or not National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo is worth doing. The difficulty of that is NaNoWriMo the organization is currently experiencing troubles. They've had some problems with some of their volunteers and this year they had a big blow up where they endorsed artificial intelligence in writing in a way that offended most of their user base and as I mentioned last week, I'm wondering whether that sort of shock therapy of writing 50,000 words in 30 days is the best approach for everybody. I mean, for some people it's a good thing. I usually write more than 50,000 words every month, but that's my job. But for someone else who’s starting out, that kind of shock approach might be a bit like yo-yo dieting. We talked about that last week, how it's better to lose 1 pound a month and have it stay off than it is to lose 5 pounds a month only for you to change habits and then gain 10 pounds back. I wonder for some people National Novel Writing Month might be the equivalent of that sort of yo-yo crash diet where you make this massive effort and that burns you out and you give up on it again. If it feels like you're missing out when others are working on a bigger writing challenge this month and you want to start writing but feel overwhelmed, how about a smaller, more manageable writing challenge for the absolute beginner? That is what our November Writing Challenge will be-maybe 300 words a day or some other small number of your choosing, whether 300 or 500 or 1,000 or some other number. The key should be that the key is that it should be something small and something that you can realistically manage daily based on your current schedule and responsibilities and health and so forth. The inspiration for this idea was, as you may know, for the last year I've had a transcriptionist working on my podcast, which has been very helpful because that's something I would never have had the time to do myself. She too wants to write a novel and has started writing one and has experienced challenges trying to start one. She often says she has felt overwhelmed at the idea of starting one, and so let's follow along with her progress this month as well. So let's start. #1: What do you need to begin? Number one is a common question, technology/equipment. Someone once came to be concerned that they couldn't start writing because they didn't have software that “real” writers used only to be surprised that I used Microsoft Word and have been using Microsoft Word pretty consistently for the last 10 years. However, you don't even need to use Scrivener, Microsoft Word, or some other fancy software. I wrote Ghost in the Storm and Soul of Serpents and a couple of other books entirely using LibreOffice on Ubuntu Linux, which is of course free. That was back in like 2012/2013/2014 and back then I was more enamored of writing on, you know, small 10 inch screen laptops that I would install Ubuntu on and then enjoy the portability of them, that I could write anywhere using these very small laptops. That, however, was 10 years ago, and both the writer in question (me) and my eyes are 10 years older. These days I prefer to write on the biggest screen possible whenever possible, and my preferred laptop has a 17 inch screen which is less portable but definitely easier on the eyes. But the point is you don't need to spend a lot of money on software. You can write in Word on a cheap Windows 11 laptop. You can write on LibreOffice, which is and remains 100% free. You could write on a Chromebook using Google Docs. All you actually need is a word processor and some way to back up your work. Don't just store it locally. If you are writing Google Docs, you could save to the cloud automatically. Many other cloud services offer free tiers, and you can even email it to yourself every day to keep a backup because that way, if your computer and your backup flash drive are lost or damaged or stolen, you don't lose all your work. Why can't you write using paper? You can if you want to. However, keeping track of progress would be tricky, because then you might have to do, ok, I'm going to write like, you know, a page a day instead of 300 words and then if you ever want to publish it, you will have to transcribe it to electronic format. So if you want to write on paper, go ahead and just to be aware that you are creating more work for yourself in the long term, if you are fine with that. #2: The second thing we need to do is make a plan. I would suggest writing at least a simple outline and then make a plan for your word count goal for the month of November, whether it's 300 words a day or something else. You can write without an outline. I find that it's for myself, it's easier to write with an outline, and if you're an absolute beginner, outlining in advance might help you work through some plotting problems you would have otherwise run into later on in the book. I would recommend blocking out time on your calendar for writing, even if it's only 5 minutes a day. Treat it like an appointment that you have to keep. You could churn out a few paragraphs on your lunch break or write a few sentences while on the bus or train ride home. I know of documented cases where people have written entire books on a commuter train using their phones and they thumb typed the entire rough draft. That might be a little extreme, though I imagine the younger generations who grew up with cell phones would be more comfortable with that, but it's certainly possible. This may be the most important part. Make a plan for what you will do if something happens and you can't write as planned, whether it's a family emergency, something with your kids, something medical, house problems, or just any of the other random stuff that can come up in the course of day-to-day life. Plan for this possibility and write out what you'll do if it can't happen on that day. It's very easy to skip writing when many other things take up your day, and in fact, if you're just starting out, pretty much everything else that happens in your life tends to be higher priority than writing. But if you only write when your day is perfect, you're not going to be writing much because perfect days are few and very far between in life. If you can make a plan for what to do if you have something come up and try to keep to your writing appointment, that will probably be the best way of making progress. #3: The third thing we have to do is to prepare your mindset for writing and this is a big one, because people very often talk themselves out of doing things even before they start, and writers in particular seem to be very prone to this because they will talk themselves out of starting or psych themselves out halfway through the book or fall into the trap of endlessly repolishing the first chapter over and over until it is perfect. So what are the most common mental mindset pitfalls that writers can encounter? The first one, of course, is perfectionism/fear of starting. The ways to combat this are to realize that it is hard to be a beginner, but everyone was a beginner once upon a time. You will get better with practice. Cloak of Illusion is going to be my 157th book but a long time ago, I just had one book or zero books that I was struggling to finish. It's also a bad idea to edit as you go. Just keep going. A metaphor I've used that people have told me has found is helpful (from a quote from Shannon Hale) is that writing is like building a sandcastle in an empty sandbox. The first job of course, is to drag the bag of sand into the sandbox and fill up the sandbox, and the second step is to then actually build the sandcastle, which is editing. Creating the rough draft is filling up the sandbox and then the editing process is building the sandcastle but it's a bad idea to start building the sandcastle before you fill up the sandbox because you might psych yourself out and not finish filling up the sandbox, which is what you really need to do. It doesn't matter if it's good at first, it just needs to get done. Get the words down for the day. It's also a good idea to find a way to silence your inner critic and the best way to do that is to not edit as you go. If you don't go back and constantly revise and tinker, then you are less likely to start doubting yourself. There's a time and place for revising and tinkering and editing, but that is after your rough draft is done. It is important to do things in their proper order. Another metaphor I use to explain this is once upon a time, I moved into an apartment that was on the third floor of a building with no elevator, and I have a lot of books. Naturally I had to carry all those books up three flights of stairs and into the new apartment. By the time I was done, I was probably in the best shape of my life. I've found that is a useful metaphor for writing, because writing the first draft is carrying all those books up to the third floor of the apartment, and the editing process is once you have all the books in the apartment, the editing process, is arranging them properly on the shelf. Now you could start rearranging the books into proper order while they're still in the truck, but I think we'd all agree that was a waste of time because the books aren't getting out of the truck. They're not even going to stay in that order once you get them up the stairs. If you waste too much time rearranging the books in the truck, eventually the police are going to come by and complain that you're taking up the fire lane (not that this ever personally happened to me, of course). So it's good to finish the rough draft first and then focus on the editing. Another mindset challenge is telling yourself that you don't have time. We've already talked about a few ways to get around this. Start by making your goal small. Even if you write only 300 words a day, if you do it every day in November, you will have about 9,000 words by the end of the month, which could be a chapter, several chapters, or even a short story. For myself when I started writing, I was still working a full-time job. So what I would do in my lunch hour (my lunch hour was literally an hour) was I would scarf down my food in the first 10 minutes and then spend the remaining 50 minutes typing as fast as I could on my laptop before it was time to get back to work. I wrote several different books that way. You’ll also find if you look honestly at your day, there are probably spots of wasted time where you could squeeze in a few 100 words on a phone or laptop if you brought it with you. For example, there are times in the day when I find myself just looking at memes on the Internet and if I was squeezed for time and could carve out some time there, that would be a few hundred words. If you find yourself waiting in a car to pick someone up, that is an excellent time to squeeze out a few hundred words. I've done that many times. Waiting rooms are good for that too, and any situation where you find yourself with dead time, like you're on hold, you're in a waiting room. You're waiting to pick someone up, you're on some form of public transit. If you have a cheap laptop or you can type on your phone, that is an excellent time to squeeze out a few words. Another possible mindset trap is just the intimidation factor of starting, and it might be helpful to remember back to when being creative didn't intimidate you, when creative work was a sort of play, and if you can recapture some of the playfulness of that, that may remove some of the intimidation factor. My transcriptionist found a quote from a writer named George Saunders on Dua Lipa’s podcast, and he said, “so much of being an artist is trying to trick your habitual nature, which likes safety and security and repetition and being sure, trying to trick that person out and go back to the kid you were at 13 or 14 who was just overjoyed to be making something.” There is definitely something to be said for that, too, you know, as a way to get past the intimidation factor and some self-doubt. So those are some of the mindset trip traps we might fall into, and hopefully some techniques for getting past them. And finally, in future episodes, we will check in with my transcriptionist and see how she's doing with her writing progress, whether she has any questions. Since I'm recording this literally on the morning of November 1st, there's not any progress to report yet, but there is a question. Why do you think so many people want to write books but never start? And I think we talked about that pretty well in the episode. There's a lot of activation energy and you have to get over perfectionism and the fear of being laughed at and the time problem and just overall the fear of starting, but as other wiser people than me have said, 80%, maybe even 90% of life is just showing up and doing the work. Like for example, I never knew how to replace front porch steps, but when the front porch steps started rotting, the alternative was trying to find a carpenter, which is difficult and expensive, or figuring it out how to do it myself. So I watched some YouTube videos and bought some lumber and paint and figured out how to do it myself. Would a professional carpenter have done it better? Probably. However, last night was Trick or Treating and I had about 80 kids and their parents come up and down the porch steps to get candy. The porch steps held and not a single person fell in. So sometimes showing up really is just good enough. So anyone who is participating in some sort of writing challenge in November, whether NaNoWriMo or writing challenge month, if you want send any... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/33774227

Episode 224: Sourcing Ad Graphics 10/28/2024

Episode 224: Sourcing Ad Graphics In this week's episode, we take a look at the best methods for finding ad graphics for book advertising. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 224 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 25th, 2024 and today we are discussing the best methods for sourcing images for ad graphics. We'll also have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. Let's go right to that. I am currently 61,000 words into Cloak of Illusion and am hoping to have that out before the end of November, since 61,000 words puts me about halfway through the rough draft, I think. I'm also 14,000 words into Orc Hoard, which will be the 4th Rivah book, and if all goes well, the final book I publish in 2024. In audiobook news, recording is underway for Shield of Conquest. That will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills, and it's also underway for Cloak of Spears and Ghost in the Tombs, which will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy. I think probably Cloak of Spears will come out first, but we will see how things play out for the rest of the month. So that's it. That is the update on my current writing project. Next month and next week, I want to do a new podcast series for the month of November that I’m going to call Moeller Writing Tips Month as sort of a gentler alternative to National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) for a couple of reasons. The NaNoWriMo organization has had a number of problems over the years, especially recently, so I don't feel comfortable endorsing it anymore. I've also begun to wonder if NaNoWriMo is a bit like a shock diet. If you talk to doctors and other medical experts about weight loss, they say the best way is always to make small, sustainable changes that you can keep up with over time. It's better to lose like a pound a month and keep it off than it is to lose like, 5 or 10 pounds a month in a shock crash diet only to gain it all back once you go back to your own old habits because that kind of a weighty yoyoing is very hard on the body. I wonder if National Novel Writing Month, where you write 50,000 words in a month is like that for a lot of people; it’s sort of a crash diet. For someone like me, Ghost in the Tombs was my 156th novel. I typically can write a rough draft or novel in a month if I don't have anything else come up. So for me, that's normal, but for most people who don't have that kind of experience, I wonder if National Novel Writing Month would be the sort of writing equivalent of those crash diets that might leave you worse off than you were to begin with. So with that in mind, next month I'll start a podcast series discussing gentler ways one can ease into the regular habit of writing. More discussion on that topic next week and next month. 00:02:45 Main Topic: Sourcing Ad Graphics Now onto our main topic for the week, sourcing ad graphics. Before we get into that, a disclaimer. I am not a lawyer and none of what I'm about to say is actual legal advice. You obtain actual legal advice by hiring a lawyer who is qualified to practice in your jurisdiction. It is very important (to continue the disclaimer) to be on firm footing with the copyright of your ad image. If you don't own the image or the right license to use it, you're infringing on someone's copyright and they can respond either legally or through the places where your book is sold. This is less of a problem with ad images than is with book covers, but it still can happen. With that in mind, some of the free stock images sites have restrictions on commercial use or modification of the images. It's a good idea to read the licenses carefully. Some of these sites have often not gotten the appropriate clearances from the models in the pictures, so be cautious of using images with identifiable faces from those types of sites. If you're not familiar with the legal term, a model release is when a model or someone in a stock photograph appears in the stock photograph. They sign a release that gives the rights for their likeness to be used for the commercial image and not all free stock image sites do that. Good stock image sites like Shutterstock or iStock Photo or Dreamstime will clearly state on the image page whether or not a model release has been included. If a model release has not been included, you can't use it for commercial purposes, and though it is not terribly likely, you can open yourself up to legal liability that way. In that vein, be also cautious about Creative Commons sites, since copyrighted work frequently ends up on those sites. This is also true of the free stock image sites, where sometimes people will pirate images and post them there. Also, many Creative Commons photos are restricted from commercial use, modification, and/or the artists require attribution. Tread carefully and make sure you understand the conditions of using images with any of the various Creative Commons licenses. And before we get into further details, it's also important to understand the difference between creating book covers and creating ad images. The number one thing to remember about ad images is that ads are ephemeral, and they should change often because you often get diminishing returns for using the same ad graphics. Ads can be tailored for different audiences. Ads can be tailored for different platforms. In fact, you kind of have to tailor ads for different platforms because, for example, Bookbub and Facebook, the two ad platforms where indie authors are most likely to use ad graphics, have very different requirements for images. People are more tolerant of AI images in ads than in book covers, but AI is very polarizing, and if you use an ad image that is easily and immediately identifiable as AI, you will probably get some pushback for that. So with all that in mind, let's first look at some free places to get images for ads and then some paid options. The number one free option is public domain images from the US government pages. It is the law of the land in the United States that images produced by the US government or federal employees in the course of their duties (with some exceptions) are in the public domain. Some of these are great as using as backgrounds or components of an ad. For example, are you a sci-fi author in need of a planet you can put behind a spaceship? You're in luck; NASA has plenty of those images and you can find them quite easily. However, sometimes U.S. government websites use stock images or government created images that have some types of restrictions. For example, NASA forbids use of images of current astronauts for commercial purposes for any reason and has some pretty strong feelings about people using their images to create NFTs. You do not want to go through life getting sued by the federal government, so you probably want to avoid that. Sources that are easiest to be confident in, images that are explicitly included in public domain collections on U.S. government websites such as the Library of Congress free to use and reuse sets website or NASA's Images Hub (this page also includes some guidance on NASA specific researchers) and the National Gallery of Art Open Access Images page. All of these have ample supplies of images that are in the public domain, and you can look over them for images you can use for ads or components of ads. Another free option is other public domain collections. Some libraries and some museums have created public domain image collections or let you filter for public domain images on their site. Very large institutions tend to be cautious about using this type of copyright language and their staff generally have training on what is or is not public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has a public domain filter on their search page and The Met museum in New York has an Open Access filter in their search page where you can look for images in the public domain. The third free option and one that I have done myself a lot is take your own photos and use your own photographs for backgrounds components in an ad, etcetera. Since you're the creator, you hold the copyright. I have done this in a lot of the books I have published in 2024 and the ad images I created in 2024. A fair bit of them have my own photos because I took some trips to some fairly scenic parts of the country this year. I was fortunate enough to be able to do that, so while I was there, I took lots of pictures with an eye towards using them in ad images and book covers because as you get more practice with graphic design, your projects tend to have more layers to them. You often come across things and think well, this wouldn't be a good image by itself but would be a great background or great foreground and I can use pieces of it to assemble a better picture. So I've done that a fair bit and since I own the rights to all the photographs, I am one hundred percent in the clear. Now let's move on to a few free or low-cost options and one that might be a bit controversial. In fact, it is controversial: AI generated images. The pros of this are that the US government has consistently ruled so far (this might change after the election, but it might not) is that AI images cannot be copyrighted in any capacity. This means you can quickly make eye-catching art that matches your specifications instead of hunting for stock art. The con is that many people will assume that the book is AI generated if they see an AI generated ad image and many people strongly dislike AI art in general, or object to AI art on principle, viewing it as a form of theft. For myself, I've decided that my personal ethical line on this (barring changes in circumstances or laws) is that I will not sell anything that was created by AI. If I am selling anything or giving away a free ebook, it is 100% written by me and the cover was either made by me or someone I hired to do it. And in the audio books I sell, they are 100% narrated by an actual human being. That said, I have, I'd say, from time to time, used AI for ad images for the reasons we've discussed. Ads are ephemeral and phased out pretty quickly, but I have found that it's generally unwise to use an unmodified AI image, because it has such a very clear and obvious AI look to it. It's a good idea if you are going to use an AI image for an ad to run it through Photoshop a bit and change the look and maybe eliminate some of the more obvious AI tells such as extra fingers or misshapen eyes, that kind of thing. So if you are comfortable using AI, it can be a good source of ad images with some work, but otherwise, if you're not comfortable with it and you think your audience would be offended by it, it's probably best to avoid it. So those are the free/slightly free options, and now it's time to move on to the official paid options. The first paid option we're going to discuss is Shutterstock. You pay by image. It's simpler than the credit systems that Dreamstime uses, and the interface is easy to use. I have not generally used Shutterstock all that much because it tends to be a bit more expensive than the other options. However, you can find some very high-quality photos there if you are patient enough to look. The second paid option we're going to look at is Dreamstime. You can either pay images a la carte with credits you buy or by subscription. I have used Dreamstime quite a bit and quite a few of my covers have images I have licensed from Dreamtime. I'd say the pros of Dreamstime is that it has a very large and very strong library. The con (and this is true of stock photo sites in general) is that it's very easy to find an image that is like 95% perfect, but that 5% would be a lot of work to fix in Photoshop or just isn’t right for some reason. Additionally, I don't agree with this decision on Dreamstime where they’ve begun including a lot of AI generated stuff on their page. It's clearly labeled as AI and you can use filters in the search engine to filter out the AI stuff, but if you're looking for stuff for covers because like I've said before, my personal ethical line (barring changes in law) is that I won't sell anything that was made by AI. If I'm looking for elements for a cover, it's really annoying to have to double check to make sure that the image was not AI generated, which is another good reason to use your own photos because you can then be certain it wasn't AI generated. The final paid option that many authors and many professional graphic designers use is Adobe Stock. Adobe Stock is probably the gold standard for stock photos. It has a large library with a range of image types and very clear license terms. The flip side is it's expensive. You can often include it with an Adobe subscription (which is in itself quite expensive) and then you get a limited number of image credits every month and that can be quickly expensive. If you have an Adobe subscription, you can also use Adobe's Firefly AI image generating service. It's not quite as powerful as Midjourney or some of the other ones available, but that said, it is trained only on stuff that Adobe technically has the legal rights to do. In my experiments with it, I found that Adobe Firefly’s AI generator is not good at generating scenes. It is good at generating components of scenes, like you could tell it to generate a forest or a beach or a mountain, or a castle or something, and that'd be pretty good. Then you can modify it and add in other elements later, but it's not so good at generating a finished scenes the way that something like Midjourney would be. Now that we've looked at sources for stock images, let's look at a couple of paid sites that can help you use the ad images you have found. Obviously, you can work on them in Photoshop or GIMP or Affinity Photo editor, but those are fairly complicated programs that can take quite a bit of effort to learn. There are websites that now specialize in helping you to create specific ad graphics. I'd say the most valuable one for indie authors is Book Brush. It is a specialized image editing website designed for indie authors. It lets you make things like 3D covers of your books or audiobooks to include as part of an ad, and it also has a variety of ad templates, where you will have ad templates that are the right size and resolution for the various ad platforms, and then you can drop in the elements you need to make an appropriate ad graphic. So if you’re an indie author who just wants to make ad graphics or maybe even some basic covers, Book Brush would be well worth your time to investigate, in my opinion. A second option would be Canva Pro. Amazon has explicitly said in their guidelines they don't like people using it for book covers, but ads are a different game and Canva is reliable for this purpose. It's good for beginners and those starting out. It's quick and easy to reuse. The downside is that since Canva is so popular, people have gotten used to the Canva look and you get bored with seeing those, especially if you've only minimally modified a template, but with some creativity, you can make an ad graphic that looks fairly nice. So that is it for this week. I hope you will find that helpful for finding sources for your ad graphics. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you that you can listen to all the back episodes on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/33614897

Episode 223: Five Writing Lessons From The Nintendo Switch 10/21/2024

Episode 223: Five Writing Lessons From The Nintendo Switch In this week's episode, we consider how the Nintendo Switch does the simple things well, and examine how writers can likewise do the simple things well to write excellent books. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 223 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October the 18th, 2024 and today we are discussing five lessons for writers from the Nintendo Switch, of all things. Don't worry, the analogy will make sense later in the show. Before we get into that, let's have an update on my current writing projects. I am pleased to report that Ghost in the Tombs is completely done and is currently publishing on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. The links are already live on some of those stores. This episode should go out on the same day as my newsletter, so by the time this episode goes out, the book should be available at all ebook stores. If you are subscribed to my newsletter, you will also get a free ebook copy of the short story Ghost Tablet. So that is one of the many excellent reasons it is a good idea to subscribe to my newsletter. You can find the details how to do that on my website right at the top. My next main project now that Ghost in the Tombs is out will be Cloak of Illusion, the 12th Cloak Mage book. I am 31,000 words into that. I'm hoping to have that out before the end of November, if all goes well. After that, I am 11,000 words into Orc Hoard and hopefully that will be out in December, if all goes well. As I mentioned earlier, the audiobook of Shield of Darkness is out, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills. You can get that at Audible, Apple, Google Play, and all the usual audiobook stores. We are also working on Shield of Conquest right now, and that is being recorded as we speak. Hollis McCarthy is also recording Cloak of Spears and that should hopefully be out before the end of the year, if all goes well. This week, we're not doing Question of the Week because all my time was going to finishing Ghost in the Tombs, but we will be doing another Question of the Week next week, so watch for that on my website and social media. 00:01:54 Main Topic: 5 Lessons Writers Can Learn from the Switch Now let's go to our main topic for the week, five lessons that writers can learn from the Nintendo Switch. So what can writers learn from the Nintendo Switch? A common complaint I sometimes see among newer writers is that all the stories have been told already, and that there are no truly original stories. Why try writing a mystery novel? Haven't they all been told? Why try writing a romance novel? How many different ways are there for a woman to meet a man and fall in love? Why attempt to write an epic fantasy when there's already Lord of the Rings and Mistborn and Shannara? Haven't all the stories already been told? That is a fair question, but it misunderstands the nature of stories. It's as profound a misunderstanding as saying that just because you've eaten one cheeseburger in your life, there is no need to ever have another or saying that since Pizza Hut makes pizzas, there is no need for anyone else to ever open a pizza restaurant or even to sell frozen pizzas. To dispel this misapprehension, let us turn to the Nintendo Switch. It is not unfair to say that the Switch is one of the most popular game consoles in the world and is likely Nintendo’s second best-selling device of all time. The Switch is also significantly less powerful than its chief competitors, the various Xbox and PlayStation models offered by Microsoft and Sony. For that matter, the Switch has only received moderate updates in the seven years it has been on the market. Its internal components are basically those of a decent smartphone from 2017, yet despite that, the Switch has significantly outsold both the Xbox and the PlayStation over the last seven years. It was a remarkable reversal of fortune for Nintendo. The Switch's predecessor, the Wii U, did so badly that the CEO of Nintendo at the time took a 50% pay cut to help avoid layoffs. One thinks American CEOs could stand to learn from this example, but that's a different topic. So to go from that to the best-selling console of the last seven years is quite a swing of fate’s pendulum. So let us then ask the obvious question: why did the Switch do better than its competitors, especially when it was so relatively underpowered compared to them in terms of hardware? The answer is simple. The Switch did the basics, but it did the basics exceptionally well and doing the basic simple things exceptionally well is often much harder than people imagine. The Switch doesn't have a lot of the more advanced features from the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation ecosystems, but it doesn't really need them. The Switch is easily portable. It has a strong library of first-party titles. The loading speed isn't great, but it's adequate. It has Switch Online for all the old Nintendo classics. You can play it handheld or docked. It's popular enough that developers want to bring their games to the console whenever possible, including some that some that were very technically difficult, like Skyrim or The Witcher 3. All that sounds simple, but it's much harder to do than it sounds, and the basics done well are always a good thing, regardless of the field. In fact, that is traditionally part of Nintendo's design philosophy. Nintendo has a thing they call “withered technology” (another translation from the Japanese would be “lateral thinking with seasoned technology”), which means rather than trying to use cutting edge technology, they use tried and true older technology and think about developing unique experiences with it. In other words, they used well established basic technology to build the Switch (which wasn't exactly cutting edge even in 2017) and then just tried to use that established technology well. So how does this apply to storytelling and writing? This is, after all, a writing podcast and not a video game podcast (even if I do talk about video games a fair bit). The same approach taken to writing can work out quite well. Don't try to be excessively fancy or flashy. Focus on the simple things and do them as well as you can, and that will probably work out better than trying to be flashy or creative in a way that only ends up being off putting to the reader. So when it comes to writing fiction, what are the simple things that you can do well? What is the “lateral thinking with seasoned technology” you can employ with writing a novel? I think there are five lessons we can take here. #1: Understand the genre you are writing in and try to hit the appropriate tropes for that genre. A lot of writers when they are first starting out try to do too much, like a fantasy author tries to write a 12 volume epic fantasy series as their first writing attempt, or someone tries to fuse a bunch of genres and write a book that is simultaneously romance, a magical realism coming of age story, and somehow also a memoir. If you can't clearly state the genre of your book, you're going to have a hard time selling it. You might also have a hard time even finishing it. What do I mean by the appropriate tropes for the genre? That's just a way of saying that the storytelling conventions that readers come to expect in specific genres. For example, in a happily ever after clean romance, the readers will expect no explicit scenes and that the heroine and the love interest will end up together by the end of the book. Romance tends to have a lot of very specific subgenres, but the rule holds for many other genres as well. Epic fantasy readers typically expect a quest, some journeying, and a band of arguing adventures. Mystery readers expect a mystery with an actual solution at the end. Thriller readers look forward to some well executed fight scenes in a secret government building. Some writers dislike the idea of writing to genre tropes but think of it this way: If you go to an Italian restaurant and order spaghetti carbonara, but the waiter instead brings out a steak burrito bowl with a side of French toast sticks and maple syrup, you're going to be disappointed. Are there people who would enjoy a lunch of a burrito bowl and French toast sticks? Almost certainly, but you ordered spaghetti carbonara. The vast majority of people who go to an Italian restaurant are going to expect Italian food. The same thing applies to genres. If you buy a mystery book, you will expect a mystery novel and not an experimental cross genre thing. If you dislike writing to genre tropes, remember that readers only dislike tropes written to genre conventions if it's done badly, but if you do it well, they appreciate it and that could be one of the simple things that you focus on doing well. #2: A protagonist with relatable problems. Another important basic in genre fiction is the protagonist with problems that the reader can find compelling. There's an endless tedious discussion about whether or not the protagonist should be likable or not, and frankly, it often degenerates into the standard Internet discussion about gender politics, whether or not a female protagonist has to be likable when a male one does not. But in my opinion, that discussion completely misses the point. What makes a character relatable, or more accurately sympathetic to the reader, is the character experiencing a conflict or some sort of emotional pain that allows the reader to sympathize with them. Whether their character is likable is less important than sympathy. Let's take two examples from recent television, specifically Disney properties. The characters of Syril Karn and Dedra Meero from the Star Wars show Andor are unlikable but sympathetic characters, while Jennifer Walters from She Hulk is both unlikable and unsympathetic. The difference between them is instructive for writers. Syril Karn and Dedra Meero are both essentially unlikable villains. Karn is a wannabe mall cop with puffed up delusions of his own importance and Meero is working for the Empire’s sinister secret police as a mid-level officer. Yet Karn’s circumstances make him emotionally sympathetic. He is stuck in a dead-end job and living with his cruel mother. Meero is trying to do the best job she can in the secret police and is fighting against her obstinate and clueless colleagues within a cumbersome bureaucracy, something many office workers can sympathize with. Indeed, it's clever how the show sets her up as a strong woman making headway in the male dominated secret police, only to yank away the sympathy when she brutally tortures one of the show's protagonists. By contrast, Jennifer Walters is both unlikable and unsympathetic. She's a rich lawyer who has rich lawyer problems, which is generally not sympathetic to most people. Indeed, she strongly establishes herself as unlikable in the first episode when she lectures Bruce Banner (who in past movies tried to kill himself in despair, was hunted by the US government, held as an enslaved gladiator for two years, brutally beaten by Thanos, and fried his right arm with the Infinity Gauntlet) about how much harder her life has been than his, which is objectively not true. As we mentioned with Karn and Meero, it's very possible for unlikable characters to be sympathetic, but Jennifer Walters is so unsympathetic that the best episodes of She Hulk were the ones where she becomes the unsympathetic comedy protagonist like David Brent from the UK Office or Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers and she suffers the comedic results of her own bad decisions. What's really compelling is when you have a likeable character who has a sympathetic problem. As an added bonus, it's usually easier to write a likeable character with a sympathetic problem. Striking the balance between an unlikable character with a sympathetic problem is often a challenge for even experienced writers. But if the reader likes your protagonist and the protagonist’s problem inspires emotional sympathy in the reader, then that's half the battle. What is the other half of the battle lesson? #3: A strong conflict. I’ve said on the podcast many times before that conflict is central to storytelling. If you have a sympathetic protagonist who has a serious conflict, you've got yourself the potential for a strong book. Another way of saying conflict is “the problem the protagonist must solve, face, overcome.” If the protagonist doesn't have a problem, he or she might as well sit at home playing well, Nintendo Switch. Fortunately, it is easy to think of a suitable conflict for your story, because in Real Life, the potential causes of conflict are sadly infinite, and you can easily apply that to fiction. Like if you write epic fantasy, you could have the conflict be the quest to stop the Dark Lord, or if you write sci-fi, it could be defeating the invasion of the space bugs. Mysteries have a conflict built in for the genre. Solving the crime, finding a missing person, etc. Thrillers tend to be all about violent conflict, but conflicts don't have to be violent or even high stakes to be emotionally significant. It could be a conflict with a rival at work, or not even involve a person at all, like trying to survive the aftermath of a natural disaster. It boils down to that the protagonist must have a conflict and the protagonist must take some sort of action to resolve that conflict. Stories where this doesn't happen tend to become boring quite quickly. #4: A satisfactory ending. The ending is really, really important. You know how a joke isn't funny if it doesn't have a good punchline? A story with a bad ending, unfortunately, almost always turns out to be a bad story that leaves an unpleasant taste in a reader's mouth. What makes for a good ending? The story's central conflict has to be resolved in a satisfactory way, in a way that generates emotional catharsis. In fantasy, the quest needs to be achieved. In science fiction, the space bugs need to be defeated. In mystery, the killer has to be caught or the mystery resolved in a satisfactory way. In romance, the heroine needs to end up with her love interest. Bad endings are ones that don't resolve the conflict or resolve the conflict in a way that feels like cheating to the reader. This can include the protagonist solving the conflict through no effort or struggle or a Deus Ex Machina style ending where the conflict is solved simply because the author wants to hurry up and finish the book. Granted, this doesn't mean that a good ending is a happy one. The Lord of the Rings had a famously bittersweet ending. Sauron is defeated and the One Ring destroyed, but the Elves leave Middle Earth forever, and Frodo is too wounded to return to his homeland, instead choosing to accompany the Elves into the West. There are many other examples. The mystery could have the detective solving the crime, but at the cost of his career and his marriage. The protagonist of a military science fiction story could win the battle but be the only surviving member of his squad. The ending must resolve the conflict in an emotionally satisfying manner that doesn't leave the reader feeling cheated. #5: The fifth simple thing you can do: write clear prose. Writing clear prose that unambiguously conveys your meaning is one of the vital basics for storytelling, and this is harder than it seems. An anecdote from this topic about this topic: back in 2023, Wired magazine ran a hit piece on fantasy author Brandon Sanderson about his Kickstarter. One of the criticisms in the article was that Sanderson's books were written at a sixth-grade level, which is debatable, but that's not the point. The point is the writer of the article and many other people have the profound misapprehension that simple, clearly written prose is somehow easier to write than more dense or complex prose. It's really not, and this fact is easily proven. Think about how many people you know in real life who struggle to communicate through written communications such as emails or text messages. Think how many times you've gotten an e-mail from a manager or client only to have no idea what the person in question is trying to ask for, or even say. Or how much family drama can be created by a badly written text message or social media post that is easily misunderstood. In all of these examples, people failed to communicate effectively through written prose and would have benefited from the ability to write simple, clear, not easily misunderstood prose. Therefore, developing the ability to write clear, transparent prose that precisely conveys your meaning is a useful skill for anyone, not just fiction writers. It just happens to be especially useful for writers of fiction. When writing fiction, it is probably best to remain as clear and concise as possible. So in conclusion, these are the five simple things you can do well to have a good book: #1: Understand the genre #2: Have a protagonist with a sympathetic problem #3: A strong conflict #4: A satisfactory ending #5: As clear of prose as possible All relatively simple things, but if you do them well, I think you are well on the way to writing a good book. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes of the podcast on https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/33514997

Episode 222: Story Conflicts 10/14/2024

Episode 222: Story Conflicts In this week's episode, we take a look at four different types of story conflict, and explore three different ways to add them to your stories. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 222 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October the 11th, 2024 and today we are discussing four kinds of story conflict and three ways you can bring conflict into your books. Before we get into that, we will have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects and then do Question of the Week. The good news is that I am done with the first pass of editing on Ghost in the Tombs and I'm ready to start on the second. This is Episode 222 and if all goes well, I think Ghost in the Tombs will be out shortly around the time Episode 223 comes out. So second-half of October, we're on track for that. I am 28,000 words into Cloak of Illusion and that will be my main project once Ghost in the Tombs is published. I'm also 8,000 words into Orc Hoard, the fourth Rivah book, and that'll be the main project once the Cloak of Illusion is done. In audiobook news, Shield of Darkness is now out. You can get on Audible, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Chirp, Kobo, Payhip, and all the other major audiobook stores. That is excellently narrated by Brad Wills. Recording is underway for Cloak of Spears and that should hopefully be out before the end of the year. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:01:22 Question of the Week Let's move on to the Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics. This week's question: if you listen to audiobooks, where do you listen to them? While cooking or driving, commuting, or perhaps walking? The inspiration for this question was that I was looking at some old sales spreadsheets from 2020 (that was a fun year, wasn't it?) and I was sure the start of COVID was going to wipe out the audiobook market because a lot of commuting was temporarily going away. Except this turned out not to be the case, and audiobook sales overall actually went up during COVID. So clearly I was wrong about how most audiobook listening took place while commuting. We had a few answers to this question. David said: Mostly while I'm home prepping and eating a meal, sometimes I'm in my vehicle enjoying a coffee while I drive somewhere. Sometimes when I go out to eat by myself, I'll listen on headphones. So it’s when my hands are otherwise busy and it beats listening to music or TV. JLH says: I pretty much only listen to audiobooks while driving. While home, I prefer to read. I'll listen to music when I'm at the gym. Tom says: Anywhere and everywhere. Driving car and tractor, at work, when walking (single earpiece only), and when at the gym. MW says: Usually while driving. I prefer reading and drawing to listening, but those aren't an option when driving my car, so a podcast is usually it. For myself, these days I usually listen to audiobooks when making long road trips by myself where I don't need the GPS to navigate. That's because if I'm going someplace I've never been before and need the GPS to navigate, it is highly distracting to have the audiobook and the GPS cutting back and forth between each other while you’re trying to figure out where you're going. That said, long drives to places where I know I'm going happen less than it did, so I generally listen to audiobooks less than I than I did before COVID. That said, in 2023 through 2024 I listened to the new audiobooks Andy Serkis recorded for the Lord of the Rings and was blown away by how good they were. Definitely recommended. So that is Question of the Week. 00:03:21 Main Topic of the Week: Story Conflicts So now on to this week's main topic: four types of story conflict and three ways you can add those conflicts to your story. So as we all know and as I've mentioned many times before on this podcast and on my blog, a story is nothing without conflict. Conflict is what drives the story. There's a story that when he was writing The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien probably would have wound up with a 1200 page description of a Hobbit dinner party if C.S. Lewis hadn’t kind of gently urged him to add more conflict and have things happen to the story. I'm not entirely sure if that's true or not, but the point is quite valid that if you want to have an interesting story, you need a conflict. You need the characters to act and respond to that conflict, and that will help drive your story. Most stories also have more than one type of conflict. You can have internal conflict and external conflict and different kinds of internal versus external conflicts. For example, my novel Half-Elven Thief contains three of the four types of conflict we will discuss. I will mention those when I get to them. So let's look at four classic types of story conflict. #1: Person versus internal conflicts. What does that mean? That means the protagonist is facing challenges that test their core values and beliefs and must face their character flaws in order to move forward. There are numerous different types: midlife crisis, a character who has to overcome self-doubt, or a character who is confronted with a strong temptation or an otherwise moral test. There are numerous good examples from fiction. A relatively recent example would be the movie Inside Out, which shows a child trying to handle major changes in her life. She tries to face them by shutting out Sadness in favor of Joy, but finds that accepting all of her emotions is actually what's healthy and the internal conflict in that movie is the character in question learning to accept all of her emotions rather than trying to suppress sadness, and you know, live with sort of false joy. Another very classic example would be Lord of the Rings, where several different characters have internal conflicts. Perhaps the biggest one, of course, is Frodo trying to resist the power of the ring throughout the trilogy. Another big one that decides, of course, the book is at the end when Sam really, really wants to kill Gollum. As the narration in the text suggests, killing Gollum is probably the smartest thing he could do in that moment, but he can't within himself bring himself to strike Gollum. So he lets him go, which turns out of course to be very decisive to the plot. We mentioned before that Half-Elven Thief contains three of the four conflicts types below. Half-Elven Thief does have an internal conflict for Rivah where she has to balance her desire for financial stability and security with her conscience, because, though she's a thief, there are many more ruthless and immoral ways she can make money. She thinks about this throughout the book and the sequels, but never can quite bring herself to do that. The second major type of conflict is person versus others. And what it is a person's goals are being thwarted by another person. This is easily the most common kind of conflict, because in many ways it's the easiest to write. You can have anything ranging from a superhero fighting a super villain, you know, Iron Man versus Thanos. Most of us in our lives aren’t going to hopefully experience conflict on that scale, but that is essentially person versus others in the form of Ironman versus Thanos. It could be not such a severe or violent conflict but a rivalry between, say, two sales reps or two City Council people where they will never come to blows, but they're both competing for the same goals or trying to promote harmony or trying to get someone to collaborate. Examples are numerous. Sherlock Holmes versus Professor Moriarty. Conan the Barbarian versus Thulsa Doom. Batman and The Joker and many other range of potential conflicts ranging from like we said before, super villains fighting each other to smaller and more intimate conflicts where two people are competing for the same goal in a way that won't result in, you know, violence or supervillainy, but is then nonetheless emotionally significant for both of them. And once again, we can use an example from Half-Elven Thief here and in Half-Elven Thief, Rivah's main adversary in the book is Marandis, who is the sort of official of the thieves’ guild that she reports to who hates her and wants to find any excuse to sell her into slavery. She's managed to avoid that so far. So that is another example from Half-Elven Thief of person versus others. #3: The third common type of conflict is person versus environment. And what does that mean? It means the person is facing a conflict based on something that's happening in the environment. Types can include tornadoes, floods, hurricanes (which we are sadly seeing in real life right now), a pandemic, or getting stranded on desert island or a remote alien planet, that kind of thing. A famous example would be the 1995 movie Twister about surviving tornadoes. Twister is a little bit of a ridiculous movie, though I am looking forward to seeing the sequel Twisters, which I actually rented and will watch tonight. In my own books, I have not used conflict based on the environment too often, since I tend to prefer person versus others or person versus internal conflict. Probably the closest thing I have done would be some of the dungeon crawls, like in Frostborn: The Broken Mage where surviving a dungeon is a part of the plot, but in Ghost in the Tombs, there will be some person versus environment and what it will be we shall have to read and find out. #4: The fourth type of conflict is person versus supernatural and what that is, where the protagonist of the story must face a god or supernatural force of evil. Obviously, a fantasy book where someone fights an evil wizard is one of those. It also turns up in horror novels pretty frequently, where the protagonist is haunted by ghosts or haunted by vampires or werewolves, or Cthulhu or something like that. Examples are abundant. Maybe one of the oldest ones is The Odyssey, where Odysseus battles supernatural forces attempting to keep him from returning home. In Half-Elven Thief, once again we have a supernatural threat where Rivah is compelled to steal an item from a powerful wizard, and she has to face that wizard’s powers and find a way to survive them. So with four types of conflict, let's see if we take a look at three different ways to add those types of conflict to your stories. #1: Put your characters in an unfamiliar or hostile environment. For example in my books, in Frostborn, Calliande in Frostborn: The Gray Knight wakes up in a world far different from the one she has known and must act to protect herself and her original quest. There are many different ways you can do that. If you are writing a mystery novel, for example, you could have your protagonist be transferred to another police precinct where no one likes him or her. If you're writing science fiction, the options for hostile environments are abundant, considering that most of space is lethal to humans. There are other genre suitable ways you could do that. #2: Force your characters into making decisions, and if you really want conflict, have them start off by making the wrong ones. This can be a good way to do that, so long as you don't make your character out to be an idiot. People make bad decisions all the time for what they think are good reasons, and if you can convincingly convey that, that is a good source of conflict. An example from my own books in the Dragonskull series, Gareth faces conflict with his parents over his rather ill-considered romantic relationship with Lady Iseult Toraemus. Then he has further conflict when that ends very badly. #3: Have your characters face an external conflict in different ways, which then creates an additional conflict. When two different people face an external conflict, they may undergo a different internal conflict over the problem and decide to react to it in different ways that create additional conflict. For example, in Stealth and Spells Online: Creation in the back story, the protagonist Noah Carver finds out that the game he was working on, Sevenfold Sword Online, was being used for illegal activities. He wanted to blow the whistle on it, but his wife didn't want to lose her job over it, so she immediately divorced him. That led to a new external conflict between the two of them, since they both wanted to deal with the problem in different ways and more internal conflicts for Noah since of course, he is our protagonist. So those are four different types of conflict and three ways you can apply them to the story and hopefully you will find that helpful as you think about writing your own stories and books. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. I reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/33421417

Episode 221: Audiobook Sampler Platter, The Second Course! 10/07/2024

Episode 221: Audiobook Sampler Platter, The Second Course! In this week's special autumn episode, I share samples from four of my audiobooks. Each audiobook is the second book in its series! 1.) Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, narrated by Brad Wills. 2.) Ghost in the Flames, narrated by Hollis McCarthy. 3.) Wizard-Thief, narrated by Leanne Woodward. 4.) Cloak of Wolves, narrated by Hollis McCarthy. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 221 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October, the 2nd 2024 and today we are sharing a second Audiobook Sampler Platter. Back in June in Episode 204, I did not have time to record an episode that week so what I did was I made a quick update and then assembled the samples together of four of my audiobooks, and then patched that together as an episode. People seemed to like that. Once again four months later, I find myself without time to record a full-length clip. So this week, what I'm going to do is put together a second Audiobook Sampler Platter. This time will be 4 samples from the second audiobooks in some of my series, so we will have that coming up later in the show after I offer an update on my current writing projects right now. I’m pleased to report that the rough draft of Ghost in the Tombs is done at about 93,000 words. I have also written a companion short story called Ghost Tablet and my newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Ghost Tablet when Ghost in the Tombs comes out. So now is a good time to sign up for my new release newsletter. If all goes well, Ghost in the Tombs should be out in the second half of October. I'm also 25,000 words into Cloak of Illusion, which will be the 12th Cloak Mage book and that should probably come out in November, if all goes well. I am 5,000 words into Orc Hoard, which will be the fourth Rivah book and I'm hoping to have that out in December In audiobook news, I'm pleased to report that after some processing delays, Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling is finally available at all audiobook stores. It's excellently narrated by C.J. McAllister. You can get it at Audible, Amazon, Google Play, Apple, Chirp, Spotify, and all the other usual audiobook stores. Recording just started yesterday for Shield of Conquests. That will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills. Shield of Darkness, the audiobook of that is done and is currently working its way through processing. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects and now on to our audiobook samples. We shall have four audiobook samples this episode from the second book in four of my different series. The first sample will be Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, the second book of the Dragonskull series (as narrated by Brad Wills). The second audiobook sample will be Ghost in the Flames, the second book in the Ghost series, as narrated by Hollis McCarthy. The third sample will be Wizard Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series as narrated by Leanne Woodward. The final sample will be Cloak of Wolves, the second book in the Cloak Mage series, again narrated by Hollis McCarthy. So those will be coming up very shortly. Before we get to that, I'd just like to say thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and enjoyable. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week with hopefully a full-length episode. And until then, here are our four audiobook samples. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/33300787

Episode 220: Eight Tips For Finishing Your First Rough Draft 09/30/2024

Episode 220: Eight Tips For Finishing Your First Rough Draft In this week's episode, we discuss eight tips for finishing your first rough draft. You can also get 25% off any STEALTH & SPELLS audiobook at my Payhip store with this coupon code: LEVELING The coupon code will last until October 8th, 2024. You can get the audiobooks here: https://payhip.com/JonathanMoeller/collection/sevenfold-sword-online-audiobooks TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 220 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September 26th, 2024, and today we're discussing eight tips for finishing your rough draft. We also have a Question of the Week and then close out the episode with a short preview of the audiobook of Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling, as excellently narrated by C.J. McAllister. First, let's have an update on my current writing projects. As of right now, I am 82,000 words into Ghost in the Tombs and if all goes well, I'm hoping to wrap up the rough draft for that next week. I am 24,000 words into Cloak of Illusion, and I'm hoping to have that out in November and I’m also 4,000 words into Orc Hoard, which I am hoping to have out in December, if all goes well, though obviously if anything goes wrong, we're probably going to slip by a month or so there. In audiobook news, the recording for Shield of Darkness (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is finished. That just has to work its way through processing and should be up on the various audiobook sites soon, and we're going to start on the recording for Shield of Conquest next week. The audiobook of Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling is done. That's narrated by CJ McAllister and that's probably going to be a while before it turns up on Audible and the other sites because, as you might remember from previous episodes of the podcast, I changed the name of the series from Sevenfold Sword Online to Stealth and Spells Online and ACX does not like that, so it's going to take a bit for it to get through processing on ACX. In the interim, it is available on my Payhip store and as of today through October 8th you can get 25% off both Stealth and Spells Online audiobooks at my Payhip store with this coupon code: LEVELING and that is LEVELING. I will include that coupon code and a link to the Payhip store in the notes for this show. Remember that coupon code is valid through October 8th, 2024. So act now if you want to get a copy of Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling and listen to it before anyone else does. 00:02:10 Question of the Week Now on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: do you reread novels that you have previously read? Now, there are obviously numerous reasons to reread nonfiction- research, for example, or double checking on how to do a certain technical procedure. But there seems to be less of a reason to reread novels, so I opened up this question and people had a lot of thoughts on this. In all the times we've done Question of the Week, this is the most comments we've ever gotten. So rather than read them all, which would take something like 20 minutes, I'm going to read some of the more representative ones here. Our first comment is from Mary who says: yes, a lot. I have lost count of how many times I've read The Lord of the Rings. Joaquim says: Sure, I reread novels. When you announced Ghost Armor, I reread Ghost Exile and Ghost Night. Some things were different from my memory. Shane says: I reread books pretty often. I just got my brother into your books, starting with Frostborn, so we've been reading them at the same time and having daily calls to talk about the exploits of Ridmark and his friends. Surabhi says: when I was little, reading books other than those assigned by schools was an alien thing where I live, because books were expensive and people considered fiction a waste of time. My parents are more liberal, so I requested them to give me the Harry Potter series. I never knew another book for years, rereading Harry Potter twice a year. It was my escape, a little dose of magic and friendship in my lonely, backward society life. I've read Harry Potter like twelve times by now, and I rarely ever reread books except for occasionally going back to favorite scenes. It's been a while since I reread Harry Potter, so maybe I will reread it someday. It was what got me into reading and still has a special place in my heart. My next comment is from Michael, who says: yeah, I reread your books while I'm waiting for you to release a new one, which sometimes backfires when I'm only four books into Ghosts when you release the next one…what to do? And I reread Lord of The Rings and my other favorite fantasy novel every year, too. William says: when I was stuck at Club Med for almost week on a family vacation, I ended up reading the first five Gotrek and Felix novels every day (twice one particular uneventful day) since they were what I had thought to pack. Rereading is a lot more optional now thanks to digital publishing. Anyway, out of all your novels, I have reread Cloak Game, Silent Order, Cormac Rogan and Stealth and Spells Online: Creation. JL says: I frequently reread novels I've previously read. It's fun way to go back through a series once the first time glamor and immersion has worn off tiny bit and think about how I would have reacted in certain scenarios. MW says: Yes, I regularly reread old novels. I love new stuff, but I don't just abandon old friends. Shandy says: I constantly reread series. I've reread your Ridmark, Caina, and Nadia series a few times over. Wheel of Time is another one I reread every couple of years or so, and The Man of His Word series by Dave Duncan. Sometimes I want a familiar story and miss old friends. Pippa says: I do reread some of my favorites and some of them multiple times. Daggerspell, the “trilogy” that ended up being 16 books by Katherine Kerr, I’ve reread that at least 10 times over the last 30 years. I've reread Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit many more times than that. I love revisiting the stories again, both because it's comforting to read what I already know so well and also the enjoyment of experiencing new/different things in them as time and experience have changed me. I love your books too, but I'm not sure I'll be able to reread them all for a while yet as I’ve still not finished them all. Rob says: every time you release a new Ghost or Cloak novel, I start from the beginning and work through to the latest. Caroline says: I reread the Malloreon series and the Mithgar series and the Dragons of (mispronounced word). Darla says: I read my favorite books and sometimes find details missed the first time around. I reread Nadia’s and Caina’s books at least twice. Still great stuff. Randy says: yes, some stories and characters (Ridmark, Harry Dresden) are too good to read just once, and some authors (Tolkien, Heinlein, Rowling) are just fun to read. Becca says: I read a lot. My usually reading is often 40% new and 60% rereads. Some of my favorites I reread almost every year. Depending on costs, new books might go down or rereads go up. That is always a challenge because of tight economic times, I'm afraid. Gary says: I generally do not. I am not a fast reader, but I generally retain most of what I read, so rereading stories is usually dull. Bob says: very rarely. I'm usually too busy keeping up with series and reading new books. Barbara says: I reread my favorite books at least once a year. Asimov, Andrew Norton, Anne Bishop, Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley, yours, and many others. Bonnie says: I reread your books all the time. Usually it's the last two before the newest comes out. I’ve gone through all Ridmark a couple of times. The Master Reading List comes in handy for where the short stories fit in. Same with Demonsouled. A couple of others I reread are K.F. Breene and C.J. Archer. Mary says: I reread Rosamund Pilcher’s short stories and novels. Michael says: I rarely reread novels unless I read them decades ago and don't remember much about the story. Tom says: I reread several series and could still pick up one and lose myself: Harry Potter, A Song of Fire and Ice, Fable Haven/Dragonwatch and of course, Frostborn. By the way, that is only rereads. I've listened to many series on Audible that I have already read. I actually do that myself because I usually listen to audiobooks while I'm driving and while I'm driving I’ll have an audiobook on, but only if it's something I've already read, because that way I don't have to concentrate too much on it, since while driving, obviously it's best that your attention is on the road. And finally, perhaps the most definitive comment comes from Rick, who says: yes and I'll read them more than two or three times if they're good. I'll often reread a few books back in the series when a new one comes out to refamiliarize with setting and characters. Sometimes I read the whole series again if it's still short. I reread series if I've gotten a few books behind, too. I've read Lord of Rings dozens of times since the first way back in fifth grade and it's interesting how one's perspectives can change over the decades. I don't mean anything drastic, just in viewing characters, motivations, deeds, etcetera, and having a greater understanding thereof. Good novels are like old friends I'm always happy to see. I'm a voracious reader and can burn through a book quickly while having a high rate of comprehension and recall. I can also watch movies I really like multiple times. For example, I've now seen the 1986 movie Highlander close to 100 times since I was 20. I'm 57 now. I've gotten through some hard times that are visiting the words and tales within the covers of my many-paged friends, same with favorite movies. For myself, I don't usually reread novels and I'm usually looking for something new to read. That said, this year I have had a hard time finding something new to read, so I reread a lot of novels from the 2000s/early 2010s that I liked but could recall little else about. I have to admit it was enjoyable to come back to something I previously liked with 20-ish years of additional experience. I could appreciate the nuances and allusions in a way that I couldn't before. I should also mention that when it comes to my own books, I reread them like all the time because of the simple fact of continuity checking, where very often during the writing process I need to pause, open up something a couple books back, and then Control+F until I find what I'm looking for and refresh my memory on what actually happened. So that was Question of the Week. Quite a good collection of comments this week. 00:09:12 Main Topic: 8 Tips for Finishing Your First Rough Draft Now let's move on to our main topic, eight tips for finishing your first rough draft. This is a major hurdle for many new writers and was the reason that things like National Novel Writing Month existed is to encourage people to finish their first draft because that is a major milestone and also for lack of a better term, a major mental hurdle to get over. Because if you've done it once, you can do it again. And finishing that first novel rough draft is getting over that major hurdle and proving to yourself and possibly to others, that you can do it, through proving it to yourself that you can do it probably most (indistinct word) of all. So with that in mind, I thought I would share eight tips that would hopefully help you finish that rough draft and pass that mental hurdle. Tip #1: schedule your writing time. All of us are very busy. Some of us are busier than others, but most people are busy. So for most people, if something isn't scheduled, it's not going to happen. Waiting until you feel like you have the energy or motivation to write means that it's going to be put off a lot. Put it on your calendar like it's an appointment. It doesn't have to be a lot of time, especially at first, but it does need to be consistent even if it's only 15 minutes a day. If you do 15 minutes of writing a day, that adds up over time. Most writers and most even well-known writers have day jobs and have to write either late in the evening or early in the morning to accommodate their work and family lives. Some people even use lunch breaks to write. I did that myself for quite some time. Back in the days when I worked IT support, I'd have an hour lunch break. And so for that hour lunch break I would wolf down my lunch quickly and then pound out as many words as I could on my laptop before it was time to go back to work. And if I did that every workday whenever possible, because sometimes other obligations to precedence but I did that whenever possible and that added up over time. It's not impossible. You don't have to be a full-time writer or have hours a day free in order to write. You just have to squeeze out a little at a time to get a little writing done. Just do it every day. Small efforts over long periods of time can add up to big results. Tip #2: start small. Most people do pretty well with making small changes gradually. You can see a book like Atomic Habits by James Clear for more detail on how to make small goals effectively. Writing for 10 minutes a day is better than waiting for the perfect time to write or waiting to feel ready for some big challenge like National Novel Writing Month (which might be going away because of all the scandals for the organization anyway). Starting with a small daily or weekly block of time gets you into the habit of writing and makes the process easier. Another anecdote might illustrate that. I had my yearly doctor's checkup about a week ago, and the doctor was very happy with me because I was 9 lbs. lighter than I was that time last year. We talked a bit about that and she said that when it comes to making dietary changes, making small, sustainable changes you can actually do is better over the long term than going down some sort of crash diet or exercise program where you lose like 10 or 15 lbs. quickly in a couple of months, but then you can't sustain what you're doing, you revert back to old habits, and then all the weight comes back. That's true of writing as well, where it's better to do small changes consistently over time that add up rather than trying to do some sort of crazy crash program to get results quickly. Tip #3: start with a plan or an outline. Many people claim they can't write using an outline. However, that's the sort of knowledge that, in my opinion, comes with experience, where after you've written a bunch of books and you realize you work better without an outline, that's one thing, but if you're just starting out and you find that you're stuck, it might be a good idea to at least try writing with an outline and see what happens. I do think many people who are just starting out would benefit from at least a loose plan of the main characters, their motivations, conflicts that will happen, and major plot events. You shouldn't get too in the weeds with it. That can be a form of procrastination, like we'll talk about later in the episode, but having at least a rough plan sketched out makes it easier. And it's also a good idea not to think of your book as a single huge item, but as 25 to 30 pieces or chapters. One 3,000 word chapter feels easier to manage than a 75-100,000-word novel. Having at least a rough outline or plan sketched out makes it easier to tackle individual chapters and mark your progress and feel a sense of accomplishment. Outlines make it a lot easier to work when you feel uninspired or stuck. I've often used the metaphor that writing novels is like driving from New York to Los Angeles, which is a very long drive across the entire North American continent, and outlining is like charting out the route you will take before you make the drive. Now you could set out from New York with like no map and just the idea that you're going to gradually work your way west and south until you get to Los Angeles, but you could easily get lost along the way and have to backtrack a lot and make the trip a lot longer and more complicated than it needs to be. With a road map and a trip plotted out in advance, you'll get there much more efficiently. If you get to say, Wyoming and realize that there's road construction or a better route you can take, you can plan around that, which is something an outline gives you when you're writing a book; you have an idea of where you're going, and if you get there and you have a better idea, you can do that, but you have an overall guide to where you're going. Tip #4: don't edit as you go. This is a mistake that many writers make where they will write the first chapter and constantly be rewriting it, or maybe get like the first third of their novel down and are constantly rewriting it and trying to perfect it before they continue onward. Remember, perfect is the enemy of the possible. Write down some notes for future edits if you think of something major that will need revision, but keep going instead of stopping to edit or revise. Often when I'm writing and I come across something factual I want to check later, like you know, the number of miles between, say, Cheyenne, WY and Milwaukee, WI, I'll just write down “look it up later” and then when I get to the editing part of the process, I will look it up and then put it in rather than stop writing to go on Google Maps and look up the distance between Wyoming and Wisconsin. Stopping to research while you write as well is often just as tricky as editing because you get caught in a Wikipedia spiral and waste your time. Another good idea is don't let someone read your book until the draft is done. Having someone read like your first chapter to see how it's doing might seem smart and productive, but it can easily make your self-criticism worse and cause you to doubt yourself. You need a near delusional amount of self-confidence in your ability to complete a first draft and most people are not going to be able to help you with that and can hinder that, which is why I've noticed that very often people who successfully finish their first draft or do something like to return to a previous example, lose weight, when they do so do it in secret, they like start working out and don't tell anyone they start eating less and don't tell anyone or are writing over their lunch hour and don't tell anyone. And then it's only when they have noticeable results that they talk to people about the topic. Tip #5: manage or suppress distractions. This reminds me of a very amusing tweet I saw a couple days ago where someone was arguing that console gaming was better than PC gaming because on console gaming you don't have the constant distraction of social media notifications, emails, or YouTube videos to watch, which made me wonder how bad this person's ability to concentrate was because he couldn't even concentrate on a leisure activity like gaming without getting distracted by emails and tweets and so forth, which makes me wonder what his concentration is like when he's trying to get actual productive work done. However, that is a good point. When you are writing it is a good idea to avoid digital distractions. If this is a challenge for you, there are browser extensions and apps to limit your screen time to just a few designated websites and apps like your word processor. Most phones also have settings where you can silence notifications for a set period of time and limit incoming calls to just your contact list or a designated set of people from your contacts. Digital distractions can be a problem. Space distractions are a potential problem as well in your writing space. If you are writing in the kitchen or living room or the dining room, you may get distracted by other family members or roommates, if you don't live alone. Find a place where you can go without being interrupted and often headphones can... /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/33220577

Episode 219: Prequels & Preorders! 09/23/2024

Episode 219: Prequels & Preorders! In this week's episode, I take a look at why I don't set up preorders and I usually don't write prequels. I also share my thoughts about the video game STARFIELD. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 219 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September the 20th, 2024 and today we are discussing why I don't set up preorders for my books and why I prefer not to write prequels. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have an update on my current writing projects, Question of the Week, then we'll talk about a video game I recently enjoyed, and then we'll plunge on ahead to our main topic. First up, current writing and audiobook projects. I am pleased to report that Shield of Conquest is now completely finished and available. You can get it at all the usual ebook stores. It has been selling quite briskly and has been receiving good reviews. So thank you all for that. My next main project, which you can probably guess if you've been listening to the show for the last few months, is Ghost in the Tombs. As of this writing, I am 62,000 words into it, which I think puts me about 62% of the way through it, because I believe the rough draft will be around 100,000 words. I'm hoping to have that out towards the middle of October, if all goes well. I'm also 21,000 words into Cloak of Illusion. That should hopefully be out in November and I've just started what will be the fourth Rivah book, Orc-Hoard. It originally had been entitled Elven Sorcerer for the fourth Rivah book, but I decided to change the title to Orc-Hoard and that will be out in either December or January, if all goes well. In audiobook news, Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling is completely done and currently working its way through processing and the various audiobook platforms. You can get it at my Payhip store right now and it should be available at all the other stores in a couple of weeks. Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling was excellently narrated by CJ McAllister. Recording is almost done on Shield of Darkness, and hopefully we can approve the final version of that next week and then that'll work its way through processing and be available before too much longer. So that's where I am with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:02:00 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is the most annoying video game enemy? Obviously, there is no profound reason behind this question, since we're talking about video games. I happened to be reading an article about the upcoming Starfield expansion, and the comments devolved into a rambling discussion of game design and most annoying enemies, which inspired this question. We had a good range of responses. Reader AM wrote in to say that her greatest video game enemy is her own hand-eye coordination. We've all been there, AM; we've all been there. Justin says: The Legend of Zelda series is a great bunch of video games, but they do have their annoying bits. I nominate the Like Like worm. To get sucked in and spit back out (minus your shield) is incredibly aggravating. I cannot count the number of shields I’ve lost to this adversary. Later versions steal money or health, but for me, you know, the annoyance of having to go back to town to get a replacement shield (while trying to avoid encounters) ranks up there. Legend of Zelda also has annoying characters. Navi is the most so- her cry of “Hey! Listen!” quickly becomes painful. I too remember the Like Like worm from the Legend of Zelda days and that was indeed very annoying. JD says: Cliff racers from Morrowind. Do I need to say more? Juana says: the vampire guarding the sewers in Vampire: the Masquerade-Bloodlines. You have to be maxed out in at least two disciplines to take them out. It's really difficult to get maximum disciplines. Ross says: at least for me, it's Cliff racers in Morrowind. They're so far out ahead of anything else, I can't even think of what I’d put in second place. Morgan says: not sure of all time, but in terms of more recent games, the Zoanthropes in Space Marine 2 are an absolute nightmare, especially when they come in pairs so one is always shielding the other. Jesse says: Seymour in Final Fantasy 10. Only boss I remember that you have to beat five times. Jenny says: that drum boss in Ocarina of Time. William says: Zelda 2 has no shortage of troublesome enemies, like the Iron Knuckles. It’s probably for the best I never had the chance to play it back in the day without save states. Brandy says: The first multiplayer run through Diablo, where you're through the Easter Egg levels and every other flick of the mouse you're screaming “run away, run away!” or “hold still, so I might smite thee!” For myself, my answer would be those stupid Medusa Heads from the Castlevania series. If you’ve played any Castlevania game, you know what I'm talking about. You'll be climbing the stairs and the Medusa Head will somehow come in at exactly the right angle to avoid all your weapons and to knock you off the stairs to your death at the same time. Honestly, a lot of the old school Castlevania Games are much more enjoyable with save states on modern systems. A very strong runner up would be Lakitu from Super Mario Brothers. He's the guy in the cloud who drops all those Spiny Shells on your head. So we had quite a good range of responses this week, thought it appears that the Morrowind Cliff Racer may take the championship. 00:04:49 Thoughts on Starfield Speaking of video games, I actually wanted to talk about Starfield a little bit because I beat the main quest in Starfield this month. By my standards, this is fast. I first started playing Skyrim in 2011, and I finally beat the main quest in autumn 2020 on the Switch version, since that was during the height of COVID and there wasn't much else to do. By contrast, Starfield came out in September 2023, so I beat the main quest in just a little bit over a year. So here are my thoughts on the game. Overall, I would say I really liked it. It does capture the feel of being a competent space adventurer wandering around the galaxy. You can do bounty hunting, pirate hunting, mining, exploring, and a variety of other stuff. Back in the ‘90s, I really liked Wing Commander: Privateer, which had infinite random missions and Starfield kind of feels like an enormously expanded version of Privateer, or like Privateer with a Halo game attached to it, given the wide variety of firearms you can obtain. In the grand tradition of Bethesda Games, you don't even have to do the main quest or any of the scripted side quests. You can just wander around visiting random planets and fighting space pirates forever. Honestly, I probably spent more time playing randomly generated side missions than any of the scripted quests. That said, I very much liked some of the scripted side missions. The Vanguard plotline was the best of them, in my opinion. You have to help the United Colonies find the origins of a super deadly alien predator called the Terrormorph, and at the end there's a genuinely hard moral question: does the greater good justify the means for people in positions of authority? The game also improved quite a bit since launch with new patches. The updates added a city map feature which is massively useful and a Space Car you can use for driving across planetary surfaces, which makes a lot of the game’s missions quite a bit simpler and easy. Now, while I enjoyed Starfield, I concede that many of its critics had a point about its weaknesses. The game relies a lot on procedural generation. Every time you land on a planet, a bunch of nearby dungeons and features are randomly generated. This can get repetitive, though honestly I don't mind that very much. It makes it easier to play the game in bite sized chunks when it's late and I'm tired and I just want to mow down some Space Pirates or something. What is annoying is that sometimes the procedurally generated locations don't match with the procedurally generated quests, which locks you out of finishing some of the randomly generated quests. That was really irritating, though it only tends to happen at very high levels. The game’s main plot revolved around multiverse stuff, and as I've mentioned frequently before, I am not a big fan of the multiverse as a storytelling concept. However, it works better in a video game than in a movie or a book, and Starfield's implementation of it is quite clever. Many games have the New Game Plus concept where you beat the game and then you start a new game, but things are slightly different. In Starfield, when you beat the game, you go to a new universe, you lose all your possessions, but you keep all your skills and knowledge, so you're starting the new game at level 65 or whatever. Additionally, a lot of the quests are subtly altered because your character knows in advance what is going to happen from the previous universe, so you can get a better outcome than you did the last time, which is honestly a kind of a clever game mechanic, which makes it a compelling journey to go from universe to universe and to put right what once went wrong. Anyway, I enjoyed Starfield and I will definitely play the Shattered Space expansion, which comes out at the end of September, but enough talk about video games. 00:08:14 Main Topic of the Week: Preorders and Prequels This is writing podcast, so let's move on to our main topic, preorders and prequels. I have to admit preorders and prequel sounds like a really lame tabletop RPG for indie authors. Like if you roll a 20, your book gets picked up as an Amazon Daily deal for the US, but if you roll 1, your book file gets corrupted and you can't figure out how to fix it. Anyway, the inspiration for this alliterative title was that someone asked me about preorders, and someone else asked me about prequels within 24 hours. So let's start with prequels. Reader Juan writes in to ask about preorders: something I noticed about your books. There's never a preorder option on Apple Books. Is this by design? I know you self-publish so I didn't know if that was a publisher feature or if there's a way to preorder there. If not, no worries, I just know Apple takes a little longer to load the book. Preorders are available to self-publishers, but the reason I don't do preorders is by design. I never do preorders for a couple different reasons, which we'll go through right now. #1: the consequences of missing a preorder date are moderately negative. If you miss a preorder date on Amazon, you get locked out of doing another one for the following 12 months. I'm not sure what happens if you miss a preorder on Apple Books, but I suspect it's about the same level of penalty and this ties directly into reason two. #2 is that life is chaotic and unpredictable, and I absolutely hate making promises I end up unable to keep. Like if I get sick or something in Real Life comes along that I have to deal with immediately, I could easily miss a week of writing time, which would make hitting the preorder date either very stressful or impossible. #3: If I wrote like only two books a year, I might do preorders. That would give me enough of a cushion of time to make sure that everything is ready to go well in advance of the launch date. But I usually write and publish like ten books a year, sometimes more. With books coming out so frequently, organizing that many pre-orders would be a serious headache and sometimes I don't actually decide what I'm going to write next until the day comes and I actually sit down to start writing. Like at the end of 2023, I pretty much decided on impulse to finish writing Half-Elven Thief and had that be my last book of the year in 2023. So with the amount I write and publish, managing the logistics of so many pre-orders would be a serious headache. #4: And finally, reason number four and the most important reason: the worst consequence of missing a preorder is a loss of reader confidence. Without going into details, let's say there's been enough of that in the fantasy genre already, so preorders have too many negatives and not enough positives, at least for my situation. I'd rather just make a good faith effort of having things come out when I can and announcing them via my newsletter. Speaking of which, if you sign up for my newsletter, you get regular free short stories. Now onto prequels. Concerning prequels, reader Danny writes in to ask: May I suggest writing a series of prequels to the Cloak Game series? Shield of Conquest made me hope that it would be a prequel book to the Cloak Game series, a book that speaks about the invasion of Earth by the elves and brings some backstory of the relationship between Kathran Morvilind and Tarlia- a teacher and a student, and the discovery and invasion of Earth, or other back stories that were not developed enough. For example, what about Aiden, brother of Riordan, or Riordan's experience as a Shadow Hunter? Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of writing prequels. I have written a couple of prequel novels out of the 155 books I've written (Frostborn: The First Quest comes to mind) and sometimes I'll do short stories as a flashback. Probably the most recent example of that is Prophecy of the High Queen, the short story that describes the first meeting between Nadia and the High Queen written from the High Queen's perspective. The High Queen uses magic to look into Nadia’s past and her various potential futures, and so the short story bounces all over the place in time. I have also written novels that kind of jump around in time. In Cloak of Iron, the scenes from Lauren Casey's perspective go back to even before the Cloak Game series actually started to set up why Lauren was desperate enough to save her brother that that she was willing to deal with someone like Mr. Shang of the Deathless Society. Or in the very first Nadia book, Games: Thief Trap, where we blur through the first twenty years of Nadia's life in the first chapter. That said, I do write the short stories in mind as bonus materials like the extra scenes on a movie DVD. However, at this point I don't think I would write a prequel novel, and I certainly wouldn't write a prequel series. Why not? It feels like prequels are sort of like procrastinating before you continue on the main story, which is likely what most readers really want. I've noticed some writers (again, without going into details) have a bad habit of writing prequels instead of getting on with the main story. Making yourself continue the main story instead of getting sidetracked by prequels or side quests is difficult, but it must be done for the greater good of the story. Additionally, a big problem with prequels is it's extremely difficult to generate narrative tension because you know in advance that certain characters are going to survive or certain situations are going to play out in a way you've already read in subsequent books. If I did, for example, my Andomhaim series as a prequel series, it would be set in a region of the world we've never visited and with characters we never encountered before, so that way there is a dramatic tension that the reader doesn't know how things are going to end and that will make the book more enjoyable. Also, some things are really better left to the reader's imagination, and that can include back stories. Writing fiction is in some ways an exercise in creating a line drawing and letting the imagination of the reader provide color and shadow. Like, since we've been talking about Nadia, here's someone describing her from a first-person perspective: "A woman in a dark coat and black jeans sat across from me. She had red-tinged brown hair tied in a loose ponytail and pale grey eyes the color of knives. I thought she looked like she could stand to eat more. That, combined with the eyes, gave her a look of feverish, almost unsettling intensity. I probably outweighed her by a good ninety pounds, but I felt the sudden urge to reach for the gun I wasn't carrying." Now that's just a line drawing, right? Yet every reader will fill in that line drawing with something from his or her own imagination. In the same way, I think it is sometimes (even frequently) best to let the reader's imagination fill in the details of the character’s backstory. Like Riordan- we know he tried to save his brother Aidan and failed. We know that he became a Shadow Hunter and that his first wife joined the Rebels and tried to murder him to score points with her new friends. I could write out a prequel series describing those events, but I think at this point it wouldn't be as vivid as the one that readers have generated in their imaginations. Besides, writing a prequel story would be a distraction from the main story. So that is why I don't set up preorders and I don't usually write prequels. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. /episode/index/show/thepulpwritershow/id/33145637

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