Month: October 2022

Being a Better Writer: Planning and Executing Heavy Worldbuilding

Max Being a Better Writer , , , , , , ,

Welcome back, writers! It’s Monday, and it’s also Halloween! Not usually a vacation holiday, so I don’t plan on taking one. You know, as evidenced by the fact that you’re looking at this post right now.

But before we get talking about writing for this week and wrap up October, I do have one little tidbit to remind you all of: Dead Silver is on sale for 99 cents until midnight tonight! This spooky little (it’s a full novel, but by my standard) tale is perfect for Halloween and hey, it was my second published book, so it’s got a soft place in my heart. Following Hawke Decroux as he heads out to the sleepy New Mexican mining town of Silver Dreams to help Jacob Rocke catch a chupacabra, things soon take a turn for the worse, Silver Dreams seemingly caught in events more out of a nightmare than a dream.

Like I said, 99 cents until Halloween is over. You can click the link above or click the cover on the right. Either way, I hope you have a spooky and thrilling—in a good way—Halloween!

Now, with that all said, this is still a post about writing, so how about we get down to it? Today we’re going back to a classic topic that’s on a lot of minds. So much so, in fact, that the tag for it on the site is … substantial, to put it lightly.

But it’s a commonly discussed topic for a multitude of reasons, one being that it’s such a vast topic, but second to that because a lot of writers find it to be both a major source of inspiration and a major stumbling block in equal measure. Thus, it will not be a surprise to many of you to learn that today’s topic is a reader request from our last topic call!

So, let’s get down to it. Let’s talk about heavy worldbuilding. The in-depth, up-to-your-elbows-in-it sort of stuff. But with one gigantic context: making it useful, and then executing on that vision to craft a story, not just a bunch of excess files cluttering up a hard drive somewhere.

Hit that jump. Let’s talk worldbuilding.

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Starforge Preview: Chapter 3 Excerpts

Max Books! , , , ,

Well, we’ve reached this moment. We’ve seen Jake. We’ve seen Anna. That just means that there’s one member of the trio left to get our early look at.

That’s right, it’s Ray Candy! Though to his friends he’s just Sweets. Or Dystopian_Snowman if you’re one of his hacking buddies.

Jungle was a huge shift for Sweets. While Jake and Anna were marooned down on the surface of [REDACTED], Sweets was shuttled off on his own aboard the military cruiser Casimir, where things were absolutely not what they seemed. Alone and with limited resources, Sweets had to push ahead, ultimately saving the lives of not only Jake and Anna but several others as well in a daring dropship rescue … which since it involved flying, was a pretty bold move for Sweets. And honestly not the first time, either, if you recall the end of Colony.

But what’s happened in the meantime? With the threats now facing Pisces, what’s the last member of our group been up to, and how might he play a part in the what’s to come?

Well, to find out in full, you’ll have to snag a copy of Starforge when it releases this holiday season. But you can get a taste of what’s to come—as well as what Sweets has been up to—by hitting the jump.

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OP-ED: The Great Wheel of Greed Grinds on With No Backsies

Max Misc , , , , , ,

Hey folks. Max here taking a time-out from the Starforge editing (which is coming along pretty nicely and will soon have some updates) with a small OP-ED post.

Also, Dead Silver is on sale! Grab this fun and spooky Halloween-appropriate adventure mystery for under a buck!

Last night, after repeatedly closing a new pop-up on the site’s stats page, I noticed a new button next to every single one of the posts listed there. A little megaphone. What was this little megaphone? Why, it was a “Promote this post with WordPress Advertising” button! It appeared to be a very straightforward process: I click the button, I check that the advertisement appearance meets my approval, I fill out payment information, and then the post gets advertised … somewhere. I couldn’t actually see that bit without putting in all the other details such as payment information. So I sdon’t know exactly where it would have been, though I assume from the wording it would have been on other’s WordPress-based posts.

Or perhaps they would have been elsewhere on the web? Again, I couldn’t see that information without confirming the ad and the payment information, so I can’t say for certain. I’m just extrapolating based on the most likely targets.

Point being, WordPress is the latest in what seems to be every web service ever trying to squeeze more money out of its userbase by stripping away a purpose of the service only to sell it back to the highest bidder.

Amazon was the first for me that I noticed engaging in this behavior. Sure, you could sell their products on their store. But then someone got the idea of charging for “premier shelf space” and Amazon Advertising was born. It wasn’t enough that they were carrying your product and making money each time a copy sold. They realized that they could double dip and get the creator to pay for each product sold as well by setting up a “bidding” advertising system. Sure, you could just have your product “on the shelves,” but if you paid Amazon for each eyeball that looked at your product, you could make sure that by default most eyeballs saw your stuff first. As long as you either had a lot of disposable income (advertising may be tax deductible, but it’s still money out of your pocket) or could make sure that a certain number of eyeballs could buy your product, that advertising would take your product from “the mass” to “everyone sees it.”

Bear in mind, this is for something that Amazon already makes money selling. If a supermarket operated off of this principle—and maybe they do, I don’t know—suppliers and distributors would pay not just for placement on shelves, but a fee for each person that picked up an item and looked at it … even if they didn’t buy it. All those items at the front of the supermarket or by the checkout, where the most eyes look at them? Those positions would cost $X per-item to be there and make the supermarket money anytime someone looked at them. Someone handled that Snickers bar but set it back down? Mars owes the supermarket 7 cents.

We’ll get into how this quickly becomes—to me, anyway—insane and unbalanced in a moment, but first let’s move on.

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Being a Better Writer: Reading VS Hearing

Max Being a Better Writer , , , , , , , ,

Welcome back writers! It’s Monday, and you know what that means. That, or this is your first time stumbling across this corner of the web and are just in awe or suspicion of what you’ve found. Maybe both.

Well, if you’re a writer or looking to do some writing, let me reassure you. This is Being a Better Writer, and you are in the right place.

Now, a quick aside before we dive into today’s promised topic, which is a … contentious one, to say the least. If you’ve not been on the site over the weekend, then you might have missed out on Saturday’s Starforge preview, which gave everyone their first look at what’s become of Annalyne Neres since the end of Jungle, plus her first steps in the finale of the UNSEC Space Trilogy. Action-packed steps, of course.

In related news, Starforge is getting closer to release with each passing day, but also now closer to a pre-order date. The Copy-Edit is nearing, and once the novel is in that phase, the pre-orders can go live. I’ll keep you all up to date on that as things progress.

Now, one more bit of spooky news before we head into today’s topic. Because it is the Halloween season, Dead Silver will be on sale starting tonight at midnight, and will remain on sale through October 31st. You can click that link there or find the book via the Books tab, but keep that in mind if you’ve not read it. It’s a perfect little spooky mystery for the Halloween weekend, so if you’re reading this after midnight, October 24th, do yourself a favor and snag a copy! It’s spooky good fun, and an enjoyable read.

All right, that’s all the news and whatnot taken care of. Now lets get down to business and talk about todays—as I warned—contentious topic.

This one I think is going to puzzle some, while being a revelation others. It’s one of those aspects of writing and publishing books that you really have to be immersed in some part of the production or output of to be aware of, but again as previously stated it’s also something that brings with it no small amount of controversy, especially among certain circles and with regards to both writing and editing a book.

You ready? Then hit the jump. Let’s talk about reading versus hearing.

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Starforge Preview: Chapter 2 Excerpts

Max Books! , , , ,

I know many of you have been waiting for this moment to arrive. Last week, the writing was on the wall when you all got your first look at some bits of chapter 1 of Starforge, at long last giving you a peek a what our famed corporate investigator has been up to since the end of Jungle. And, of course, there was the sense of omnipresent dread that the prologue chapter (revealed a few months ago) delivered. But I know for a number of you, the big question was “What about Annalyne Neres?”

Well today, readers, you get to find out. Today we’re taking a look at some scenes from chapter 2 of Starforge! Today you get your first taste of what Anna’s bringing to the party when Starforge drops this holiday season.

Are you ready? Hit the jump.

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Weekly Update: Starforge and Other Things

Max Weekly Updates , , ,

I feel like for this announcement I should be climbing up on a mountain outcropping and shouting “BEHOLD!”

Yesterday, after thirty days of grueling work, I finished the first Beta Pass for Starforge. And grueling almost doesn’t describe it. I have now read through Starforge … five times, I think? I’m starting to lose track. And that’s just start to finish, in-depth reads, over the last few months. There’s still the “Oh, check this chapter again” reads, the rereading of a paragraph, several times, to check changes, aloud and silent …

Point being I’ve read it a lot lately. And there’s still at least one more full read-through to go. So … what is the status right now?

Well, today I’m taking a day off. I’ve been regularly up editing till past 1 AM several nights a week for the last few weeks, and I am exhausted. So I’m taking today to just rest and not be editing for a little while. Just for one day. As much as my mind is whirling and whizzing on “Okay, gotta check that” and “Ooh, make sure too …” I need a day off. Thirty days of grueling double-checking of every comma, period, and apostrophe, word by word, across a 500,000 word draft is … a lot. Thinking back to the Being a Better Writer post on Mental Health, I need to let some pressure out of my pressure cooker before my brain overloads.

This isn’t bad news, mind. I’m not trying to paint it as such either. This is good news. I’m still on track to get Starforge out in November thanks to all this work. It might be late November, but then to be fair so it was with Colony and Jungle.

So what’s next, then? Well, tomorrow (not today, despite my itch to jump right in) I’m going to go over the Beta Reader feedback, taking each of those catches and doing a master comparison against the whole manuscript. Plus there are a few checks of my own I want to make as well, things I caught but want to make certain I didn’t miss any instances of (for example, yesterday I caught a single instance of “steeping” instead of “stepping” and found on a search one other instance of it in the book). I want to recheck a few of the larger chapters, or those that saw heavier edits and may still have “shrapnel” (my term for when a paragraph or section gets cut up or rewritten but old stuff gets missed, put in the wrong place, etc). Anything I might have missed when I was up until 1 AM editing, or because I was enjoying an action sequence a little too much to be paying attention, etc etc. You get the idea.

That’ll probably take a few days. Once that’s done however, and I’m satisfied with how clean the draft is … It’ll be time for the copy edit. Yes, that means putting in a Table-of-Contents, an introduction, all the copyright stuff, etc etc. It also means that I will be sending out an e-mail to all Alpha and Beta Readers who participated, both for acknowledgement in the book itself and for figuring out where to send their complimentary copies once the release hits.

But … it also means that once I’m officially going over the Copy-Edit, something else can happen. The pre-order can go up, because I’ll be able to set a release date.

That might happen—I’m not setting anything in stone yet—next week. While it may not, I can say this: We’re getting very close.

Which is going to be a relief to me. Starforge has been a major stressor for me. I’m ready to finish this project and do some smaller, lighter things for a while. Like another Jacob Rocke novella. And the next Axtara book.

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Being a Better Writer: The “Perfect” Book Is an Awful Read

Max Being a Better Writer , , , , , , , ,

Hello again writers! Welcome back, and welcome to Topic List #21! That’s right, we’re on a new list, with new concepts and ideas to explore! Writers, there is still time to make a request for additional topics to add to it over at the topic call post, but only for a few days more!

Anyway, how was your weekend, writers? Feeling recharged and reinvigorated? I am, and it was desperately needed. Not only was I able to get some relaxation and decompression in, but I also woke up today to some fantastic news: Axtara – Banking and Finance has cracked 50 reviews on Amazon.

Like I’ve said, she keeps sailing. I don’t doubt that before long Axtara will be neck-and-neck with Colony. Though the leader of the UNSEC Space Trilogy isn’t taking it lying down, especially as over the weekend we saw our first tease from Chapter 1 of Starforge. To applause, no less. It was clear to me from the number of hits that a lot of you were interested in that.

Banking dragon versus a Sci-Fi tale of empires old and new. Will Axtara tighten the race? Or will Colony pull ahead? I don’t know, but I’m thrilled either way as both take strong strides in bringing me toward that 10,000 copies sold milestone.

Anyway, that’s the news, writers. Keeping it short and sweet today so that I can dive into the first topic on our new list. Which is … a contentious one, to be sure. I already am aware that by the title alone there will be many who will be lighting their torches and gathering their pitchforks, ready to defend an incorrect philosophy that they themselves will likely never test.

Today, we’re going to talk about the “perfect” book. And why you’d never want to read it.

Hit the jump, folks. Let’s talk about writing.

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Starforge Preview: Chapter 1 Excerpt

Max Books! , , , ,

Hello readers! Looking for something a little … exciting? Because I’ve got just the thing for you. A look at the first chapter of Starforge! Not a big preview, and you’ll notice some cuts right away, but a look nonetheless.

Mind, this is not the first thing you’ll see when skipping to page one of the book. That would be the prologue, which is already online here. This is a chunk of text from chapter one. It’s not the whole chapter, but it is a few select scenes from it. Just enough to wet your appetites for when the full conclusion to the UNSEC Space Trilogy drops this holiday.

So, are you ready for your teaser? Hit the jump, folks. And get ready.

This book is a ride.

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The Weekly Update

Max Weekly Updates , ,

Well, there really isn’t much to say today. This week was, well … editing. So much editing. Like the week before it.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t news there. Just that it’s close to the same. As of today, there are three chapters left for me to Beta. Then I need to go back and start going through the Beta Reader catches, checking the errors that they find against the master document as a whole …

There is a ray of sunshine here. We’re halfway through October, and I’m making a lot of progress. It is conceivable that before the end of the month, we could see a pre-order page.

We’re certainly getting close to that point. It’s such a juggernaut of a project though, I don’t want to make any promises yet. But again, I can confirm that this has been one of the cleanest drafts to leave my keyboard yet. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been plenty of edits, but thankfully they’ve been less “plentiful” than before.

Case in point, a methodical search of the entire manuscript found only twenty-seven instances or so of an apostrophe being used in place of a quotation mark. There were about ten in Axtara before Beta, if memory serves, so I’ve gotten better at preventing those, seeing as Axtara was a fifth this book’s size.

Oh, and for some amusing reason, over half of those typos were all in association with the letter “W.” Yeah. That was a weird little discovery.

Anyway, I’ve got three chapters left to go, so I’m going to get back to it. Patreon Supporters, you’ve got a live preview today, while those of you who aren’t supporting will get to see it tomorrow.

Until Monday, where we will start Topic List #21 (oh, and don’t forget the topic call), I’m off!

Being a Better Writer: Mental Health

Max Being a Better Writer , , , , ,

Hello writers! We’re back with the final installment of Being a Better Writer … from Topic List #20. Still, I probably gave a few of you a scare there. Tis the season, right?

Anyway, before we dive into today’s writing topic—which has a lot more to do with writing than some of you might think, so stick around—I do want to reemphasize what was said above with a different context. This is the last topic from Topic List #20, and that means that there is currently a Topic Call going for Topic List #21. If you’re not familiar with what that means, well it is pretty straightforward. Have a writing topic you’d like Being a Better Writer to discuss? Head on over to the Topic Call and post it! Get your topic put on the list! That’s it! Hit that link!

And that is all the news I’m doing today. That’s it. Topic call, and the end of Topic List #20. Because I want to dive right into things today. I want to talk about mental health.

Not just in writing, but the whole process. Editing, writing, publishing … the works. Why? Well … because if I’m honest I feel like mental health and its related, associated topics aren’t addressed as much as they should be. Especially if you live in the United States, where decades of neurosis from earlier generations have pounded the idea into many people’s heads that “If it’s not physical labor, it can’t be stressful because it’s not even work.”

I’m not exaggerating about this. I wish I was, but I have been told point-blank before by more than one person that what I do ‘isn’t work and can’t be tiring because all I do is sit and hit keys all day’ or some variant thereof. Because it’s not a ‘real outdoors job’ therefore it cannot be tiring, exhausting, stressful, or even count as effort or ‘real work.’

Now, I’m going to say something right now as an aside: This. Is. Crap. Utter garbage. And I can say that with the highest possible authority, because I’ve done some of the hardest of the “real jobs” out there. I paid my way through college working on commercial fishing boats. I remember one week where I tracked my time working, on my feet, and it was over 150 hours in one week. That’s right, I was getting two hours of sleep a night or less. I’ve been so tired from those jobs that I’ve literally fallen asleep before hitting a bed and slept for 20+ hours at the end of trips.

BUT … I would never say that what I do now is any less stressful or hard work. Is it easier on my body? Yes. I’ve got some long-lasting impacts to my knees and the rest of me that came as a consequence of all the hard labor I’ve done over the years.

But have I been just as mentally fogged at the end of a day in which I’ve edited over 60,000 words as I have at the end of a long day on a fishing boat? YES. Writing, editing, and publishing a book is exhausting. My legs may still have plenty of energy at the end of an 8+hour writing session, but my mind? It’s been through a wringer. I’m exhausted. I have ended 10+ hour days of fishing and 10+ hour days of writing with exactly the same mental fog of fatigue.

As someone who has done both ends of the spectrum, from commercial fishing boat and cannery work to sitting at a desk all day trying to figure out how to make an imaginary person’s declaration of love sound genuine, real, and in character … I am someone with the authority to say “both of these are exhausting.”

Are there people who shirk and aren’t that tired? In both paths. There are just as many people who call it a day and slack off on a fishing boat after a single set as there are people who “write” by sitting in front of a keyboard watching Youtube and then after 3-4 hours writing a single sentence that they’ll “touch up” tomorrow. Yes, both exist. But far too often one type of job gets a free pass in the public mind, while the other doesn’t.

Okay, stepping back from that aside and explanation, I wanted to make that tangent clear because as I stated at the start and with the lead in … Many, many people, especially in the US, believe this to be true. “Oh, it’s just writing. What do you have to be stressed about?” This is a question I’ve had directed at me after expressing to someone that I’ve had a long day, because many people in the US have bought into a fiction far more outlandish than anything I’ve ever written, the fiction that “brain work isn’t real work.”

Unless, of course, you’re a CEO or a C-Suite executive. Then it’s the most draining, compensation-desperately-needed job in the world.

But back on topic, today we’re discussing mental health and writing precisely because of this false perception. A false perception that many writers fall into the trap of. A belief, pushed fiercely by some, that writing and similar work “can’t be real work” and therefore cannot be the cause of stress.

And this mistaken belief? It can wreck you.

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