This is a little bit of an extension of the previous post. I lived through a moment of history. Also, because I live on The Internet, I’ve seen people much younger than me talk about the birth of The Internet, their extreme confidence matched only by how incredibly wrong they are about the details.

Let’s go back to 1991. I graduated high school. We had computers, but we didn’t really have the Internet yet. PCs were just starting to become more dominant, but there were plenty of us that still had Apple computers from the 80s. I had an Apple IIc and an Apple IIgs. I still have them, actually.

There was plenty of enthusiasm around computers, but since networking wasn’t common, it wasn’t like you could download new stuff, or send messages to anyone. You could buy software, including games, and run that software off of 5.25″ or 3.5″ drives. PC users might have a hard drive, but almost no one with an Apple had one.

In 1992, I went to Southern Oregon State College, which would eventually get renamed to Southern Oregon University. The computer lab had both Apples and PCs, but it was getting increasingly obvious that no one wanted to do their school work on an Apple anymore. I remember seeing something happening at school, some people recording what looked like a news report, and I believe the production was getting sent to another school via a networking technology. It might have been ARPANET. Whatever it was, it seemed cool.

I ran out of money and moved in with my Mom in Sacramento. I brought my Apple computers with me. I had a friend named Richard that ran into a bad string of luck, losing his job and then his home within a week. I talked my Mom into letting Richard stay with us, and he brought his PC. He had a 1200 baud modem, and introduced me to the local bulletin board systems (BBSs).

A typical BBS would have some forums and maybe one or two games. Favorites included Legend of the Red Dragon and Tradewars 2000. The slower your modem, the longer it took to play those games, and staying connected to a BBS meant your phone line was in use. My Mom did not care for us hogging up the phone line all the time.

The BBS experience was my first glimpse at the possibilities. I remember hearing people talk about Usenet, and BBSs sharing data with each other to expanding beyond local call range, but that’s not something I had easy access to. People were connecting, but we still hadn’t reached The Internet, yet.

By 1993, I’m in the Air Force, first basic training and then tech school. My tech school went all the way to February of 1994, and while one would assume I’d learn about the latest technology of the time, I was being trained on stuff from the 60s and 70s. During this time, things were advancing without me. AOL might have been going on, but I didn’t know anyone using it during that time. Also, this is before the prevalence of CD Drives, so AOL wasn’t sending out “coasters” yet.

I went to Holloman AFB in New Mexico in 1994, right before my 21st birthday. My supervisor at the 83rd ACS ran a BBS. I thought that was pretty cool, but I never had a chance to connect with it. I still didn’t have a PC, and I didn’t have a modem for either of my Apples. The 83rd ACS has computers, but no networking. If you want to get data from one person to another, you’re putting it on a floppy drive and walking it to them.

As the 83rd ACS is closing later that year, I get leant to the 4th Comm Squadron, where for the first time in my life, I work on actual computers. I take to it like a duck to water. There are local networks that I learn to configure and work on, and The Internet might be around at this point, but it’s not part of my job at all, and it hasn’t reached widespread popularity just yet.

It isn’t until the 83rd is fully closed and I’m transferred to the 46th Test Group where I hear the words “World Wide Web” uttered by a living person. I was just getting setup when someone said with excitement something like, “Airman Smith has the World Wide Web on his computer,” and I responded, “Oh? What’s that?”

The first web browser I ever installed and used was… I don’t remember. I swear it was named after a college. The one after that was Mosaic, and the one after that was Netscape.

It was amazing. Absolutely incredible.

I don’t remember how we found anything online in the beginning. Maybe someone gave me a URL to enter, and from there, I just followed links to other places. I vaguely recall something about “gopher.” It’s been a long time.

Search engines did eventually show up. Yahoo was there, and it was fine. The first one to really impress me was AltaVista. I swore by AltaVista, right up to the point where Google took over. I know Jeeves was before Google, but I didn’t care for it because it just seemed like a gimmick, and not as efficient.

My experience with email was a little different. My first email address was an Air Force address, hosted by a Sun station at the 46th Test Group. We eventually moved to an Exchange system, and that became a central part of how our computer maintenance shop worked.

My first non-work email address was through my Internet Service provider (ISP), in 1995. We should talk about ISPs.

To access The Internet in 1995, you called a phone number with your modem, similar to how we used to connect to BBSs a few years prior. The ISP would answer, and there would be the sound of handshaking as your modem and the ISP negotiated how fast the connection would be. In 1995, people were only just starting to get 56k modems. Many people had slower, and phone lines were such that even if you had a 56k modem, you weren’t guaranteed to get that speed.

It’s at this point where it’s not too uncommon to get a dedicated line just for Internet.

That’s how it started. Things got faster. The phone company you worked with eventually took the place of ISPs. Connections got faster, with various types of DSL replacing clunky modems.

It took a long time before Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon came around. Social Media is the point where I think things went really, really wrong. But maybe things were doomed before that.

Did I leave anything important out? Let me know.

[Note: I wrote this yesterday, but somehow forgot to hit publish. Still considering The Ultimate Blog challenge a success, even though this one is coming out a day late.]

I remember life before The Internet. I remember the time of bulletin board systems, which gave us a peek at interconnectivity. I remember my first web browser and my first email. I’ve seen a lot of changes, and I fully live on The Internet now. So, I have observations and opinions.

The Potential

The potential back then is the same potential today. We can be one people. The world doesn’t have to feel large and frightening. Our words can be translated, and we can share culture, stories, play games together, live, and laugh together, even if we’re on the other side of the world.

We can defy those that would try to control us by keeping us separated and ignorant. We can pool our knowledge, share our art and our science, work together to solve problems that we could never solve on our own.

It doesn’t have to just be about money.

The Reality

It’s all about the money.

We are interconnected and wired together, all the time. Everyone has a cell phone, and a cell phone is less of a phone and more of an Internet tether. I’m not sure very many people actually use their phones to make calls, these days. Texting, doom scrolling, a couple of games (usually filled with ads), the other half of a 2-factor authentication system, and apps built by corporations to track our consumption so that they can improve their profits.

Tech bros want to own The Internet and profit from it. It’s flooded with bots that crawl along, posting propaganda to virtual town squares and fanning flames to increase rage engagement.

Search engines summarize what you’re looking for, trying to give you the answer rather than encouraging you to visit the sources, so the sources start drying up because they no longer get traffic, and the answers your receive become hallucinations and low quality slop.

Cable was replaced with streaming services. Book stores evaporated next to the heat of the Amazon.

The rise and fall of social media was certainly something to behold. MySpace, replaced by Facebook and Twitter. Twitter, bought for and now populated by Nazis, became X, and I have no idea why anyone would still go to that rancid hell pit. Facebook, managed by the robotic Zuckerberg, tilting the scales of elections with lies and propaganda, paid for by bad actors.

Zuck wanted Facebook to be The Internet, blocking access to anything else unless you went through it first. That didn’t take off, so the company evolved into Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Meta also went all in on buying up VR companies, quashing them, and ruining that space before it could get too big.

I really, really hate Meta.

The Future

I don’t know. The potential of The Internet has been there the whole time, but we’re living in a cyberpunk dystopia, and not the one we were promised in the 80s. This is a boring, less sexy dystopia, in which we get constant scam calls by robots looking for people susceptible to their lies. We see videos now, and we have to wonder if it’s real or generated by a computer. The tech bros, that never understood art, have stolen art to feed to their machine so that the machine could replace the artists.

If we continue to let criminals govern us, start unnecessary wars, promote white supremacy, and attack our own citizens based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and ability, then the future is fucked and I’m not looking forward to living in it. The Internet will continue to be a tool used and dominated by oligarchs and oppressors, in order to continue to consolidate wealth and security among the privileged few, while the rest of us fight each other over the scraps.

Or, something else can happen, and we can look back at that potential I described at the beginning, try to work towards that, and reject the evil.

Some days, I’m optimistic. Other days, I remember the last 10 years or so, and I can’t seem to find any hope.

I’m not sure how much value I’m going to put into the world with tonight’s subject. I had plans at the start of the month, which have not come to fruition. I was supposed to have built a home brew adventure for my friends, to surprise them on one of our Wednesday gaming evenings, and I’ve been doing a lot of day job activities instead.

Let’s begin with defining terms, and providing my credentials in this area.

TTRPG is Table Top Roleplaying Game. The most famous (and in the late 80s, infamous) flavor of TTRPG is Dungeons and Dragons, though there are many, many, many other games out there for people to play. They don’t have to be just fantasy, either.

Roleplaying games are inherently social, involving 2 to 6 people sitting around a table playing Let’s Pretend together, with dice and rules to help manage the chaos and provide structure for all involved to lean on. There are exceptions to all of this. Amber, based on Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, had no dice. Also, games can have more than 6 players. There are solo adventures out there, but I’ve never tried one and I find it hard to see how it’s different than a Choose Your Own Adventure story, or simply sitting down to write a story yourself.

In this day and age, roleplaying games are about as popular as they have ever been. You can find Let’s Plays of them on YouTube and Dropout, with the most famous of those being Critical Role and Dimension 20.

You probably didn’t need me to explain roleplaying games to you, but that’s the format of these things. We start with definitions, and then everyone is on the same page.

Also, if my definitions suck, you know that I’m not a good authority on the subject, and you can treat the rest of what I have to say with the appropriate levels of apprehension.

In this case, that may be warranted, as I’m not the most skilled GM/DM (game master/dungeon master). I’ve run a handful of games that I think were okay, but I’ve never had a run I would consider a truly successful game.

I have been a really decent player over the years, and I’ve been in many very successful games. And I’m a writer, which you should already know. So, as far as being an authority on building a good TTRPG adventure, my resume is weak, but I have a substantial amount of “Trust me, bro” going for me.

Enough preface! Get on with it!

So, how do you create a great TTRPG adventure? As usual, it depends.

If this is a stand-alone thing you’re making, with the intention of putting out in the world so other folks can download the PDF and enjoy the adventure with their friends… I don’t have much advice for you. That’s not what I’m setting out to do right now.

I’m setting out to create a homebrew adventure that is tailored towards the personalities of the people I’m playing with, that will hopefully ensure everyone at the table has a good time. In this game, the “table” is Discord, but you get the idea.

So, the beginning is all about asking questions, to make sure you and your players are all on the same page. What genres do they like? Are they more into dungeon crawling or roleplaying? How experienced is everyone at the table when it comes to this kind of gaming?

The truth of the matter is that the system you use mostly doesn’t matter. The group you’re playing with is all that matters, and is the main thing that determines how much fun will be had. There are different gamer types. Some people are explorers, some are achievers, some are socializers, some are loot goblins.

Find the route through gaming that everyone will want to travel. If the players are too disparate in what they enjoy, the game probably won’t be successful.

Once everyone is on the same page as to what a good game looks like, it’s time for next crossroads.

Do you create the characters for your players, or do your players create the characters for your world?

If you have a bunch of people that have never played in a TTRPG before, or if this is supposed to be a one-shot, it may be more appropriate for you to make some premade characters, so that when you get together, you can jump right in with playing. I think this will be the first game for a couple of my players, so this will be the route I take.

However, as a player, it is often much more satisfying to create your own character. This introduces more variables for you as the GM, but that’s okay. Once the game begins, your players will hand you ideas and scenarios that never crossed your mind while you were preparing. It’s best to get used to thinking fast on your feet.

Players are going to struggle to make their own characters if they don’t know what kind of world they inhabit. Here are the things you’ll need to write, in roughly the order they need to be written:

• Basic world details
• The player characters (either written by you or created by your players)
• NPCs based on the backgrounds of the player characters
• NPCs to fill gaps in the party
• Towns and structures
• The Bad Guy(s)
• The Backstory

Basic World Details

This starts with genre, moves down to setting, and then gets into enough details that you or players can create characters that will adventure in this world. Let’s say you wanted to run a game in the Mel Walker universe. You have some information from the books, and because it’s urban fantasy, you pretty much already know the world, so there’s not that much to do. Determine when and where, and making characters that fit in that (our) world should be easy.

If it’s a more traditional fantasy adventure you’re running, determine what that means to you. Is this a Tolkienesque world? Is it gritty, like in Game of Thrones? Maybe it’s something completely different. Here are some decisions to make regarding your fantasy adventure world:

• Is there magic and how prevalent is it?
  • What is the cost of magic?
  • Do you want the players to have access to this magic?
  • How much of the plot depends on magic?
• Do you know what the geography of this world is?
  • You don’t need the entire world
  • You do need enough for where the adventure will be taking place
• What are the different races in this world?
  • Dwarves? Elves? Dragon-kind?
  • Which ones can be player characters?
  • How much of the plot will hinge on the cultures of the different races?
• What aspects of the world do you want to highlight to enhance the story you’re hoping to tell?

The Player Characters

These are the adventurers. The party. The protagonists. Each of the players gets a character to engage with the story that we’re all collaboratively putting together, and from their perspective, it is the main character.

Every player will be experiencing the story from a different perspective, and we want each of these main characters to feel significant and meaningful. It’s a balancing act that can be tricky to pull off, but setting things up at the beginning, during character creation, makes it easier.

Do you have some ideas of what the story is going to be about? Maybe the main plot will be solving a murder. If that’s the case, having the player characters be relevant to that plot will help a ton. Maybe one is a reporter. Maybe one is an investigator. Maybe one is related to the murder victim. Maybe one is related to the murderer, and they’re your mole, and secretly working against the rest of the party.

There are lots of ways to plant hooks that pull the player characters into the larger plots you have in store. At the same time, they should have their own features, wants, and needs that you should work with so that the player feels like they’re getting their own character arc and special moments.

Do all of the player characters know each other? As the characters are being created, consider what you’re going to do at the beginning in order to bring the party together.

NPCs Based on Player Characters

When creating player characters, the rules were fully engaged and character sheets were generated. For player character related NPCs, you may or may not need to be so elaborate. You don’t necessarily need a character sheet for Aunt May if one of your player characters is Peter Parker.

For all of the things you’re writing up, you only need characters sheets and stats when those characters and features engage with the mechanics of the game. The bartender that is never getting into combat doesn’t need a sheet or stats. The bouncer in the bar, on the other hand, should probably have enough stats that when the bar fight happens, you have enough information that you can work with them.

NPCs to fill Player Character Gaps

I’ve played with some GMs that always had a character in the party, so that they could feel like they’re a player at the same time as the GM. NPCs filling party gaps are basically that, and they should have a full character sheet and progress the same way the party progresses.

One of the nice things about having one or more characters like this in the party is that it provides a way for you to have a voice with the party. This can help with both guidance and misdirection, depending on what you need at the moment. Remember that it’s a character, though, and should speak and do things in character, and not just be a tool for you to manipulate the party.

Towns and structures

This is the geography of the game, and it can be important. It’s the stage upon which all of the story will play out. This can be as detailed or as barebones as you need it to be. If you have opportunities to use information from the player to enhance your geography, do it.

If you like drawing maps, you’ll probably really love this part of the world building process. If you don’t love map making, well, do your best.

The Bad Guy(s)

These are the antagonists. Maybe they’re evil incarnate. Maybe they’re misunderstood.

Take a lot of care when constructing your bad guys. These are the characters that instigated the plot. They should be motivated and interesting. I think it’s best when there are reasons for them being the way they are, or making the choices they made. If they’re not interesting, the story will probably fall flat.

Eventually, you will need character sheets for your bad guys. You can hold off on this until later, if you need to, but you should know what your bad guys can and cannot do before they run into the heroes.

The Backstory

From the players’ perspectives, the story begins right where they start. Everything that led up to that moment is backstory.

For you, the GM, the story starts wherever it makes the most sense. You can write whatever you want, making it as detailed and as interesting as you can. For you, the heroes are coming in and finishing the story you began. With your help, of course.

Rich backstory makes it easier for you to have NPCs answer questions that the player characters pose. You don’t have to write a novel of backstory, and if you write a bunch of stuff that the players never get to, you might feel frustrated, or tempted to push the players in directions that aren’t natural to the gameplay.

You should write some history for the area, some one-off details to make the history of the NPCs more interesting, and you should write up the causes and effects that lead to the inciting incident and the problems that the heroes need to solve.

Concluding thoughts

I think I’ve written more than enough, and more than I expected on this topic. However much you write, it will always feel like you wrote too much, and not enough at the same time. You will be forced to think fast on your feet and come up with details on the fly.

When you have to come up with stuff in the moment, be sure and write down enough of the details so that you can weave it into what you’ve already prepared.

Finally, practice makes perfect. I’d be a much more confident GM if I did it more. I’d do it more if I had more time and players willing to play with me.

If you find any of this advice I’ve laid out helpful, let me know!

While preparing my write-up tonight, I looked back to see how much I have talked about Valheim before. To my surprise, I wrote an entire post about it 5 years ago, to the day.

The old post does a pretty good job of describing the game. In 2021, it was in early access and progress only went up to the plains. Now, as of just a few weeks ago, the game is fully released, with many more zones added since then, additional mechanics, and an actual ending.

Valheim: A Brief Summary

As I said 5 years ago, Valheim is an open world, sandbox adventure game set in a Norse-Viking, low-polygon world. It can be played solo or with friends. It supports PVP, though I don’t know how many people are interested in that kind of gameplay in this world. It has progression that is based on the resources you’re able to acquire, and soft gates bound to different bosses in different biomes, which get progressively more difficult.

I’m writing this from a place of ignorance: I haven’t been to the newest zone yet, and the game has acquired secrets upon release that I have yet to discover.

The biome progression is this: Meadows, Black Forest, Swamps, Mountains, Plains, Mistlands, Ashlands, and finally, The Deep North. I haven’t been to the deep north yet. There is also the Ocean biome, but there are no bosses there, and that biome doesn’t gate progression.

Things that have changed

Since the post last year, they added magic with the Mistlands. They added siege weapons with Ashlands. They’ve added some other mechanics with The Deep North, but I haven’t discovered those yet, and I’m not looking for spoilers.

With each new biome added came a new boss. Defeating a boss bestows a resource necessary for moving on to the next zone. For example, once you defeat the Queen from Mistlands, you get the material necessary to build a very large boat, capable of surviving the boiling waters that surround the Ashlands. There are some clever tricks a Viking can perform to get there without the ship, but those ways generally invite madness and mayhem.

More foods have been added, and recipes, and weapons. They’ve expanded building options, and building materials, and the way pieces can snap together. They’ve added a few quality of life improvements.

Unfiltered Thoughts

While I’m still talking about the game from the perspective of what it is, and before I get more into how I feel about it, I want to mention that this is another game in which the modding community does a lot of heavy lifting. Project Zomboid has more mods, but there are plenty of Valheim mods out there, some of which change the game in truly impressive ways. Recently on Reddit, I saw someone showcasing a mod that added trains to the game. It was pretty wild.

There are a handful of mods I like to run with Valheim, just for quality of life improvements. For example, there’s a mod which allows crafting from nearby containers, which is nice. There is a mod for automatically storing items in containers, as long as the container already has items of that type. Valheim can suck up a lot of time just managing collected resources, so some of these mods allow for more time playing the game, rather than managing it.

How do I feel about this game, now that I’ve described it so thoroughly? This game that I’ve played off and on for over 5 years?

I love it, but it can be extremely frustrating.

This game is capable of being soothing. Perhaps meditative. It can be inspiring, action-packed, and thrilling.

But sometimes, when you’re getting ready to hop in a boat and go exploring, the fog will roll in and make it very difficult to see anything more than 20 feet away.

There’s something of a theme that happens with all the biomes after the plains. The post I wrote 5 years ago precedes these biomes, so I was much more undeniably bullish about the game. When they added the Mistlands, though, they almost lost me. It’s a land that is — you guessed it — full of mist. It’s very difficult to see in it. You can make a belt which releases a little fairy that pushes the mists back a little, but it’s not nearly enough.

The Mistlands are also full of bullshit bug monsters. Some float along, spitting fireballs from the air. Some appear next to you, like a carapaced troll, shaking the ground and doing devastating damage.

Oh, and the Mistlands are extremely hilly. Extremely vertical terrain, which the combat system did not handle well.

It’s like the developers took the two main weaknesses of the game and made a zone all about them. I might have quit playing for a while, at that point.

Eventually, I went back with my friends and played through it, and it does get easier with better gear. But even still, it leaned way too far into the things the game was not good at. They’ve since made improvements to combat with creatures that are at different heights than you, but it’s not perfect.

When I finally made my peace with the Mistlands, the devs added the Ashlands, and I quit again.

I had a hard time explaining why I hated Ashlands for a while. It didn’t suffer visibility issues the way Mistlands does. The air is clear. It’s not particularly vertical. Fights are usually on the same plane. The problem with the Ashlands is that the fighting never stops. Just a continuous, unrelenting torrent of monsters, which you can’t just ignore.

At the time, trying to talk about it on Reddit wasn’t productive. A lot of people took the complaints as an excuse to say, “Git good scrub.” My problem wasn’t player skill. My problem was that I wasn’t getting fed what I loved about the game before. I want to explore. I want to build. I want to collect new resources so I can make cool things. You can’t really do any of that other stuff when you’re constantly fighting just to hold your position.

The Ashlands were eventually toned down, multiple times, and my friends and I eventually went back and made real progress. We ran out of steam before we fought the boss in that zone. I never tried it solo.

Concluding thoughts

When the game went into full release, Mike was ready to jump back in with the group, and I dragged my feet. All these thoughts and memories came up. Each of the times I started playing, I had a great time and loved it, until I didn’t. Then it was heartbreak, or rage quit, or exhaustion.

Respecting his birthday last week, we jumped in, and we had a good time. We made great progress, and in a few minutes, I’m sure we’ll jump back in and keep going.

Wish me luck. If you have thoughts or feelings about this game, let me know.

I’m going to split this into two categories:

1. Selling in person
2. Everything else

The “Everything else” will probably be the shorter section. It will include a little bit of info on querying, writing the summary that goes on the book, and whatever else I can think of.

I have to write this one fast tonight, folks, because I’m still heads down with a bunch of work stuff, and I don’t want to stay up until 2AM like I did last night.

Selling in person

When I’m selling person, I’m almost always at a table with more books than just the ones I wrote. I’m working the publisher’s table, and my publisher has put a substantial number of titles.

There is always the temptation to only sell my books, but that’s a trap and a mistake. For starters, my stories are not for everyone. They’re for a lot of people, but the person standing in front of me may be looking for SciFi, or epic fantasy, or poetry, or anything but urban fantasy. Some people hate urban fantasy. Trying to sell my book to that person is going to just make them frustrated, and then they’ll leave with nothing.

Then there is the matter of optics. When you come across an author at a table that is only selling their book, when they are surrounded by so many other titles, it can look narcissistic.

I think this is building to a rule. Let’s forge it.

The first rule of selling in person is making it about the customer, not you.

So, ask them what they like. Ask them if they’re looking for something in particular. Ask them what their favorite book is, and hope you know it and can match it something on the table.

Resist the urge to bend your story to fit what they’re asking for. Again, this is about getting the customer a book they’ll love. If they get something they enjoy, they are more likely to look for other books from the author or publisher. You want the publisher to stay in business, because that means the publisher can publish more of your books and continue sending you checks and statements. Selling books to a reader that makes them happy, even if it’s not your book, is good for the publisher and indirectly, you.

I have a question I’ve recently started using which flips the script and helps get customers more engaged with the conversation. I save this for the people that are struggling to describe what they like.

“If I were to visit you, and you were to recommend me a book from your library, which book would it be?”

It really is still the same question as “What is your favorite book?” but it reframes it so that they are in the position of giving me a book, rather than me trying to sell them one on the table. That reframing can be amazing, and often opens up into more interesting conversations about books in general.

One might think that the “win condition” of successfully running a table at a convention is selling the most of your book. That is a way of defining it, and my books often are the one with the most sales at the end of the convention, but that’s not what I’m setting out to do.

My “win condition” is to have the most interesting conversation with readers and writers at the table. It is a truly special day when I can talk to a writer just starting, and give them whatever it is they need to move on to the next step.

That is the convention for me, often. I’m not always on panels, and I don’t attend panels as often as I used to. Most of my time is at the table in the dealer’s room, so meeting people, talking to them about books and writing and all of the topics that fall in between, that’s my absolute jam.

This is also building into something. Not quite a rule. Maybe more of a guideline.

It’s easier to sell to people that are a fan of your work, or people in which you have a relationship. So build a relationship with the customer.

When I talk with people that come to the table, I listen as much as I can. I usually have to ask questions to prime the pump, but once they start talking, I listen and ask good follow-up questions that are pertinent to what I perceive as their interests.

I want to say something like, “You can’t force a sale,” but I don’t think that’s entirely true. It’s more like fishing, sometimes. I don’t always call out to people just walking by the table, but some events, it’s the only way to draw interest. When I call out, it’s often just a greeting. When we were at the chocolate festival in Paradise earlier this year, I went so far as to ask, “Can I tell you about this book?”

Narrowing the choice to a single book and targeting it can sometimes make the table less intimidating, and encourages the person to approach and listen to my pitch. And I have my pitch ready to go, the salient points memorized.

For all three of my books, I have elevator pitches memorized, but I try not to say them as if they’re memorized. Keep it as natural as possible, change up some of the wording from time to time, but get across the finish line. When it’s a good pitch, it can often land a sale on its own.

It’s not as easy to have elevator pitches for other people’s books, but it’s possible to have a list of interesting details about the books at hand. Things like:

“It’s ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ meets ‘Pacfic Rim.'”

“It’s about Frankenstein’s Monster, picking up right where Mary Shelley’s story ends, but it’s not Mary Shelley’s version. It’s the classic movie monster, with the flat head and the bolts in his neck, and he’s playing the part of Sherlock while Igor plays the part of Watson.”

“It’s a complete series, 2nd world SciFi, in which charlatans pretending at magic stage a coup to take over the kingdom and build up this ‘chosen one’ to take the throne, but it doesn’t go very well. Think ‘Trump term 1’ for book 1, and ‘Trump term 2’ for book 2.“

“It’s Tombstone meets Van Helsing, in a world where silver is a corruptive element, and our protagonist, infected with silver, is looking for the one gun that can put down the machine-monster that caused him to be infected in the first place.”

Unintentionally, I don’t think any of these pitches are as good as the ones I have for the books I wrote. I think that’s always going to be the case. I think the ones I can pitch the strongest are the ones I’ve read, but I haven’t read everything that’s on the table. I’m working on it, but there’s only so much time in the day.

Selling in person has become easy, for me. I don’t land every sale, but I have a good time, and I think most of the people I talk to that come by the table have a good time, too.

Selling books — Everything Else

Agents think in terms of comp titles, and they want their authors to be thinking about relevant comp titles, too, because comp titles are used for positioning. The advance is based on predictions of how well the book will sell, and those predictions are almost entirely based on comp titles.

If someone tells you that comp titles aren’t important, they may not know how traditional publishing works.

When writing your query, remember that you’re trying to tell a story about your story. And, stories should invoke an emotional response, even when it’s a story about your story. Keep that in mind, and also remember that you don’t have to include every detail. You’re going to have to leave out subplots, characters, settings… do whatever it takes to make your story about your story interesting and pertinent to the larger story. This is not always easy, but it also doesn’t have to be as hard as I usually make it out to be.

Another way to think of the query is that this is a look through the keyhole. Such a view doesn’t show everything. Make sure that the view is somewhere in the story that is interesting, and that will make the person peering through the keyhole with you want to open the door.

There are places where the “In a world” voice is appropriate, both in query writing and writing the book summary that will go on the book jacket. It will feel cheesy. Embrace the cheese. Then edit it until it doesn’t feel cheesy.

Find things that are interesting in your story and bring them to the front of the summary, but do it without spoilers and without jeopardizing the experience of reading the story. Are there robot dogs in your story? Find a way to get them on the book jacket, but only if it doesn’t give things away and ruin the reader’s day.

My original plan was to talk about lots of different media I’m consuming lately. Some of it is on YouTube, on Twitch, and Dropout. Those are all still fun distractions, but over the weekend, I put in the first episode of Lanterns and didn’t stop until I’d gone through the entire series. For the last couple of days, that’s where all of my thoughts have been. So let’s write some of them down.

Short, non-spoiler review

The casting is perfect. The story is great. It looks really good. This is a very good series set in the DCU, and I hope we get more. There are definitely some surprises, most of which land. I can easily recommend people watch this. Maybe not in one giant sitting like I did, though.

Longer review, with spoilers

Once again, if you don’t want any of this series to be spoiled, now is your time to close this tab, or delete this email, or exit however you exit seeing this post. No more warnings after this point, and I honestly think this is best viewed without spoilers.

Before I get into the details of the show, I’ll offer my “credentials,” as it were. I’ve enjoyed stories from the comics since the late 80s. My favorite Green Lantern is actually Kyle Rayner. I can name all of the emotional spectrum cores, I can spell Larfleeze correctly on the first try, and I know tons of interesting trivia about Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner. I went into this series rich with background information, so the two Mogo jokes in the show landed perfectly with me.

The show is told out of chronological order, and it divides its focus between an older Hal Jordan that is bitter but still doing heroic work, and John Stewart, who has been training to live without fear his entire life so that he can be Earth’s next Green Lantern. Most of the story takes place in 2016, with the next sizable portion of the story occurring in 2026.

It’s grounded, gritty, and our main characters are given plenty of opportunities to be clever and solve mysteries. The first episode establishes what the season is about: John is supposed to be getting trained by Hal to be his replacement, but Hal doesn’t want to replaced, and gives John a hard time. They’re pulled in to investigate some alien murders in a small town, Rushville, Nebraska. This storyline is set in 2016. By the end of the first episode, we jump to 2026, where John drives back into Rushville, meets up with the sheriff, and we see Hal Jordan’s dead body sitting on bleachers, snow collecting on him, and he has no ring.

The first episode is setting up some promises, and for the most part, keeps them. The missing ring is a bit of a misdirect, but I’ll forgive them that one sin.

As they dig further, they find that there is a Manhunter hiding somewhere in the town, influencing the townsfolk, and must be stopped.

This is where I must pause and reveal a hole in my knowledge. When they said “Manhunter,” I was thinking of Martian Manhunter. They described the Manhunters as a race that was supposed to be extinct, which I think lines up with Martian Manhunter’s background. Later, when they talked about The Guardians being responsible for creating the Manhunters, I looked them up on the Internet and found — whoops! — Manhunters have been in the comics before, they’re machines, and were supposed to be unfeeling space cops. When their programming became corrupted, The Guardians wiped them out and turned to create the Green Lantern Corps to replace them.

The show isn’t afraid to take its time with the story telling. It gives us an entire episode where we get to learn about more about John Stewart’s upbringing. The night that the ring chose Hal Jordan, it tried to choose John Stewart’s father first. When the ring came into his room, picked him up, and asked, “Are you afraid?” John’s father truthfully said “Yes!” and then the ring moved on.

The close encounter nearly ruined John’s father’s life, and The Guardians tried to make amends by offering John’s mother a huge diamond. Ultimately, they talked about how John Stewart is made of stern stuff and could be the next Lantern, so John’s parents began conditioning John to suppress his fear. They shot apples off his head, made him walk alone through scary neighborhoods… all sorts of things which could be described as abuse.

Not to say that the ends justify the means, but it worked. John grew up, joined the marines, became a sniper, demonstrated incredible willpower, a lack of fear, and tried to serve his country to the best of his ability. His military career ended when Hal swooped in and nabbed someone John was supposed to snipe.

I really liked John Stewart in this show. Aaron Pierre played him perfectly. I’m looking forward to seeing more of him.

The show also dedicated an episode to Hal Jordan, and what makes him tick. He was a stubborn kid that loved his Dad, and his Dad loved him back. We get a scene where Hal’s Dad takes Hal’s side and gets into a fistfight with Hal’s baseball coach. The next scene, they’re sitting next to a runway, watching planes fly by. That’s when Hal’s Dad tells him how his grandfather gave him a key before going off to war. He explained that he was as good a fighter pilot as they come, but there’s always the possibility that there’s someone out there that’s a little bit better, or circumstances that might get out of control. The key was to a “fail safe,” and as Hal’s Dad finished the explanation, he reached into his shirt and handed Hal a key.

Next scene, Hal is standing at his Dad’s funeral.

The episode is titled “The Jordan Boy’s Legacy,” and we learn what it is. Hal’s grandfather died by suicide, and Hal’s Dad learned about it from a note in the safe. Hal’s Dad also died by suicide, and again, Hal found out from a note inside the safe his Dad left him. Hal doesn’t feel fear because of conditioning. It’s because he’s broken. And alone.

I really liked Hal Jordan in this show, too. Kyle Chandler brought a lot to the role, and made him interesting. It was a different Hal Jordan than what I remember in other media, and that’s okay. I also hope to see more of Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan as the series goes on, but given that he’s dead at the end of the first season, that might be challenging.

That’s one of the surprises this show gives us that may or may not land. When people say “Green Lantern,” most people will probably think of Hal Jordan. If you grew up on the cartoons, you might say John Stewart, but Hal has been the most consistent front man for the series. It’s sort of like saying “Ghost Rider” and people think “Johnny Blaze,” even though my favorite Ghost Rider is Danny Ketch, and the most recent Ghost Rider is Robbie Reyes.

Some people probably wanted more constructs, but that’s not really the kind of story they were telling. There were constructs, and they were done well. Like I said before, the show looks great. I really don’t have any problem with how much super stuff we got in our super hero show.

I enjoyed Nathan Fillion’s appearance as Guy Gardner in this show. He’s been enjoyable in all of his appearances so far. Even though Guy didn’t have a bunch to do in this show, I think his character was given a little bit more depth.

Closing thoughts

I hope to see more of this. I really enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to what they do with Sinestro, played by Ulrich Thomsen. He didn’t have a ton to do in his season, but what they did give of him was perfect.

There are plenty of things I didn’t talk about, such as Hal’s hologram, Hal’s weird plant, and the sheriff’s son, Noah.

What do you think? Did you watch it, and do you have thoughts on the show? Let me know.

Trans rights are human rights.

About 1% of the population identifies as trans.

More than 40% of trans people have attempted suicide.

Around 80% of trans people have sought medical health treatment from licensed professionals, compared to only around 45% of cis people.

I’m making this list to paint a clear picture, which is that around 1% of our population are vulnerable, often in crisis, and they deserve our compassion.

Why am I writing this?

I’m cis gender, male, heterosexual. This isn’t about me, and it’s not about any specific person I’ve known, though I have been friends with quite a few trans folks. I’m not claiming to be an ally, or “virtue signaling,” or any of the other B.S. we throw up to keep people from being kind and doing the right thing.

We are in another election cycle, and the last one had the Republicans airing anti-trans propaganda all over the place. I remember watching one of the screens in a Mel’s Diner tuned to ESPN2, flabbergasted at the naked hate on display.

Trans rights are human rights, and I’ve already seen some hints at scapegoating trans people again, which sucks. So, with whatever voice I have, I’m going to say again that we should be looking out for trans people, not demonizing them.

J. K. F’ing Rowling

Rowling made a ton of money, and donated bunches to charity. I’m not going to ignore her generosity and her philanthropy. She acquired wealth and did some real good with it.

However, Rowling identifies as a TERF, and has also used some of her considerable wealth to support politicians and policies that are anti-trans.

TERF stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.” TERFs are bad. TERFs are attacking people that are already vulnerable.

Rowling uses her wealth and her voice to hurt some of the people that are in the most danger, as I described at the beginning.

Harry Potter and the Author of Hate

There is no ethical way to consume Harry Potter media at this point. Some of the money goes back to Rowling, and Rowling uses that money to fuel hate. That sucks.

Since Rowling revealed who she is, and repeatedly doubled-down on her messages of hate, people have looked at the Harry Potter franchise critically, and found reasons to hate on the series. Some of these criticisms are fair, but a lot of it feels like revisionist history, to me.

The Harry Potter series captured the imaginations of an entire generation and got them reading again. There are good things about the series. Rowling did some clever things that I’ve learned from, such as hiding things in plain sight.

At the same time, Rowling represents other cultures and races in Harry Potter by leaning into cheap stereotypes.

The franchise is undeniably a cultural touchstone, and Rowling made an indelible mark on the world with her story about The Chosen One and his fantastic wizarding school. Unfortunately, the franchise is now poisoned, and should probably not be read or enjoyed by anyone.

Other TERFs to be away of

There’s Macy Gray.

Bette Midler, unfortunately. She doesn’t seem to understand the effects of her words.

Dave Chapelle is always looking for different ways to be super problematic.

Rob Schneider, Carlos Santana, Alice Cooper, Kevin Hart, and John Cleese, among others.

Final thoughts

It should be pretty easy to avoid saying stupid shit and hurting people. Before opening your mouth, ask yourself, “Is there an intersectionality of people that may be unfairly targeted or hurt because of my words?” If the answer is yes, shut up and move on.

Give trans people the same courtesy you would want for yourself and your children. Let them seek their bliss, and be the best version of themselves they can be. Their experience with gender and transitioning and body dysmorphia has nothing to do with you, and you may not be able to relate or imagine what it’s like for them. That’s okay. Let them be themselves. Your life will not be harmed by them or their gender expression.

Tonight is the first of three unscheduled topics. I can write about anything I want to write about. So what will it be?

Perhaps a bit of everything. Tonight, I’ll talk about the things I’m happy with, the things that are bothering me, and what I’m going to do about any of it.

I’m angry about Trump’s latest deal with Russia

If you haven’t heard, Trump made a deal with Putin in order to acquire nearly 5 million tons of diesel fuel. It seems this started nearly a month ago, around the same time that Trump was signing the Lindsey Graham package of sanctions against Russia. With this deal, Russia gets money from the US, we get diesel, which is projected to lower the cost of diesel a few cents, and this is terrible for several reasons.

Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia was the aggressor, violated international law, and started a fight with a people that Putin thought he could intimidate or crush. But Ukraine fought back, and were more fierce than anyone expected. Putin thought the war would be over in a matter of weeks. Three and a half years later, Ukraine has done extremely well, winning more than they’ve been losing.

Trump’s deal fucks over Ukraine. I don’t know how much of a difference US dollars will make in Russia’s hands, but it’s not good. We should be supporting Ukraine.

Furthermore, Russia has been funding Iran. Which means, indirectly, we’re funding the people we’re still at war with. An illegal war Trump started, with no end in sight, that has destabilized the area and the global economy.

Lower down on the list of atrocities this deal creates, Trump decreed through his executive order that red diesel can be used on the roads. Here’s the thing, though. Executive orders are not laws. Trump is in the Executive Branch. It’s the Legislative Branch that makes laws. All Trump has done is created confusion, and people using red diesel off of farms may be subject to fines and other repercussions from breaking the existing laws.

The best thing Trump could do for all of us is stop breathing.

I’m annoyed by the scam callers

Every day, I take a call. People asking if they want to buy my house. Absolutely not. People claiming to be from “member services,” wanting to talk about my credit card debt. Those calls are usually robots.

People claiming to be from AT&T. People claiming to be from my bank, without stating which bank that’s supposed to be. So many scams. So many thieves.

One of the scammers calling about buying my house caught me while I was really sick, a couple weeks ago. When I get sick, I have even less of a filter than normal.

“Would you be interested in selling your home?” they asked.

“I would rather burn it to the ground than sell it to you,” I said, without missing a beat, and with my voice rough from being sick for so long.

It was the first time I ever stunned one of those callers. There was an uncomfortable pause, they said something that was a cross between “sorry” and “bye” and then they hung up in a hurry.

I cannot summon any sympathy for these people calling me, trying to separate me from my property and savings. They succeed on people less savvy than me. They’re able to sustain their operation because some small percentage of people play into their game. These thieves gorge themselves off of unsuspecting, gullible grandparents, and I really wish they would get the kind of justice they deserve.

I’m tired of being sick

The cough never really went away, and with the change in weather, allergies have hit me pretty hard the last week or so. It’s been hard to sleep. It’s hard to focus. I’m not getting as much done as I want.

I’m not getting any writing done.

I spent most of yesterday in a mostly incoherent fog, and I’ve been spending all day today trying to catch up on the work I missed. It’s not going that well.

I want to feel strong and healthy again. I want to be able to get things done. There’s so much to do, and I’m barely doing anything.

I reinstated Disney Plus

When the stuff was going down with ABC trying to silence Jimmy Kimmel, I tried cancelling my Disney Plus. For some period of time, I did not have access to any of that programming. I missed Wonderman. I never did finish Andor. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s on Disney Plus that I want to see, but I thought it more important to take a stand and withhold my money from Disney until things got better.

As far as I can tell, Disney/ABC aren’t trying to silence anyone anymore. So, maybe my original reason for canceling Disney in the first place has evaporated.

Furthermore, even though I canceled it, the statements make it look like I was still paying for it. That’s… very annoying.

Finally, I want to see Visionquest. I don’t pirate anything.

I hope you don’t think less of me for reinstating my Disney Plus subscription.

What am I going to do about any of this?

Aside from the TV subscription thing, I don’t know that there’s anything I can do. I’m trying to rest as much as I can, to try and get healthy again. I don’t know that there’s anything I can do about the scammers.

As for Trump, I’m voting very soon.

There’s been some noise from some Democrats that if they retake congress, they shouldn’t prosecute Trump.

Here’s the thing. Either our laws apply to everyone, or they apply to no one. When you swear to uphold The Constitution, you are duty-bound to do exactly that. Trump does not have the authority to start wars, and yet he has. Trump does not have the authority to use tax-payer funds to do anything, and yet he has. He didn’t have authority to knock down The White House.

He is the worst. The absolute worst. He’s a criminal, a rapist, and an incompetent, incoherent idiot.

Democrats, if you take The House and The Senate, start the investigations. Assign special councils. Collect the evidence. Do your fucking job, and take the next steps in cleaning up this ridiculous mess. That’s why you’re being elected. That’s the only reason you’re being elected.

Hmm. Seems like I got a little off topic, there.

This one has been more of a rant than anything. Thank you for joining me on it. If I got any facts or details incorrect, please let me know (with sources) so that I can make corrections. I do not want to spread misinformation or do harm.

No one really wants to read my political takes here, and I understand why. Either you’re in agreement with me, in which case we don’t have much to discuss on the topic, or you disagree with me, which will be frustrating because this isn’t a great forum for 2 way communication.

I do read all the comments, though. And I try to reply when I have anything meaningful to reply with. If I’m talk about something, anything, and I don’t have my facts straight and I’m clearly wrong, I’d rather find out about it than continue to spread misinformation or worse, do harm.

It’s difficult to be apolitical in this day and age, because all too often, it’s not a question of politics but morality. For example, Ms. Rachel is a host for kids programming, and you wouldn’t expect a lot of political content from her corner. However, she believes children are dying in Gaza, and she no longer wants to work with celebrities that don’t use their platform to speak out about it. If it was political, it would be Republican vs Democrat, right vs left. She just doesn’t want to see kids get hurt.

There is nuance there, of course. I talked about that with my last post about The Hugos. I think it’s possible to be both against kids dying, and also be against antisemitism. That’s where I’m at.

Making art is a political act. You make a choice as to what will be included in your art, and what it reflects about you and the world. Sometimes, that statement might be “I’m leaving that out, because I don’t want to talk about that in this piece of art,” which I think is reasonable.

That’s what I’m doing with The Psychic Out of Time. I have it set in the summer of 2024, not because I don’t want to update it to be the current year, but because I don’t want to write a story in which Trump is the president. One of the background points in The Mel Walker Stories is that Mel and his friends are preparing for the end of the world. It would be way too easy for me to bring Trump into that, and that’s not the kind of story I want to tell.

We all live in the same world, even if some of the inhabitants appear to be operating on a different information. When we sit down to write a story, we’re bringing our voice, which is a culmination of our experiences, both on and off the page. We make our stories relatable by bringing in bits of the world we know, and the reflections of the people that inhabit our world.

Let’s try an example. Maybe Charlotte’s Web. Is that a political story? Not on the surface, but let’s look a little deeper. Wilbur is an unremarkable pig living on a farm that is doomed to be slaughtered. An intelligent spider named Charlotte helps Wilbur by writing words into her web that the farmers can read. “Some Pig,” “Radiant,” and “Terrific” are examples. Wilbur is spared, Charlotte dies, but not before 3 of her many children remain behind to continue writing messages in the webs, saving Wilbur and allowing him to live a long, happy life.

Charlotte’s Web isn’t a political story, but Wilbur lives in our world. Without utility, or something to make Wilbur stand apart, he is bound to be slaughtered. No one questions this fact of the story. It’s just the way the world works. What does that say about the world? Pigs are slaughtered on farms, no matter how cute or innocent they may be. This is a world that eats meat.

If you squint your eyes, you might be able to see a message here that capital punishment is wrong. Wilbur is a pig, but he and all the other animals on the farm are humanized, and we’re sympathetic to Wilbur and his plight. Slaughtering him would be wrong. Is it not wrong to slaughter humans, or creatures we relate to the way we relate to humans?

Or, maybe there is something there about Utilitarianism. If Wilbur were remarkable on his own, he wouldn’t have to worry about the farmer’s axe. He depends on Charlotte’s unique skill. What does that say about Wilbur and the world he lives in?

I’m not saying any of this is E. B. White’s intention. An artist’s intentions don’t matter as much as what lands on the page. J. K. Rowling claimed for a while that Dumbledore is supposed to be gay, but there’s no evidence of that in the stories themselves. I think it would have been great to have good representation in one of the most famous children’s fantasy series ever, but it’s not there.

In my opinion, it is better to be intentional with the messages that we place into our stories. To do that, we must understand ourselves, our biases, and then we must see where our biases may intersect with the material in our story. There will always be things we say unintentionally, and that’s okay.

For me, whenever I talk about Trump and what he’s done to our country, I get a little heated. I possess a very strong bias and as such, I am avoiding writing stories that include him. I’ll write blog posts about him (probably one tomorrow, if I’m being honest), but unless it is my intention to write about modern politics, I’ll keep him out of my light-hearted, present-day fiction.

The first 4 episodes of the podcast are out. They’re the only episodes I’ve recorded so far, and I think they’re getting better. I’m getting more comfortable with the tools I’m using, and I’m less nervous about putting the content out in the world.

But why put out a podcast at all?

I don’t honestly know. I suppose it all started with Writing Excuses. That’s really the first podcast I listened to for any length in time. I tried a couple of the different SciFi/Fantasy podcasts, and they were fine, but I don’t even remember their names. I think their names changed over time.

Writing Excuses lead to retreats, and other conferences, and I saw them do their thing live several times. It looked like fun.

When The Repossessed Ghost came out, Steven had the idea of doing Live From Baycon that year, and asked if I’d like to interview people. I did it, had a lot of fun doing it, and I’ve been doing “Live From X” episodes for Small Publishing in a Big Universe ever since. It makes up a lot of the SPBU episodes.

A few times, I’ve received compliments, either about how I conduct interviews, or the sound of my voice, or both.

As LLMs and generative AI (I’m never calling it SI) became more pervasive, the timing seemed right. If I can talk about writing in a way that helps people get over the fear of the blank page, if I can show people that writing is, in fact, fun, then maybe they will think differently about using an LLM. Even if I can convince just one person to forego AI in favor of using their own voice, I would consider this whole thing a success.

Looking back, it seems inevitable that I would try this.

But how do you feel about it?

I feel pretty good about what I’ve put out so far. There is quite a bit of work that goes into it, but it doesn’t feel insurmountable anymore. Before I recorded the first episode, I was intimidated by it, and dragged my feet. But now it feels relatively natural, and something I want to continue to do.

From what I can see of the numbers, there are a handful of people listening to the episodes. Spotify warned me that most podcasts like mine average 4 viewers, and I might be beating that by a little bit.

I came into this with very low expectations, and I’m not disappointed with how things are going. This is not the sort of thing that’s going to make me rich or famous. This is just another way for me to put out into the world some of the writing advice, tips, and tricks I’ve been gathering for several years.

Anything else?

There’s a handful of people that consume the podcast on YouTube. Those folks may be further entertained; I bought a green screen. I’m probably just going to put my keyboard logo behind me. It should be less distracting than the blurred background I used on the first 4 episodes.

My camera setup at my desk where I did the original recordings doesn’t work with the green screen, though, because the aperture is so wide. I set it up, tried it, and it is quite comical. I’ll switch back to using my Surface to do the recordings, either with the same microphone or my Yeti Orb. Both are great. I’ll do some experiments with both and see which one I like the best, and then go forward with that.

For those that have checked out the podcast, thank you! I appreciate it, and I hope you got something from it.

I’m going to finish the first season of this, and then evaluate after that whether or not I keep doing this.

If there is anything you’d like me to cover on the podcast, or if you or someone you know would be appropriate for an interview, let me know!