Using some AI art for concept designs for an rpg module. Ideally I'll have enough money to get a decent artist, but I find it's easier to generate close to what I want, and the point at it and go: something like this, than play email tag with written descripptions.
Every author can tell you about "Writing ADHD"; you have a great idea. The best idea. One that would make the great writers of history weep that they had not thought of it. Then you start writing it. And it's great... but maybe you didn't quite think of an ending. Or maybe you have an ending but your outline has "..." for the middle. Or maybe you run out of steam... Easier to start with the NEW great idea.
Which will run out of steam in its turn.
I'm not saying I suffer from Writing ADHD... Let's just say that my half-completed stories could fill up a not inconsiderable portion of the Library of Congress. So I'm going to be doing some small changes. First of all, the Worm/Mist/??? Crossover is an example of a story that is bounded in time--it has an ending, already written in fact. It has a middle outlined. So I'll be doing that. Orb Weaver will continue; have no fear, that's right now my flagship fanfic, so it'll be updated at least once a week. But having a second fanfic, more importantly, one that I know where it is going to end, gives me a better fallback.
The original story is going to finish up Book II of Wanderer's Quest, and then finish Book IIi.
This came from a very annoyed comment from a much better-known author I talk to. (he's actually had a few books pop up on the bestseller list) which can be summed up as "Jordan, you have three or four incomplete series up on Amazon--why should I, as a reader, buy your stuff if I have no certainty you'll complete it?" That was followed by a snarky comment that GRR Martin is already rich and famous, he can get away with that. I'm just old, so I can't.
So Wanderer's quest will go up. The ebook format will go for the ebook tier, but I'll put up an rtf file for everyone else, so you're not stuck "in the middle" with no idea who these people are.
Every story up here will be completed, have no fear, but I think it's better to work to complete one, really complete it rather than have a bunch of fragments, especially given how hard it can be to find stuff on patreon.
There WILL be other stuff--gaming stuff, excerpts, and maybe short stories, but those are teh things I'm aiming at right now to defeat my writing ADHD--ooh, a story about a baseball pitcher sent to a world where baseball is how nations fig--NO! BAD JORDAN!
I'm also considering a discord, but I dunno if that's going to be that useful.
So let me know what you think.
HAsn't it. Well, I'm gonna too my horn, two new stories up on amazon and smashwords. I'll have to wait a day or so to make certain they're actually available, since sometimes there's a delay, but they're posted.
To be honest, I got a bit used to just posting on user boards and patreon, so now I'll come back to this. Ideally, we'll be a bit more active.
I'm going to start making videos about both history and writing. I'm hoping that people will enjoy them, because by I am enjoying them big-time. Here's my history channel and I'll have my sci-fi and culture channel coming up.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw6_Cqt-duoOQiU1G8NvSuQ
Thanks all!
When to ignore science.
You’re writing a tale about a band of teens turned into miniaturized humans, and there’s a scene where they’re sitting around a fire made from matches, watching as the night wears on. And suddenly, you say: wait a minute! Fire doesn’t last that long! A bunch of matches would burn for only a few minutes tops!
Yes. And? If you want to go all hard sci-fi, miniaturized people shouldn’t exist. For that matter, even many “hard” sci-fi settings include things like FTL and generated gravity, usually covered with some comments about how theories in the present turned out to work. But in truth, it’s likely that FTL is just as much fantasy as Harry Potter.
None of which matters. If people are buying your book about tiny people, they’re buying into the fantasy. As long as you’re consistent, only a very few are going to start muttering about how this couldn’t really happen. The rest will roll their eyes and say: Duh, if we wanted reality we’d be watching CNN.
To use an example of this: The Cold Equations. Not a single engineer is going to say: that’s realistic. Not even in the 1950s. If the safety margins were that narrow, then the ship would be behind a bank vault, not a little door with a polite: “if you board this ship, you will die” note. The entire plot, looked at with a critical eye, falls apart based on this one, specific thing.
And it doesn’t matter. There’s a reason why the Cold Equations is in so many collections, and why it sparked a furious response from readers, and why there have been actual remakes, published in Analog and other magazines, finding “a better way.”
The story wasn’t about the science. The story was about the fact that the universe can be cruel, and as much as we could like to believe that the innocent are protected from bad decisions, they aren’t. The emotional punch, which grabbed many people, was a fundamentally unfair situation that no amount of smarts or courage could fix. And it worked. The Cold Equations are still remembered, while you could fill a library with more scientifically grounded stories that are more or less forgotten.
So remember, unless you’re writing a very hard sci-fi story, don’t let science be your tyrant. Sometimes it’s okay to just wink at people and know that they’ll be understanding of your setting, because they didn’t come to you for an education in science—but to have a fun read.
And I got the following:
So AI art isn't great--but it's decent if you have no art budget and can't draw. For myself, I've been playing around with it, and found a few concepts for my next "A Sorceress on EArth" project.
Which is to say, I decided to play around with it a little bit today....
And there went my productivity. As was no doubt intended.
That being said, fears that all real artists are about to be rendered jobless are highly overrated, I think. You don't just pay an artist to put pent to paper, you pay them to understand what your'e saying and get the intent being your flat words, something that the AI (actually a misnomer, since they're not intelligent, artificially or othewise) programs fail to do.
Well, it's coming up to Halloween, and I'm gonna take advantage of my mid-journey subscription to put together a new thirty pagish gamne--Zombies Vs. Teenaged Wizards! The local mad cultists did something very bad, and now zombies are starting to rise, and since mostly adults get it, it's up to the kids to fight them off!
But don't worry, the cult sort of messed up and released friendly spirits that will help their friends and allies learn ways to fight off the zombie plague. That's the good news. The bad news is... THERE'S A ZOMBIE PLAGUE!
Looks like Halloween is either gonna be cancelled or get very real...
Well, for some definitions of soon. Not tomorrow, hope, but definitely within a few weeks. Dara has dealt with spirits, golems, and California traffic. But now she's going to have to deal with a haunted house and, even worse, college. Will she survive the horrors of magic? Will she survive the horrors of the college course-sign up process?
Get ready to find out!
The Isekai Guide to Technology: Canning is up, and you can get it here!
Have you ever been hit by a truck and catapulted into a strange new world full of beautiful princesses and dreadful monsters? Or beautiful monsters and dreadful princesses?
Have you ever realized that you’re missing some of the conveniences you took for granted back home? Sure, now you can cast fireballs, and there’s a beautiful princess who is talking about marriage, but the only thing you have to eat is hardtack and salted pork!
But you can change that! From tin cans to phones, you can make the world a better place—or at least a more convenient place to live after you’ve defeated the Ultimate Lord of Darkness! And if you don’t like fighting, what’s better than introducing something that will make you a lot of money?
So let’s get started on a glorious mission, to bring canned and preserved food to our fantasy universe!
The Isekai Guide to Technology is a series of volumes designed to help you learn about the kind of technology that you can bring from Earth to your new world in order to make your life, and that of your friends and enemies, easier. Even better, these guides are factual.
Or, if you just want to learn about how things that we don’t even notice anymore utterly changed our world, you can have fun reading this little book even if you aren’t currently living in the Castle of Last Hope as the Armies of Darkest Doom prepare to march on you.
So, sit back, watch out for Truck-kun, and get ready to read the Isekai Guide To Technology: Canning!
Book One in A series of books to help you survive in a fantasy world--or have fun in our world!
This is going to be my working cover. As a cover artist I'm... a good writer. :). I may go back to doing some romance, just to get the scratch needed to pay for a real artist!
Okay, it's not, at all, what you'd get from a real artist, but for the budget challenged? It might take some work and isn't good for everything, but even so, some of its attempts look pretty nice...
Can be a huge pain. But it's also important because a lot of people look at your backmatter to see what is happening with your later work. So for today, in addition to broiling... I work on my backmatter. Bleh.
Swap Meets, Drug Gangs, and Monsters, Oh My!
Being an apprentice sorcerer from another world, now lost in California, isn't any walk in the park! Dara didn't think things could get any worse, but now she's in a strange new world, living with an ex-lawyer with a thing for lost causes.
Even while she's trying to find a way home, there are people who need help and people who need a clue. And Dara is going to learn the joys of being shot at while she's trying to help.
Combine that with the FBI sniffing around, and Dara's life just got a whole lot more exciting.
Oh, did we forget to mention that it looks like magic is now returning to Earth?
Dara's about to receive a graduate course in thinking on her feet!
Not entirely satisfied with it, I may try a different font. But here's a preliminary cover.
Better yet, it's for free, no need to sign up. A Sorceress on Earth is ready for initial pre-reads so if you like it, give it a try!
Trollhunters vs. Avengers is the first one, but I'm mainly doing it because the interface is a lot less clunky than that on FF.net. I'll continue updating the stories I have on FF.net, but I'm probably going to centralize more things on RR, along with Archive of our own.
Using some AI art for concept designs for an rpg module. Ideally I'll have enough money to get a decent artist, but I find it's ea...
