A major advantage of newpub is that you have full control.

One disadvantage is that the buck stops with you.

“Which book do I write next?”

“How should I sell it?”

“When to pull the plug on a project that’s not getting results?”

Those are the kinds of questions that come up every month in the Court of Kairos.

Our September Council session covered a wide range of topics from the results of my Souldancer 10th Anniversary Kickstarter to marketing tactics, reader expectations, and the problems that crop up when authors plan their next projects.

We also made time for a recommended reading list of pulp sci fi classics.

Here’s a sample of what we discussed. The full list of questions comes afterward.

FIRST, A QUESTION ABOUT SPACE OPERA

One Council member asked:

“Any space opera works you especially recommend to get to know the genre better, especially since my knowledge of said genre effectively goes no further than Star Wars?”

The Court’s recommendations included:

• Edmond Hamilton’s Captain Future

• Leigh Brackett’s John Eric Stark stories

• Lensman and Skylark of Space by E. E. “Doc” Smith

• John C. Wright’s Starquest series

• Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter novels.

These books and series make great introductions to the literary tradition behind popular space opera.

For aspiring genre authors, reading stories written before 1980 is indispensable. The more you understand the conventions that earlier writers established, the better equipped you’ll be to choose which ones to employ in your own fiction.

WHAT ELSE DID THE COUNCIL DISCUSS?

The September session raised several questions of practical value to independent creators.

Crowdfunding and promotion

• What went differently than expected with the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Kickstarter?

• What’s one marketing step an author can take right now?

• How should an author approach establishing a presence on X and Substack?

Writing and editorial decisions

• Should a novelist fulfill expected genre promises right away or gradually meet those expectations over the opening chapters?

• How can an author plan a second novel while still finishing the first?

• When does brainstorming the next project distract from completing the current book?

Publishing platforms and creative projects

• How is the new Word Surgery editing livestream progressing?

• What do viewers and manuscript submitters think of the format?

• What should authors consider when choosing tools and platforms for their projects?

The Council also discussed the relationship between Patreon style patronage and traditional book sales, along with several questions about technical publishing tools.

Advice that sounds obvious in isolation can be challenging to act on when it affects how you spend your limited time and money. That’s why the Council’s conversations address the tough calls independent authors have to make every day.

HEAR THE COUNCIL FOR YOURSELF

Here’s a sample from September’s Council session. Listen in to hear how we field real questions from real indie authors.

Want the whole discussion? The full September Council question transcript continues below for paid subscribers, covering crowdfunding, author marketing, writing decisions, and publishing challenges. Founding members also get the complete AMA recording.

One of the trickier problems I come across in my professional fiction editing is a protagonist who seems to have everything a good main character needs.

A clear goal? Check. Motivations that make sense? Double check. The stakes are high, and the author has imposed plenty of obstacles to surmount.

Yet reading the story feels like watching somebody else play a video game.

The hero travels the land, overcomes enemies, gains wisdom, and eventually confronts the villain. It all unfolds more or less as the author intended.

Maybe a scene or two even elicits a legitimate thrill. But the hero himself never catches the reader’s interest.

Early readers will usually suggest making the hero’s backstory traumatic, giving him some odd personality quirk, or tacking on inner conflict.

Well-meant as they may be, those suggestions just distract from the underlying problem:

The protagonist goes through the whole novel reacting to the plot without making decisions that fundamentally change the course of events.

A PROTAGONIST CAN BE ACTIVE YET LACK AGENCY

Think about a fantasy novel in which a young soldier’s village is destroyed by an invading army serving an ancient evil. He vows revenge and falls in with a plucky resistance group. Our soldier takes part in a series of battles until the rebel leader orders an attack on the villain’s fortress itself.

On paper, that’s an active protagonist.

But look closer at how the story actually takes shape.

First, our hero’s village is destroyed by a force beyond his control. He’s recruited by the rebels because his skills are of use to them. Then he fights on their orders.

At every stage, someone else decides what happens next.

The hero responds with competence, but the major plot points would still happen regardless of whether he made the same choices, the exact opposite choices, or none at all.

In fact, his main achievement is surviving until the ending.

It should go without saying, but some do need to hear it: An active character takes action. Character agency means taking actions that influence the story’s direction.

That’s the difference between a hero readers find interesting and one who’s just along for the ride.

WHY MORE CONFLICT WON’T FIX THE PROBLEM

Let’s suppose a beta reader renders the dreaded verdict that “The middle drags.”

The common response would be to add another, even tougher battle. Then go back and make the mentor’s training more brutal to justify the hero’s win. Toss in a rival soldier for good measure, and hand the rebels a defeat that runs up the death toll.

Without a doubt, the hero would face more danger.

But he’d still have no real influence over the events playing out around him.

Adding obstacles might punch up individual chapters, but they won’t necessarily make the protagonist more compelling.

How would a professional editor address the problem? By tracing the causal chain connecting those plot points. Which choices does the protagonist make, and why? What happens as a result?

If the answers are “The ones the plot and other characters dictate,” “because the author needs him to,” and “what the author wants to happen next,” no number of added action sequences will save the book.

GIVE YOUR HERO A CHOICE WITH A PRICE TAG

Let’s get back to our young soldier.

Instead of having the resistance recruit him, suppose he learns on his own that its commander plans to sacrifice the surviving villagers to gain a battlefield advantage.

Our hero can follow orders and pursue his revenge or betray the resistance to save the people he’s vowed to protect.

The price of one choice is complicity in the atrocity that destroyed his village. The cost of the other could be losing his powerful new allies.

Notice what changed: Now the hero’s choice determines the next plot development instead of getting carried along within it. And readers will have a reason to care about the protagonist’s actions.

Because such a choice reveals his character more effectively than an extra chapter explaining his childhood trauma.

Remember: Character is most clearly revealed when competing desires force a decision.

FOUR-QUESTION SCENE EVALUATION

None of this is to say you need to rewrite your book from scratch.

Instead, start by analyzing three to five key scenes; especially ones in which the protagonist gains information, faces a challenge, or suffers a setback. Evaluate each according to the following questions:

1. What does the protagonist want?

A peculiarity of writing for a living is that success can make you more reluctant to take risks.

When you’re starting out, you have little to lose. Your first book is probably a mess, nobody knows who you are, and no one expects much from you.

But after you’ve published a few books, built an audience, and earned some street cred, the prospect of starting over can feel intimidating.

You can recognize good writing. You’ve learned to spot rookie mistakes. And you know how much you still don’t know.

So the prospect of launching a new series, experimenting with crowdfunding, or starting a YouTube channel gives you pause.

Maybe you brute-force past the inertia and start doing research. After all, you keep telling yourself, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. But not you; you’re going in prepared.

And six months later, you’re still preparing.

Therein lies the problem: You can’t get good at a skill you’ve never let yourself be bad at.

KNOWING TOO MUCH

A first-time novelist can write a terrible first chapter without recognizing all its faults. An experienced author live streaming for the first time enjoys no such blissful ignorance.

And because he can recognize, if not yet replicate, professional presentation, he compares his first attempt with a bigger YouTuber’s 100th.

That comparison is guaranteed not to flatter.

An established novelist branching out into a new genre faces the same problem. Different fiction conventions make different demands on the author, requiring that he flex underused muscles.

Yes, prior achievements may shorten the learning curve. But they won’t eliminate it.

The temptation is to put off trying until you’ve gained enough knowledge to perform at the level you’re accustomed to. Yet much of the knowledge you need can only be acquired by making the attempt.

And, sometimes, failing.

YOUR FIRST ATTEMPT IS FOR LEARNING

Lets imagine you’re planning your first crowdfunding campaign. You study several other creators’ successful campaigns from reward tiers to shipping costs.

Not even a year of intensively studying other campaigns will show you how your audience will respond to yours.

Maybe you get a ton of follows that convert poorly to actual pledges. Then, those who do pledge want signed hardcovers more than the paperback you’re featuring.

You had no way of knowing until you took the plunge and hit launch.

After that, even a disappointing campaign can ferret out weaknesses in your positioning, presentation, or promotion that no amount of speculation would have revealed.

That’s not to say you should go out and fail on purpose. Preparation has its place. And that place is to reduce your risk by the greatest extent possible with a reasonable amount of time and effort.

As a rule of thumb, if a new endeavor could make you, and you’ve de-risked enough that failure won’t break you; do it.

START SMALL ENOUGH TO FINISH

Here’s how I’d deal with the urge to overprepare for a new publishing venture:

1. Define the smallest useful version

Who can forget Han Solo getting frozen in carbonite?

Or Boromir giving Sean Bean yet another dramatic death while heroically fighting to save Merry and Pippin?

How about Conan getting crucified?

Not all that long ago, popular stories understood what the manufacturers of pop culture have now forgotten:

How to imbue fiction with a ring of reality ...

“The pacing feels too slow.”

That’s one of the most common pieces of feedback new authors get from readers of their early drafts.

And nine times out of ten, those alpha and beta readers are wrong.

Because trimming descriptions, slashing dialogue, and even cutting whole scenes won’t fix the issue that’s really making your novel boring.

Why not?

When writers are told their books suffer from slow pacing, they usually jump to the conclusion that not enough is happening. And that assumption sound reasonable. After all, pretty much everyone has been conditioned to equate excitement with rapid-fire action.

It’s a tendency I see a lot while professionally editing my author clients’ novels.

But let’s take a look at a novel that’s widely considered one of the most gripping works of popular science fiction in recent times: Jurassic Park.

Read the full post on Substack.

Before Gaming Ground Zero, we took it for granted that you could load a physical copy of God of War into a PS3 or Final Fantasy VIII into a PS2 and enjoy hours of fun.

Yet somewhere along the line, as gaming console power and price increased, reverse compatibility fell by the wayside.

Now, independent modders have restored once-standard functionality Sony doesn’t want you to have.

A vibe coder known as Sword has released PS5SX2, a homebrew emulator that allows jailbroken PlayStation 5 consoles to run original PlayStation 2 games from physical DVDs.

In case you just landed from Mars, the PlayStation 2 is one of the most beloved consoles ever made. With a vast library boasting the likes of Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 3, Gran Turismo 4, and hundreds of other landmark games, the PS2 defined a generation of gaming.

And much of that prolific catalogue is no less available today than twenty years ago. You can walk into any secondhand game store and find shelves full of PS2 games.

But as far as Sony’s latest console is concerned, that vast treasury of discs may as well be coasters.

Read the full post on Substack.

In the olden days, American genre fiction belonged to the people who actually read it. They bought cheap magazines printed on rough wood pulp paper at newsstands by the millions. Inside they found detectives, cowboys, and spacemen adventuring through grimy cities, trackless deserts, and strange worlds.

It’s a lasting testament to the popularity of the pulps that the legends of the writers who made their names there are with us to this day. Edgar Rice Burroughs gave readers John Carter and Tarzan. Robert E. Howard unleashed Conan. Walter B. Gibson turned the Shadow into a defining hero of American pop culture.

Far from obscurities indulged as guilty pleasures by small circles of niche enthusiasts, these characters dominated mass entertainment. We would not have Elric without Conan or Batman without the Shadow.

In the early 1930s, the pulps were a decidedly mainstream American entertainment medium. The Shadow became successful enough to spawn not just a hit radio show, but a whole wave of hero magazines. Weird Tales introduced generations to Howard and Lovecraft.

Imagine the popularity that Batman, Spider-Man, or the Avengers enjoy today. Back in the monoculture of the 30s, there were pulp characters with even greater cultural reach.

The pulps had a good thing going.

But one day, it all changed.

Read the full post on Substack.

Over the past twenty years, tech companies assured us that physical media were outdated relics. Why fill your shelves with books, CDs, and vidya discs when you could access any story, song, or game from your phone?

The future they promised was convenient, affordable, and permanently accessible.

People accepted the deal. Until companies started revoking access to media their customers paid for.

So those customers can hardly be blamed for wondering If I paid for it, why can someone else take it away?

A recent article reported on growing enthusiasm for CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, and other tangible entertainment formats. Against expectations, younger consumers are increasingly embracing old media.

It’s important to place that phenomenon in the proper perspective. Generation Z grew up with streaming as the default. They have no personal memories of the time when buying music required visiting a record shop, or reading the newest release meant a trip to Barnes & Noble.

Yet more and more Zoomers are seeking out physical media.

Nostalgia, is a fair explanation for the retro trend among Gen X and Gen Y; the Mall Generation and the NES Generation. But pining for a fondly remembered past can’t account for old media adoption by people who can’t remember it.

The real reason people of all ages are flocking back to physical formats; one megacorps won’t want to hear, is that those same companies rug-pulled their customers. They promised better pricing and convenience, along with unlimited access. Then they systematically restricted access while jacking up prices and making the consumer experience a frustrating ordeal.

One wonders just what these companies thought would happen when they replaced property with permissions. The only rational answer is they somehow assumed customers would never notice the bait and switch.

Unfortunately for the megacorps, people are starting to notice.

A lot of people.

Look, the original streaming pitch made sense. Why buy a box set containing a whole season of a TV series on DVD if you only want to watch one episode? Even more to the point, why buy the whole album for $20 when it only has one good song?

We won’t even get into the bloated ripoff that was cable TV.

For a while, streaming looked like an excellent bargain. Then every studio, network, and label launched its own streaming service. The tangled web of licenses scattered their catalogs across myriad platforms.

And at last, like cable before, it, streaming raised subscription fees and brought back ads.

Streaming gradually turned into early aughts TV, but costlier, less coherent, and with worse programming.

Then platforms started pulling movies and whole series without warning, and we remembered why DVDs are still pretty great.

It didn’t have to be this way. All these companies had to do was add convenient digital delivery without taking away ownership. Independent authors like me have offered our readers DRM-free eBooks for years.

So how did the entertainment companies flub what should have been a slam dunk?

Read the full post on Substack.

The scene should work. But for some reason, it feels lifeless.

Early readers are usually the first to sound the alarm. And while they’ll rightly sense a problem, their diagnoses and prescriptions will often miss the mark. Maybe they’ll tell you to punch up the dialogue. Or they’ll suggest dialing up the tension, or cutting exposition in service to the usual suspect: pacing.

The trouble is, those fixes slap Band-Aids on a more fundamental problem: Your characters aren’t changing their behavior in response to each other’s actions.

Let’s consider a simple scene. Jane wants her brother Tom to sell their recently deceased father’s house.

Tom refuses.

Jane says she needs the money.

Tom insists that the house belongs in the family.

They argue for two pages before Jane storms out.

Now, that scene checks all the basic writers’ workshop boxes. It has two characters with well-defined yet mutually exclusive goals, leading naturally to conflict.

So why does it read like a small claims court transcript instead of a story?

Because Jane exits with her goal unchanged from the moment she walked in. Likewise, Tom’s position remains unmoved from the start of the argument.

It’s an issue I’ve come across more than once while editing for clients of my author services. To sum up, nothing either character said or did had the slightest effect on the other.

99 percent of beta readers miss that problem precisely because such scenes contain all the elements writers are taught to include:

Read the full post on Substack.

But whether it’s the novel, the movie, or the album, received artistic wisdom has it that putting in years working on the material will open the gates to a career.

And that assumption made sense when the people guarding those gates also controlled access to the public. But it makes less sense now that creators can reach global audiences directly.

In fact, the creator economy is now exposing a reversal that many artists still haven’t grasped: Your audience may be worth more than the works you created to attract them.

Throughout the twentieth century, artists brought artworks to cultural institutions that cultivated audiences. Your book, film, or song had value because one of those institutions could put it in front of millions of customers.

The old status quo taught creators to think of each project as the prize. But digital distribution broke the old arrangement. Creators know they can reach people without institutional permission. What they’ve largely missed is that the democratization of distribution has changed where the real value is now concetrated.

Your novel can go out of print. The audience that always shows up for the next one can keep producing value for decades.

Hence the increasing emphasis on direct audience relationships.

Epidemic Sound’s 2026 creator survey found that 72 percent of creators are developing audiences they can reach directly. More creatives in the survey prioritized smaller, more loyal audiences over reaching the largest customer base possible.

They’ve learned a lesson that old media hid on purpose: A customer who buys one book adds value; a reader who wants your next ten books lays the foundation of your career.

But due to years of propaganda, artists still organize their careers around the first, more transactive relationship. They devote years to writing a book and spend months launching it, only to watch sales dwindle. And they jump to the conclusion that the product lacks worth.

So, they try to engineer a hit, triangulating for mass appeal; seldom stopping to think about the people who did like the previous project.

That lack of foresight explains how a lot of creators end up in a rut. They don’t set up means of reaching their original customers again, forcing them to start from scratch with every release. Those are the guys you see constantly playing the algorithm or begging gatekeepers for attention.

So, what’s the alternative?

Read the full post on Substack.

Who could blame them? Big studios had the equipment, financing, marketing, and distribution needed to get a movie in front of millions of people. You could make a film without them, but good luck getting anyone to see it.

So generations of creators learned the same career path: Make a picture impressive enough to get noticed, take the ticket to get past the gates, then let the institution introduce you to its audience.

Now creators have a new path. And Hollywood investors are driving the reversal of that time-honored process.

At last week’s TheGrill conference, movie industry dealmakers said that with fewer studios left to merge, they’re now on the hunt for individual creators, independent companies, and intellectual properties.

One investment banker pointed to YouTube, where creators can now assemble audiences on a scale that once required muscle once wielded only by studios and networks.

For a century, Hollywood made creators audition for access to its audience.

Now it’s shopping for creators who already have their own.

The writing has been on the wall for a while. Studios founded online are expanding their footprints in Burbank while Los Angeles-based production contracts. Digital shoot days rose 47 percent year over year in the second quarter, even as on-location filming days fell 13 percent.

And as creator-run operations sign deals with Disney and Netflix, the common wisdom inside the entertainment business has changed.

A recent survey of creators and industry professionals found the same recommendations cropping up repeatedly:

Read the full post on Substack.

Every struggling creator who asks social media why he’s not rolling in money and accolades gets the same litany of answers:

Readers don’t buy books anymore. Audiences have no attention spans. The algos bury anything remotely original.

The consensus is that most people would rather scroll through thirty-second videos than spend money on worthwhile entertainment.

That’s an attractive theory. Because it explains disappointing results while laying responsibility elsewhere.

It’s also contradicted every hour of every day.

Read the full post on Substack.

The Bartz v. Anthropic copyright case concerned books which A.I. firm Anthropic downloaded from pirate libraries while developing its models. The resulting settlement is expected to pay roughly $3,000 per eligible title, with authors and publishers splitting the money when both hold relevant rights.

Which sounded good, until authors checked who’d claimed the rights to their books.

The Authors Guild reports that writers whose books went out of print years; even decades ago, were claimed by their former publishers as part of the settlement.

Now, the Guild has asked publishers to withdraw claims on books that haven’t sold or produced royalty statements in more than ten years.

The trope of a dispute over serious money arising from a dusty clause buried in an old contract drives many a mystery thriller and courtroom drama. But now real life is imitating fiction.

And every author should take notice.

Read the full post on Substack.

Finally, he finds out that his mentor betrayed him.

And the next chapter picks up three days after the bombshell dropped.

And you’re surprised when beta readers tell you the big reveal blew over like a gentle breeze.

It’s understandable why many new authors get blindsided when their gut-punch scenes barely tickle. After all, the big twist and the whole sequence of events leading up to it had enormous effects on the story.

“How much bigger could it get?” they ask.

And they’re asking the wrong question. Because usually, the problem isn’t a matter of initial impact, but of aftershocks.

I know, because I help authors fix that issue all the time through my professional editing services.

Read the full post on Substack.

Now, Amazon are the ones imposing new limits.

As of September 21, Kindle Direct Publishing now limits users to creating two new titles per format per week. If you are unfamiliar with KDP, that’s two eBooks, two paperbacks, and two hardcovers. For reference, the previous ceiling was ten.

Amazon claims they implemented the new restrictions to maintain “a positive publishing experience for all authors.”

Translating from Corporate to Human, what Amazon means is “We are fighting a desperate rearguard action to maintain a shred of credibility amid the A.I. flood.”

It’s all in the timing. Amazon first imposed stricter publishing limits in 2023, when LLMs were first going mainstream. Around the same time, KDP started requiring authors to disclose A.I.-generated text, images, and translations.

File that requirement under “Too little, too late.”

Read the full post on Substack.

Veterans of the series wanted to make a spiritual successor called Armed Fantasia. Instead of waiting for a major publisher to decide whether anyone wanted such a game, they went to Kickstarter.

And the audience answered. Unequivocally.

A joint campaign for Armed Fantasia and another JRPG called Penny Blood raised ¥379,328,385. At the time of funding, that sum was roughly equivalent to $2.6 million.

Armed Fantasia found a receptive audience, which attracted a publisher.

And now the publisher has killed it.

Akifumi Kaneko, creator of Wild Arms, led the project alongside other series veterans. The developers pitched a new “Westernpunk” RPG built around exploration, gadgets, vehicles, and turn-based combat.

And 18,000 people turned out to pay for the game in advance.

Now, the Kickstarter wasn’t intended to 100 percent cover both games’ productions. Instead, the fan-raised funding would enable Kaneko et al. to build working prototypes. The next phase of the plan was to attract industry investment to take the project the rest of the way.

And that plan seemed to have worked. 505 Games signed on to publish Armed Fantasia. The conventional industry perspective would consider that outcome a win.

Which is what makes what happened next especially revealing.

In March, Kaneko announced that the team had sent working samples of the main scenario, core gameplay systems, and other key game elements, to 505. That done, his team set to work completing the game.

Fast forward to this month: 505 Games’ parent company Digital Bros announced that they had discontinued development of Armed Fantasia. The company cited multiple gameplay revisions, changing market conditions, and the need for additional funding, as contributing to their decision.

But whatever the reasons, the takeaway is that one publisher vetoed 18,000 fans.

Read the full post on Substack.

ONE LAST DAY

I’ve spent the last several years exercising creative independence on a scale I can control. That calculus included the The Souldancer 10th Anniversary Edition and the stretch goals that made it even more deluxe.

The campaign has concluded with the Special Edition and three stretch goals funded. So if you missed the campaign, you can still get the best version of SD10, but only for one more day. Seize your last chance now.

As is our custom, the Court of Kairos held Council once more. August’s convocation aired some of our deepest questions yet, on matters ranging from how to maintain the confidence to keep writing while purging one’s million words of suck, to speculation on Doom crossing over with Looney Tunes.

If you were unable to attend the August AMA, or you wish to hold a metaphorical glass to the Council chamber door, you may contemplate the questions raised by our Council members.

Question: been writing my outline/ semi first draft, and it’s slow going/ deteriorating in quality fast ... Do I keep embracing the suck and getting the suck out?

Answer: As authors JD Cowan and David V. Stewart join me in saying, every author starts out with one million sucky words in his head. The only way to be rid of those one million words of suck is to get them out of your head by writing them. Only once all million sucky words have been drained from your mind through your pen and contained on a page will your writing not suck.

So yes, the only way to rid your writing of all suckage is to keep writing until you have purged all one million sucky words.

Read the full post on Substack.

LAST DAY FOR SD10

The Souldancer 10th Anniversary Campaign ends tonight. We’ve already unlocked two awesome stretch goals to enhance the special edition, and a third that will make this gorgeous book even better is in reach.

Don’t miss your last chance to get the crowdfunder-exclusive editions. Back the campaign now!

This entertaining and informative series gives you a front-row seat in the verbal operating theater as I painstakingly dissect and reassemble writing submitted by real authors live on-stream!

If you’ve wondered exactly how a professional editor operates, speculate no longer. Word Surgery is here to dispel editing misconceptions, help authors improve their writing, and entertain viewers of all walks of life.

Watch the premiere episode here:

Our next fun and informative episode goes live tonight at 6 Pacific/7 Mountain/8 Central/9 Eastern. Don your scrubs, and join us in the OR!

And if you are brave enough to put your writing under my knife, you can submit your work for a chance to be featured on the show here.

The Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign is even closer to unlocking the Hazeroth portrait interior art! And with less than $750 and 30 hours to go, we need your help to make this special edition even more magnificent!

Every pledge moves the needle. So if you’ve been waiting to back Souldancer, pledging now will help add Hazeroth’s image to everyone’s SD Special Edition. Back the Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign now!

The main character wakes up, showers, gets dressed, eats breakfast, drives across town, parks, walks into the office, greets the receptionist, rides the elevator, and finally enters the conference room where the story really starts.

Because that’s where his boss gives him the impossible assignment. Or tells him he’s fired.

Now, consider which events in that sequence the reader actually picked up the book for.

Starting the book before the story starts is a problem that plagues many novel drafts. The author has imagined a sequence of events and dutifully records them in chronological order.

Is the sequence logical? Yes.

Is it also boring? Hell yes it is.

In early, out late is yet another problem that readers, including beta readers, frequently misdiagnose as slow pacing. It’s a problem I’ve gotten quite good at spotting and fixing in the works of authors who engage my professional editing services.

Here’s a hint: The solution isn’t to streamline the sentence-level prose so Sarah no longer “walks slowly across the crowded parking lot toward her car” and instead “crosses the parking lot.”

Read the full post on Substack.

The Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign is closing in on funding interior artwork of Hazeroth. And with less than $1,000 and 60 hours left to go, we need all hands on deck to make this epic edition even better!

Every pledge makes a difference. So if you’ve been waiting to back Souldancer, acting now will help add Hazeroth’s dread likeness to everyone’s SD Special Edition. Back the Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign now!

Pretend they did, and give them the corresponding levels anyway.

Director Naoki Hamaguchi recently stated that FFVII Revelation will occasionally offer players the option to automatically raise their party to the recommended level for a given area. This feature is perfect for people who prefer watching semi-interactive CG movies to actually playing games.

They got the idea from player feedback on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Some gamers skipped its profusion of side quests and mini-games, only to learn the hard way that their characters were under-leveled for the main plot.

And the answer Square Enix came up with is to award experience points absent the actual experience.

You may laugh. But the auto-level button holds more far-reaching implications than just another version of journo mode. In fact, it may represent the logical conclusion of a change that began thirty years ago.

Read the full post on Substack.

Speaking of stories that benefit from close attention, the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Kickstarter is now down to its final three days.

This campaign offers the definitive anniversary hardcover of my Dragon Award-winning novel, along with new artwork and the brand-new Soul Cycle novella. This is the edition I’ve wanted to put on readers’ shelves for ten years. And now, readers like you are making it happen!

When the campaign ends, the exclusive rewards go with it. The time for waiting is over. Back the Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign before it’s too late!