Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Interestingly, also seems to be a Kickstarter in progress right now.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
I can't really say; it just didn't grab me. Part of it is that frankly, the Napoleonic era is just not a setting that has ever interested me much.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
John C. Wright is a former atheist who did a hard-right turn into Catholicism. He's written space operas pre- and post-conversion.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
((That said, I'm one of probably thirty people on the planet who liked Darkship Thieves, so my taste is... not very refined.))
I liked it okay, for what was basically Heinlein fan-fiction with a self-insert Mary Sue.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
And why do you care about status effects like being published considering the fallen state of these "institutions"?
No matter how much you may despise "the institutions," I don't think anyone who wants to be a writer could deny, down deep, that seeing your name on a book in an actual bookstore, published by a real publishing house, is a milestone we all aspire to.
Man, I didn't think anyone else but me has read those. Yes, this was my absolute favorite series when I was a kid.
(And Over Sea, Under Stone is a bit dull compared to the rest of the series, but don't skip it.)
Do skip the movie, though. Hollywood made a movie (supposedly) based on the first book called The Seeker that pissed off Susan Cooper so much she was kicked off the set. With good reason- it is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
She was always consciously feminist (or at least very leftist). I am not aware of her repudiating her earlier work, but I agree that her early stuff was better.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
No special tricks, I'm afraid. It just boils down to doing a lot of research and due diligence. Actually read what the agent or contest says about what they are looking for (and what they are not looking for). A huge number of people will just ignore someone who says "I am looking for feminist utopian optimistic SF featuring communities of color" and send them their military space opera. Or worse, send their military space opera to the agent who mostly reps romance authors.
You already know about QueryTracker and similar tools. Make use of them. Sending out 100 queries without a single response is normal.
Look at the books you like (and the books similar to yours) and see if you can find out who that author's agent is. (Often you can find this on their Twitter or their website).
Networking is a thing. Most of the leads I actually got were from other authors who were willing to connect me to their agents.
There are very few publishers who take unsolicited submissions directly. Most of them are small presses. If you are in a very particular niche you might find the right one.
I was very close a few times. But it takes persistence and volume.
Also just so you know, Baen does take submissions but they take literally years to respond. (I think I got my first "you made it out of the slush pile" email two years after I submitted the manuscript, and then it was like two or three more years before my final rejection.)
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Well, see some of my recs. Most of them follow that formula and show character growth in the female protagonist. Whether individually they suit your tastes, I can't say, but a lot of the complaints about Disney and romantasy just aren't that applicable to the entire field of published genre works. (And I do recommend stepping outside of genre to broaden your horizons.)
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Are you asking for "girl stories" (that aren't smut-adjacent) or "stories written by women that aren't girl stories"?
I would argue that Harry Potter is not a girl story. While Rowling has some problems writing adolescent boys (and for that matter, her adult Cormoran Strike novels sometimes show a bit of women-writing-men weaknesses), the Harry Potter series was very much a boy's adventure (and was sometimes even criticized for that, despite its fanbase being majority female). However, as a story that appeals to girls yet doesn't also alienate boys, it's probably the ur-example today.
Dragonriders of Pern is, as you say, something that appeals to spergy horse girls and I have seen female authors inspired by it refer to it as "girl-canon," but back in the day it had a broad cross-gender appeal. (The "Harper Hall" sequel trilogy was much more of a for-girls thing.)
There are a number of female authors who write decent novels that appeal to men: Lois McMaster Bujold, Elizabeth Moon, C.J. Cherryh. Leaning more towards "feminine perspective but still readable by a man," Leigh Bardugo, Cathrynne Valente (the author is insufferably woke and has one of the worst cases of TDS I have ever seen, but I really do recommend her Fairyland books, which are both very much "girl" stories but something I would totally read to a boy), Naomi Novik (a lot of people love her Napoleonic wars-with-dragons Tremaire series though personally I didn't), Ursula LeGuin. And outside the SFF genre, Alex Marwood, Sara Gran, Lisa Brackman.
Really, it isn't that hard to find good female authors who aren't writing didactic man-hating feminist novels or romantasy. Finding books that appeal to young readers of both sexes is harder but not impossible.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Okay. I have a lot of thoughts about this, gathered over the years of my own (unsuccessful) attempts to be a published author.
To be clear, my failure is mostly lack of commitment (I have not written that many manuscripts, I have only intermittently tried to shop them around, I still mostly treat it as a hobby). I will assert that I am a good (publishable) writer. My posts here on the Motte may not reflect that, but I don't put much effort into writing here. I've been in critique groups, a few writing workshops (these are mostly worthless) and read all the books on writing (both the "how to write novels" ones and the "how to get published" ones). Feedback and my own (obviously not impartial) assessment is that if I really wrote like an author who is determined to be published and kept trying, I'm good enough to get published. (FWIW I did make it all the way to Baen's final round with one of my manuscripts- I got personalized feedback from the editorial committee telling me why it was an "almost but not quite." If you have researched publishing, you know that getting anything other than a polite "This showed real promise but it is not what we're looking for at this time" is rare.)
So first of all, you are right about the overwhelming bias in literary agencies. Fortunately they mostly advertise their biases, so you already know if they are looking for "diverse voices, especially from marginalized and underrepresented communities blah blah blah" there probably isn't much point in submitting to that agent. Most agencies list each agent's preferences, and usually there is one person (most often the one man) at the agency who specializes in things like science fiction and epic fantasy. If his (or occasionally her) profile doesn't flash all the same LGTBQ flags and "craving stories about found family, non-heterocentric romances," etc., then they just might be the sort who is looking for the next Brandon Sanderson or George R.R. Martin, and you have a shot.
But yeah, I would estimate that about 80% of literary agents today have a shingle that says, not quite in so many words, "If you are a straight white dude writing fiction that would appeal to straight white dudes, don't bother me."
It's always going to be a long shot no matter what. Always has been.
I would strongly recommend against misrepresenting your own identity. (Yeah, I've considered that myself.) It will come out eventually, and then your agent will dump you and you might become the next scandal/cancellation in the literary sphere. Also, you do want to eventually be known under your own name, right? Getting your foot in the door by pretending to be a queer BIPOC neurodivergent she/they will only ever look like you were trying to pull a stunt.
So a lot of people are telling you to skip trad publishing and go indie. This is a more viable option than it used to be. But the thing you have to realize about the real money-makers are that they either got extremely lucky (yes, that includes Larry Correia and John Scalzi and Matt Dinniman- hitting it big with a self-cultivated fanbase isn't just about writing a good book, it's often just about timing and catching a wave) or being a grinder. The real moneymakers on KU are people who churn out a book every month or two, whether it's werewolf romances or LitRPGs or harem fantasies, and while some authors can grind out passably entertaining stories at that speed, none of it is good writing. Their audiences are looking for more-of-the-same-please brain candy, not quality writing. Those authors also, of course, are doing it full time if they've started to make enough to live on.
The elephant in the room with self-publishing that hardly any of the self-publishing advocates really want to address is that you and ten million other people are all trying to do the same thing, and nowadays that includes five million Indians using AI. Kindle Unlimited was always looking for a gem in a sea of muck, and now that is true more than ever. Writing a book and throwing it online and hoping it gets "discovered" and builds an audience organically is an even bigger long shot than getting chosen by a rainbow-haired non-binary polyamorous pagan literary agent for your right-wing Catholic epic fantasy (I know that is not how you described it). So that means you have to do all that social media stuff and marketing yourself and getting "in" with various review and lit circles and hanging out with other aspiring self-pubbed authors who will boost each other and... if this sounds like a shit job to do what you really want to do (write) yeah, and everyone in that sphere will tell you tough shit, that's the game.
If you are serious about wanting to make a living from writing... you know that every single book on writing tells you the same thing ("don't quit your day job or have a supportive working spouse") for a reason, right? Even if you do get published (traditionally or self-published), your odds of making enough money to live on are extremely long. Successful authors, big name authors, authors you know, mostly do not live on their writing alone. If they do, it's because they do lots of other writing besides novels. They hustle for freelancing and editing and teaching gigs, they are constantly selling short stories, they do some journalism, they maybe get a gig writing a superhero comic for Marvel or DC. The number of authors who actually make a living, let alone a decent living, off their novels alone is tiny relative to all published authors. Absolutely, dream about becoming a Rowling or a King or a Sanderson, but don't set that as a realistic life goal.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Am I harsh? I have some sympathy for unhappy romanceless males. Can you have sympathy for a woman?
Nope, sorry; never even heard of this dude
Unironically, you might enjoy him. And seriously, read something besides manga.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Can you know stop falsely portraying the other side's argument?
I haven't, which I took your refusal to explain in what way you think I am doing so as an acknowledgment of such
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
It's one thing to make inferences. Some inferences are reasonable, in the absence of evidence. But "leaps of logic" land you into assumptions based on the presumption that your inferences are accurate.
I think your Mafia/Zionist comparison is rather specious, but is the theory that a Zionist AG did a special favor for an Israeli plausible? I'll say I could be persuaded. But given that everyone making the "leap of logic" to assume it is true just happens to be someone who hates Jews, I find it reasonable to be skeptical and demand more evidence than someone's feelings about Jews.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
You're incorrect about the modding. SS gets modded frequently for breaking rules (numerous) and he's still actually given more slack than some people harping on one-note issues in an inflammatory way and constantly making generalizations about the people they hate are given.
As for Chattah, I will simply reiterate that the thread began with an assumption that the District AG for Nevada personally intervened to give special considerations to an Israeli charged with a crime, and that she did this because she is a Zionist. So far, no one has offered any evidence for either claim. Instead, you are simply making arguments that she's a Zionist. Being a Zionist, or Jewish, or Israeli-born (it's other people who slide between these characteristics depending on what is convenient for their argument at the time, not me) does not prove any of the following: (1) That she intervened at all. (2) That she intervened out of loyalties to Isreel. (3) That Alexandrich's treatment is unusual.
This is basic reasoning and shouldn't be as difficult to grasp as it seems to be, but a lot of people really get wrapped around the axle when it comes to Jews.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
What do you understand to be the other side's argument?
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
You're making almost as many assumptions as SS, largely based on what you feel should be true.
You don't find it tiresome to claim "Someone involved is a Jew, therefore this is Jews being nefarious." But pointing out we have no evidence that the Jew in question was involved at all is tiresome. In the absence of evidence, the public should reasonably conclude "Jews."
Okay.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Is everyone just reflexively reacting to certain words and not actually reading the thread?
Reread.
It is SS's contention that the Israeli-born Attorney General of Nevada, Signal Chattah, arranged a special deal for Artem Alexandrovich because she's a Zionist.
So far as I know, there is no evidence that (a) the state AG was directly involved or (b) that allowing a foreign government official to return to their home country while facing charges in the US is unusual. We do not know why Alexandrovich was allowed bail while the other suspects were not or if he got special treatment for being a foreign government official.
If both (a) and (b) are proven, then maybe we can question Chattah's reasoning.
But right now, it's just the usual insinuations about Jews.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Yes it would be a serious issue. But there is no evidence that Chattah did that
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Okay, but I was not talking about him, I was talking about Sigal Chattah.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
Immigration is one of the issues where I tend to be more in agreement than not with the "anti" side.
Which is why I think your fist-pumping for "fuck yeah faster harder" accelerationism is ill-considered.
Because if you think future Democratic administrations cannot open the borders more than previous ones did, I think you're in for a world of disappointment. And that is frankly what I expect to happen.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
The premise is this: If we grant that the cultural right is "winning" right now, what's the strongest possible argument that this is leading to some genuinely bad outcomes for the country?
I think your premise is dubious, but assuming it's true, mostly what I see is a victory for accelerationists.
Everything Trump is doing now means when Democrats come back into power, they are going to try to reverse everything he did and then set the dial at eleventy and make sure no MAGA ever again. The MAGAs currently in power, of course, know this is what will happen, so they're doing their best to make their changes difficult or impossible to reverse, while hitting eleventy themselves.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2mo ago
someone working in the upper echelons of the Israeli government and reporting directly to Benjamin Netanyahu
You seem to have knee-jerked a reply without actually paying attention to the details under discussion.
We're talking about the AG of Nevada. Not an Israeli government official.
And assuming all Jews are Zionists is SS's position, not mine.
I also read the entire Wrinkle in Time series as a kid. Great books (and while not explicitly Christian, very Christian-influenced).
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