Steady Degradations of Human Society as Documented by A Non-Bias Third Party

Does it seem like naming conventions have changed in recent years? Not just for books, but for everything. Literally everything has stupid-ass shitty, came-up-with-in-one-second names.

The new horror book from Dunkerdoodle Nutwhack McGee, cleverly titled: "Don't go in there!" Or how about the new romance from Shitstick Alabander the Third, with the title: "You make my heart sing." Or that new Sci fi novel penned by Pooperstank Gladrick titled "I wonder what's behind this door?"

Then of course, you have to extend this bullshit to movies ("Maybe look up before you order a latte in France") and TV shows ("Oh no, they didn't") video games ("Just keep clicking")

Let's hope it moves into product branding, too.

That new flavor of Mac and Cheese ("Squishy cheesy matter to press through your teeth") and potato chips ("Big time crunch and munch")

Boo.

I'm just bored. This is what you get when you're someone who has about ten hamsters running around in their head at any given moment and then abruptly has nothing for them to do. They get to doing some really weird shit. And thanks to the internet, I can share that absurdity with (checks view count) literally no one! But potentially everyone!

I find it funny that all my life I wanted to write and sell books for a living, and as I've aged, finally getting to a point where I actually have time and focus to write something, it's not really a job anymore. Rather it is, there are still authors who get paid plenty of money to put thoughts in text boxes and there are lots of "sorta" writer jobs like articles and other soulless text content creators. But honestly, if what I wanted was money, there are way more practical and low effort ways to get it these days.

But I really don't want money. I do want money, but honestly I just want my life to focus on creativity. And getting paid for it would be nice, but it also seems secondary to the reward you get just for creating something.

We put this emphasis on financial success over artistic expression, and that really bugs the fuck out of me. I find myself doing it, too. If I can't squeeze a buck out of something, what's the point in doing it in the first place? As fiction seems to be less and less desirable in this day and age with all the new-fangled tikky toks and faciespacers, authors get paid less and less for what takes a great deal of work, dedication, and compassion. It seems unfair, but there's really nothing to do about it. Our society is made up of phone-addicted monkeys that move from one shiny thing to the next literally overnight.

So, comes back to the ultimate question in bold that keeps me up at night (great name for a new non-fiction book) WHAT IS THE POINT OF WRITING AND WHY SHOULD I DO IT? I am...42 years old, coming up on 43, and I devour books. I grind them up and slurp them down like...I was going to say spaghetti, but you don't really grind that unless you've lost all your teeth. And I love to write them as well.

So what do I do with myself? Am I an obsolete entertainment device destined to live in the shed with all those copies of Monopoly, the cathode ray tube TVs and those pocket pets with the watch screens from 1994?

I honestly don't have an answer. 

Bat Boy Found - Self Publishing on KDP and Making Fake Reviews of Books on Goodreads

 Decided to get more creative with my post titles. This is my best one. Only down hill from here.

I love books. Obviously. I'm a self proclaimed writer. I'd better love them. But my taste is pretty narrow. I mostly only like sci fi with a focus on space exploration. Sometimes, I'll branch out into something different (been trying to find some gems in litrpg, but it's hard) but there is always a robot, a wizard, an alien, a something. But at the rate that I consume books, I've been having a harder and harder time finding recommendations for good ones. I basically endlessly scrape good reads and reddit for recommendations. This has been pretty effect in some cases, found some good ones that I otherwise wouldn't have tried. But every so many books there is an absolute shit storm of a novel thrown in.

I won't name the series on the off chance that the no one reading this blog finds it and reports it to the author concerned and then I get thrown into a special kind of jail for people who say rude things on the internet. That exists. But I came on one that constantly gets recommended in the sci fi mecha genre. It is really well reviewed on Good reads, but most of them are accounts that don't have any profile data and just say "This author hits another home run." "Mechs in space, what more could you want?" "Finally, good clean fun in a sci fi adventure package."

But when I get down to the two and three star reviews where the reviewers do actually have profile pictures, they talk a lot about typos, discontinuity, and all around bad writing. But I'm like, the other hundred or so five star reviews didn't notice those things?

Obviously, this book is padded with fake reviews. It's been happening for a while. It's no secret. But my question: how do they do it? Is there a service that they enlist? Do they buy these reviews? I'd certainly never want to do something like this myself because it seems like morally wrong and only slightly different than stealing. But also, if these are paid, how much money do they spend and does it actually translate into sales and revenue for the author? Or is it just a money pit?

There are too many people writing and selling and not enough analytics about it to really know these things, but it seems like some sort of shadowy hidden world that's just beyond the horizon. What do the reviewers get out of it, if anything?

Journal Entry for the Decade

This is usually the point when I get despondent about something. If I was actually trying to get some readership from this blog, I'd be pretty depressed that there wasn't any. But since this is just a convenient spot to quietly ramble on the internet, I can't like it. It's nice to have a spot that's all to myself. Writing for an audience always feels pretty artificial anyway.

Apparently, there's research showing that people who seek more attention are less creative. I find that funny. But yeah, you see it a lot. It's like something about them changes. Especially with artists or writers that gain even a small amount of success and then they just go to pieces, drunk on the social reinforcement of people paying attention to them. I used to work in a school, and I'd see it will children all the time.

Is this total rationalization for my lack of success a writer convincing enough? I'm super convinced.

I keep hoping that someday, I can have more time for writing. It seems like the time is there, actually. I'm just not able to use it. Which is a cruel kind of irony when you think about it. I'm hoping to crack some words over the head of my new story. When I get it to the adventure part of the story, it should be pretty easy to write.

I should have thought of writing a story like this a long time ago. Just easy, fun, no stress. Focus on adventure. Don't reinvent the wheel and so on. I feel pretty good about it. I'm sure that I'll never get any readership from it, because that's the way of things, but I'll have a project that I like and can work on for a long time.

My goal is to do it a bit like serial. Still no idea what would be the best way to distribute said serial, there are loads of suggestions, but that's not the stage I'm at right now. I'm just writing it. I have a tendency to get the buggy in front of the horse, in case you didn't notice. 

Journal Entry 1-21-26

I would definitely write more if I could find some consistency in my life. But I honestly haven't been able to do that for the last five or six years. I just read something that said journaling and writing in general heals you brain. Honestly, I didn't click on it, but I'm inclined to believe it for no good reason. I was talking to chatgpt one time about finding motivation to write and it suggested that I think of writing as self care. Just do it because it feels good and makes me happy. But really, since I'm doing one (very hard) college class while I'm taking this time off from work, the vast majority of my unsupervised free time is getting dumped into that. I hope that someday it does pay off and I get a job in the healthcare field, but I really don't like my odds so far. But that is a topic for another day.

In lighter news, I started writing on my original litrpg project. I may or may not come back to A Wanderer in Bitland at a later date. I really don't think there is an audience for it, to be honest. The people who would be interested to read this stuff are probably not the type to have played NES games in their childhood. Someday, when I have nothing better to do, I'll write it out. But for now, I'm aiming higher.

The new project will be more akin to some of the common conventions in the genre. It'll star an every man character who is whisked away on an adventure to play a game against a bunch of aliens, but there will be a number of (hopefully) satisfying twists. Yup, I'm being vague about details on purpose. Not only to protect my intellectual property from the vast readership of this blog (lolololololol) but also because it's easier to stay motivated on writing if you keep it a secret. It's more exciting for you if nobody knows. And part of the reason we write is for the satisfaction of telling a story. If you tell the story out loud, in its fullness to others, you won't be so likely to write it down. I've seen it happen a few times. At least, I know that's how I work.

So I'm keeping this one a secret until it's more underway and then I'll share it with others. Because reasons.

Journal Entry 12-25

I came up with a great idea for my own litrpg story yesterday. I'm pretty excited about it, to be honest. And I found a good way to package the premise inside the sci fi genre so that it could be a bit more accessible. The other bonus is that the progression of the story is pretty open ended. I could continue to write on it and serialize it until I get tired of it.

I've been considering youtube as a possible delivery mechanism for my stories, but now that I've actually browsed stories on youtube, I'm not totally sure when I can get there. The problem is the story length. I was thinking I'd generate some shorter works, around 50,000 words at the most. This would translate into about five hours of audio. I think that's plenty of words for the average bear. But so many people just put these damn things on in the background while they dip around on other shit, that the youtube search algorithm favors very long videos instead. I mean incredibly long. Most of the ones I found were something like 60 hours long. Basically the equivalent of six full length books or 600,000 words of narration. Who is ever going to listen to all that? Maybe youtube has a thing that lets you save your spot? I don't know.

The other thing I noticed is that the actually writing content is absolute shite. Like really bad. Full to the gills on filler, thin on narrative, and they employ a plot mechanism that's dry and predictable. I think this is another case that these aren't stories, but instead they're just fucking noise. Noise noise noise. Blah blah blah. Something to fill the void and nothing more. 

Regardless, it's going to take me a decade to write out 600,000 words. And I'm sure by then the internet will have moved on to stories about donkeys eating donuts on the moon while playing ukuleles. Your standard Hawaiian musical about baked goods with humanized quadrupeds genre story. Of course. But either way, I'm still going to serialize on Royal Road and eventually some other platforms. Doing my own author website might be a thing, but I'm not sure how discoverable that would make my work. If you can consider this blog a website, then discoverability is zero.

The upside of writing an adventure serial is that I don't have to worry so much about creating an outline. I have a rough outline in my head that I can fill in as the story goes just like I was doing with my Dungeon Crawler Carl fanfic. Once I've done some mental planning for the new one, I'll just start writing.

You know, for all the work I'm doing to be discoverable, accessible, and in touch with an audience, I bet that I don't make a single fucking dime on this venture. I bet that I actually lose money and still no one reads my work. I'm not being negative or fatalistic, just trying to gauge my expectations. I have always been prone to daydreaming and I can't help it but to dream and hope about success. Finally having my life's focus to be creativity instead of this dreary daily grind. Well, I don't need to have money to make that dream come true. So I'm going to do it anyway. I'd rather have hundreds of self published novels that no one ever reads then make my whole focus on gaining money and advancing a career.

And I forgot to title the last one. Ha!

 You can probably tell how bad I am at this internet social media stuff. I forgot to title the last entry. Ha. And now I have the AIs trying to help me by making my posts more readable or engaging or something. I didn't click on it, to be honest.

I was going to post a photo of Pudding, my kitten, but I don't have any good ones saved conveniently. So I'll do it later. Or not. I don't rightly care. The cut that he laid into my hand is healing up just fine though. So that's nice.

At some point, I'll make an official website and move my blog posts there. But at that point, I doubt my blogs will really be about my daily thoughts and experiences and will probably mostly be ads and promos for my upcoming bullshit that I want you to buy.

I've been doing a bit of research and study about LitRPG, because the bits of research that I've been doing have led me to believe that it's probably a good genre for me to write in. It's obviously not the one that I would want, but that led me to another realization. I am not part of my target audience. I am a weirdo. Or I'm a normie. I'm not sure which. Normie is a crypto word, in case you're wondering.

The more I've read in the genre, the more I don't think it's something that I would like to read on my own. With the exception of Dungeon Crawler Carl. And I think the big difference there is that he has the sense to package the premise into a semi-plausible alien invasion, supposing the existence of an alien society with incredibly advanced technology that gets its thrills from enslaving people and watching them suffer. Honestly, it's quite genius.

It turns what is otherwise a very niche genre for people that prefer video games and anime to books, into something that can be enjoyed by almost everyone. I have to say almost everyone because some people just refuse to like it, and that's okay.

Just for me, without that extra layer of sci fi premise, this genre is...kind of stupid.

*he said, fully knowing that he is already writing in the genre and planning to do it more*

But it doesn't have to be.

I think this genre (no idea where it came from or how it started and don't care enough to research) has a lot of room for growth, even now. There is literally only one book series (that I found in the one day that I looked) that tries to make this genre appealing or even palatable. Our lord and savior Dungeon Crawler Carl. Yeah yeah, there are probably others, but I couldn't find them.

 I think the appeal here is for people who want a fun, dirty adventure with an easy premise (being in a video game) and who benefit from having things explained directly to them rather than using the process of inference (what we in the writing world have been crowing about for ages, something called Show, Don't Tell). Again, this is not what I crave as a reader. Not by a long shot. I want something challenging and huge (why does that sound like a dildo?) that dares me to understand it through the eyes of a character.

I like sci fi and space opera. I like wonder. I like a mystery. I like reading that book that everyone gave up on and saying "That's a really awesome book, if you stick with it". I like a difficult concept that lingers with me and tickles my imagination for years after I read it. I like a story that blossoms into other stories in your mind. I like all that. So you can see why a genre about having things explained to you through the voice an omniscient AI game master would be really annoying to me. But again, it's not without merit.

What LitRPG makes me think of is the old pulp era sci fi serials. The ones from amazing stories that were short, simple and didn't have to challenge any notions. They just stuck out a hand and said "let's have fun together". And this is why I like this genre. Because it is dumb, simple fun that anyone (within reason) can access and enjoy without having to work much for it. I get it, to that degree. 

 I quit this blog because it seems like no one reads blogs anymore. Or at least blogs that aren't provocative or promoted in some way, and I'm not going to do that. For me, this is just a space to share some of my thoughts and concerns. Usually, I keep an offline journal--just on my desktop in a plain txt file. It helps me center and focus my thoughts before I get writing. That way I don't end up with this:

Fred walked down the corridor. His feet moved. His hands swayed. His head turned as if on a swivel. Walking and walking, Fred had always loved walking. Placing one foot in front of the other. One might call it perambulating. Or even sauntering. Perhaps--

You get the idea. Ain't nobody got time for that. So yeah, a quick little blah blah blah in the mornings helps me stay focused.

Quick little side note: we got a kitten a while ago. I named him Pudding for some reason. Since no one reads this blog, it's probably safe to post a photo at some point. Lol. Anyway, he's really affectionate but also feisty. I was trying to let him hang out in here with me while I proverbially beat my head against the keyboard, but he started knocking things off my desk. And then he wedged himself into the little space above my laser printer, and I believe he was going to start chewing on the cords. He's fond of that.

So I started pulling him out of there and WHAMMO! The little fucker sliced me open like a goddamn tuna fillet at a sushi restaurant. The cut's on my palm and it's almost two inches long. I washed it out and threw a bandaid on it, but he earned himself some alone time in the other room while I work.

My life schedule has been a bit erratic lately. I'm basically living in two different states for alternating two week periods. And the houses are two hundred and fifty miles apart. Don't get excited--I don't own either of them. It's...it's something else. Anyway, I'm taking some time off from work while I do this and I'm studying health care classes in the meantime. This journal is rambly. If anyone read this, I'd clean it up. Ha.

On the weekends, I'm taking time to write again. For lots of reasons, but mostly because it's the only creative outlet I can have right now. My other hobbies, like painting tabletop figurines and running Dungeons and Dragons games, aren't available to me. And I really don't know if they ever will be again. So now I have some time to write, but no idea what to write or what to do with it when it's written.

While I figure it out, I'm writing a fanfiction (yeah, I'm not joking) set in the world of Dungeon Crawler Carl. I just need something that's dumb and fun. I'm actually happy with how it's coming along. I'm going to shoot for about 50,000 words when it's complete and then I'll post it on Royal Road for anyone interested in reading. I might also AI narrate it and throw little chunks on YouTube for no other reason than to let someone listen to it.

I have a deep need to create. But I rarely have time or the energy or the focus to do it. I look forward to one day being able to put more effort into this part of my life, but for now, this is what it looks like.

Oh yeah, I didn't forget about that LitRPG project that I did the cover for. I still think an 8-bit litRPG would be fucking funny. I think my target there will also be about 50,000 words. But it's on the back burner at the moment. And then there's my space opera project that I'll get to at some point. It's always in my brain, which generally means I'm never going to get it down. Or when I do, it'll sound like the ramblings of a crazy person, or worse, your drunk uncle.

Almost forgot. I'm thinking about publishing under a pen name. Nope nope, not just for vanity's sake. So that I can be Richard D. Longfellow or Hue G Cack or Gigantic Wang. Okay, those are porn names. But because there is already a very successful mystery author WITH MY EXACT NAME. Not even kidding about that. Same spelling too.