Recent content by KennyCelican

I... Uh... Submitted my first completed novel length manuscript to Baen Books. Got a soft R&R from the Queen of Slush (because she wasn't authorized to do hard R&Rs). Funny part? Looking back on it now I realize a lot of it needs a complete rewrite. But I still intend to rewrite it and present...

🍪🍪 You get TWO COOKIE!

I was gonna say 'she doesn't have a backpack', but... She does, she just doesn't wear it very often. I'm gonna go with the shield that normally hangs off of the backpack. But then, she didn't use it when she was fighting against a City full of Undead, so maybe it deserves some love.

Wrote like 240 KWords in the wrong PoV. Thankfully never published, but it was a near thing (almost sold the story to Baen)

I'm not sure about an Academy arc. I've written something where the first couple Volumes are focused on the MC attending an Academy, and later she returns as an instructor, but I wouldn't call any of them an Academy 'arc'. When I think of an 'arc', I'm thinking of a story arc, a sub-story...

I think the only time you need to worry about doing things 'right' is when you're in a shared setting, because then, especially if you're borrowing another person's IP, there's some objective measure you're trying to match. That said, and while I'm in agreement with your general sentiment that...

Honestly they might be past the ‘stop calling me little’ phase by ten. It‘s something I’ve noticed, an ongoing infantilization of successive generations. Younger Millennials are considered ‘kids’, even though they’re thirty now. People call eighteen year olds ‘babies’ unironically. But yeah, a...

All fiction is art. It is something created by creative humans. That is art. Now, you can grade it on quality and subject matter and all other kinds of things to determine what kind and caliber of art it is, but much like finger paint art on a refrigerator is still, in fact, art, all fiction is...

Consistent updates is how things get noticed, really. There are ways to fine tune that, or to cheese algorithms, or manipulate readers, and some of those are less ethically questionable than others, but all of it starts with consistency. If your writing is consistently enjoyable to read, and...

You and I and every author out there knows that the YA market has readers that can handle more complex storylines and prose. The bean counters at the publishers can't handle it, so they assume the YA readers can't. Also, they're not looking for 'the next big thing'. They're looking to recreate...

Yeah, I liked clips from Seinfeld and Friends, sometimes. But the bulk of the shows? Yeah, no. House was fantastic, as were most of the seasons of Blackadder. Whedon's first big hit was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He did a few other TV shows, like Firefly, Dollhouse, and my favorite, Doctor...

Out of curiosity, do readers who do comment feel that way if the author replies to their comment? I like comments, so I've made it a habit to reply to them, to interact with readers who take the time to initiate the conversation. I hope I'm not discouraging folks from commenting by doing so...

Constantly or consistently?

I think you nail it right here, and it makes all the difference between what works and what doesn't. Do the lines flow? Do they fit the character? Is everyone else in the scene acting in character, or are they volleying the idiot ball around to set up the one liner? A lot of people blame...

Thing is, from a dozen years working in customer service or customer service adjacent jobs, I can tell you that those folks aren't going off on you based on something you did, for the most part. Extreme customer feedback (both ranting Karens and offers to bear my children) correlate far more...