Podcasts about rivah

In this week's episode, we take a look at the major self-publishing platforms that I use, and examine the pros and cons of each. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress, Book #8 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: DOOM50 The coupon code is valid through June 24, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 253 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 30th, 2025, and today we are looking at the current major self-publishing platforms and what they offer indie authors. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing projects.   So let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress (book number eight in the Dragonskull series, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That code is DOOM50. And as always, we will have the coupon code and the links to the store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through June 24th, 2025. So if you are setting out on summer travels this summer and you need an audiobook to listen to while you're in the car or plane, we have got you covered. So now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. Ghost in the Corruption (as I mentioned last week) is now out and available at all the ebook stores: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and Payhip. It is selling well. So thank you all for that. Now that Ghost in the Corruption is finished, what am I working on next? Well, back in 2023, I finished the Dragonskull and The Silent Order series back to back, so I declared Summer 2023 to be my Summer of Finishing Things. Well, it looks like Summer 2025 is going to be the Super Summer of Finishing Things because I intend to finish three series back to back.   First up is Shield of Power, the sixth and final book of The Shield War series. As of this publishing, I am 26,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 6 of 29. So I think it's going to end up being around 100,000-110,000 words long, and I am hoping it will be out in June, though it might slip to July depending on how things go. Once that is done, the next one up will be Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, which will be the third and very definitely final book of the Stealth and Spells Online trilogy. Believe it or not, I have been working on Final Quest on the side for so long that I passed the 100,000 word mark in that book this week. In fact, it's been a side project for so long that I don't remember how long I've been working on it, and I had to look up the metadata to check that I indeed started chipping away on it on October 18th, 2024. So I am very pleased that I'm nearly done with the rough draft and because of that reason, if all goes well, it'll come out very quickly after Shield of Power, since I think the rough draft will end up at about 125,000 to 130,000 words or in that neighborhood. Once Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest is finished, I will then write Ghost in the Siege, which will be the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series. I am 1,500 words into that and hoping for that to come out in August or September, if all goes well. Once The Shield War, Stealth and Spells Online, and Ghost Armor are finished, I will finally be free to return to the Rivah and Nadia series. I realized that through all of 2024 and the first half of 2025, I had five unfinished series at the same time, and that was just too much for me to keep track of as a writer, and I think it may have been too much for the readers because it was too much of a wait between the different series as I worked my way through them. So five series at the same time is too much, so hence the Super Summer of Finishing Things. Going forward, I've decided that three unfinished series at the same time will be my maximum, which after the Super Summer of Finishing Things will be Cloak Mage, Half-Elven Thief, and a new epic fantasy series that I will set in the realm of Owyllain.   In audiobook news, Brad Wills started working on Shield of Battle this week and Hollis McCarthy started working on Ghost in the Corruption, so hopefully before probably about July or thereabouts, we will have those audiobooks available for you to listen to. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:03:49 Main Topic of the Week: Self-Publishing Platforms for Ebooks [Note: Information in this Episode is Very Likely to Change]   So now let's move on to our main topic for the week, which is the main self-publishing platforms for ebooks. Today we will do a brief overview of the self-publishing platforms I currently use: Amazon/KDP, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and Draft2Digital/Smashwords. The reason I wanted to do this is because there are many scammy platforms for self-publishing out there, but fortunately there are also many legitimate ones. Today we'll compare several of the most popular ones for ebooks. Just to make things easier for comparison, we'll be using the term platform to discuss both retailers and aggregators and we're not going to talk about options for self-publishing print or audio formats today. We're going to focus solely on ebooks.   First of all, what should you look for in a publishing platform? The first thing is to make sure you retain complete ownership of your content in all formats. Some of these scammer ones try to claim all rights to anything you try to post or sell through them, so that is definitely a red flag to watch out for. Make sure that you understand any exclusivity requirements of any programs that you sign up for such as KDP Select, such as if other formats like audio are also included in their requirements, how long exclusivity lasts, et cetera. If the platform requires exclusivity, that is definitely something to pay attention to. Make sure you do your research carefully to understand how pricing, royalties, and payments work on each individual platform. Sometimes some of them will pay quarterly, some of them pay monthly, and some of them pay you last month's royalties at the end of the month. Some of them like Amazon run like two months behind.   Finally, and this is a big one, you should not have to pay any money in order to upload your work. If they are asking for money upfront, it is probably a scam. Now, there are some aggregators that don't take a percentage and instead charge you a yearly fee. I'm not talking about them in this podcast episode because I don't use them, but they are out there. One example would be Book Funnel, which does charge a yearly fee for you to use but provides a valuable service in being a backend for running your own store on like Payhip or Shopify, and there's a couple of other useful services in that way, but they're not a storefront and they don't take a percentage of any royalties. They just charge a yearly fee. So they're not the topic with this episode.   All the platforms I've talked about today do not have any fees in order to upload. Reputable sites like Amazon or Kobo will instead take a percentage of each book's sale. It's also good to have a few realistic expectations before you start using self-publishing platforms, and one of them is that the platform is not a marketer. For example, many people complain that KDP doesn't showcase their books and they get lost in the millions of books available. However, none of these services are promising that you'll make the front page of their site just by publishing there. It's a common delusion among new indie authors that when you publish your first book, that's all you have to do and people will flock to it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.   In fact, since Amazon makes a small fortune off book ads, it's not in their interest to give away screen space for free, and this isn't to knock on Amazon, that's just the way the retail industry works. For example, if you go into a Target or a Walmart or another big box retailer, note the products that are prominently displayed on the aisle displays or the endcaps of the aisles. They didn't just get there randomly. The manufacturers of those products paid big money to Amazon and Target and Walmart and the other big box retailers to have their products featured there. In many cases, online commerce is no different.   Getting your book uploaded onto a platform is just the first step. Promoting and marketing the book is up to you and strategies for those will vary based on which ones you choose to use. For example, if you choose to make your work exclusive to just one platform, it's not a good idea to run Facebook ads in countries where that platform either doesn't exist or where it's not terribly popular. Today we're going to be just focusing on comparing the platforms, not how to best to market from them. So what are the options?   #1: First up is the most common platform people use and it's the 800 pound gorilla in the self-publishing space, and that is Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. And what are the pros and cons of KDP?   Pro: They are the biggest force in ebook publishing in many countries, including the United States. Some authors find that as much as 80 to 95% of their ebook sales come from Amazon, even if they are not exclusive with Amazon. For myself, it's usually about 50 to 60% of my sales on any given month are from Amazon and the rest come from the other retailers.   Heavy readers are generally very familiar with the Kindle Store interface and Library setup, and many readers are kind of locked into Amazon because they own Kindle devices, subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, and have large Kindle Libraries. So those are all the pros of publishing with KDP.   Cons: If you're expecting a large portion of your sales to come from the print version of your book or if print sales are very important to you, be aware that many bookstores and libraries either can't or won't buy print books from Amazon, so you should find an additional platform for the print version such as Ingram Spark or maybe Barnes & Noble's print division. One big concern about going exclusive with Amazon is that you're losing readers who don't have Kindle books in their countries, people who are boycotting Amazon for a variety of reasons, people who are locked into another platform such as Apple or Kobo, or people who want to self-archive their ebooks since Amazon doesn't allow that anymore. If you're already wide, you'll have to look carefully at what percentage of your sales are non-Amazon and if this percentage is an amount you'd be comfortable risking losing in order to be exclusive. Occasionally authors do complain about the customer service available to KDP, especially if it's urgent. For myself, I've not personally had any huge problems with KDP customer service. That said, I think you should expect a lead time of about one to two business days on anything you ask because I usually go through the email form.   Does KDP offer a subscription service? Yes. Kindle Unlimited (KU) readers pay a set amount and can read an unlimited number of books each month, although they're limited as to how many they can have in their library at any one time. Promotions happen regularly, usually based around big sales like Prime Day, and it can make a subscription as cheap as $0.99 for a three month period. Some also receive free subscriptions by buying certain Amazon products such as a new Kindle or Kindle Fire.   The downside of being in Kindle Unlimited is the exclusivity. You can't be in KU without being exclusive with Amazon, or at least the specific book in question has to be exclusive. Not all of your books have to be exclusive, and many authors such as myself will usually put one series in KU and then make sure everything else is wide. You must agree to be exclusive with them for ninety days and that time period is renewable.   What does KDP pay in terms of royalty? For $2.99 to $9.99, they give you 70% of the sale price. Under $2.99 and above $9.99, it's 35%. So that is sort of an encouragement from Amazon to price your ebooks in the $2.99 to $9.99 range. Currently I price new novels at $4.99 and do short stories at $0.99 cents.   What do I do? I have all of my titles available through KDP. I have a smaller portion of my collection exclusive through KDP Select/KU, and I have only recently increased that amount of Select titles due to the economic downturn. I suspect that KU users are likely to hold onto their subscriptions while cutting other expenses because honestly, KU is a pretty good deal for readers and the monthly subscription costs is about the same as one tradpub frontlist ebook, but with a KU subscription, they could read thousands of books for the same price. The value of KU is really very strong for frequent romance, LitRPG, science fiction, and fantasy readers. There's a strong population in the KU subscriber base often referred to as binge readers. They care more about variety, discovering new books, and the ability to read a lot over the ability to read specific authors or stories.   So overall, I think if you are self-publishing and even if you don't like Amazon very much or don't plan to go exclusive, it's still in your best interest to publish your ebook with them, even if you are wide and intend to do all the other retailers just because Amazon really is the biggest ebook platform out there at the moment. #2: Now, the next self-publishing platform we're going to look at is Barnes & Noble Press, which as the name implies, belongs to Barnes & Noble. The Pros: some people are never, ever going to let go of their Nooks or they already have a large personal ebook library through the Nook so they feel locked into that platform. These readers are the majority of people buying ebooks through Barnes & Noble, but fortunately that group tends to read a lot. There's also a lot of trust in Barnes & Noble as a brand, and that inspires people to continue buying from them.   In fact, for a while in the indie author space at the end of the 2010s and the start of the 2020s, it was a regular prediction that Barnes & Noble was going to go out of business soon, but then the company was bought by a private equity firm, and while private equity firms often have a deserved bad reputation for stripping a company of assets and then selling it off at a bargain basement price (such as the fate of Red Lobster), that does not seem to be the case of what happened with Barnes & Noble and the company really has been strengthening in recent years. So they may be here to stay for a while.   The downsides of publishing with Barnes & Noble Press is that Barnes & Noble is relatively a minor player in the ebook market, though usually in the top four of most indie author ebook sales if they're wide. They have shifted their focus to selling print books instead of Nook devices, especially in the retail space.   Do they offer a subscription service? They do not. However, nothing about Barnes & Noble requires exclusivity, which is nice, and the royalty structure is pretty good. It's 70% over all titles over $0.99. So if you want, you could price your ebook at $0.99 or $19.99 and still make 70%, which you couldn't do with those prices on Amazon.     #3: The next self-publishing platform we'll look at is Kobo Writing Life, which is the ebook platform to publish on Kobo, which is owned by Rakuten. Pros: Kobo is strong in the international market and will help you to reach readers in many countries. Based on my sales data, in Canada and Australia, Kobo is significantly bigger than Amazon for ebook sales. Kobo has also had a surge of recent media attention in the US as people seek out alternatives to Amazon and Kindle devices.   The Con of Kobo, and this is a fairly small one, is that their US market share is still fairly small compared to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or some of the others. But as I mentioned, they're a lot stronger in Canada and Australia, and they do reach a lot of different countries, more than Amazon does.   Does Kobo have a subscription service? Yes, Kobo Plus. Kobo Plus is significantly less expensive than Kindle Unlimited, and there's an additional tier that allows you to add audiobook content to the plan. The library isn't quite as extensive as KU though, though. I should note that in the years since Kobo has been introduced, I'd say about half of my revenue from Kobo (sometimes 60% of my revenue from Kobo) comes from Kobo Plus and not from direct ebook sales. So it's getting to the point where the majority of their ebook revenue I suspect, is coming from Kobo Plus and not direct Kobo sales.   Do they require exclusivity? No, which is another strong selling point for Kobo Plus. For their royalty structure, ebooks over $2.99, you get 70% and any books over below $2.99, you get 45%, which is a more generous term than Amazon in terms of the royalty rate for below $2.99 and above $9.99.   So what do I do? I currently use it as one of the platforms for my ebooks. It's been a pretty strong seller for me consistently over the years, and every Kobo book that I have is also available in Kobo Plus, which probably explains the revenue split I was talking about earlier. #4: The next platform we'll look at is Draft2Digital/Smashwords, which we'll do as one because Draft2Digital and Smashwords are in the process of merging. Draft2Digital is technically what's called an aggregator, where you upload your book and then they can publish on a variety of different platforms for you, and in exchange, they take a small cut of the sales. Draft2Digital is, in my opinion, probably the most effective way to get your ebooks through Apple and Smashwords. Apple does have its own direct uploading service, but I've never used it because there are a bit too many hoops to jump through.   Draft2Digital does, as I mentioned, have a way to publish on multiple storefronts at once while managing uploads and sales reporting through just one interface. They're not a storefront in and of themselves, although since Draft2Digital does own Smashwords, Smashwords essentially acts as their storefront for them. Although Draft2Digital lists Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble as an option, most authors will upload to these sites separately, and in fact, that's what I do for myself.   The Pros of Draft2Digital is that it's a definite time savings using Draft2Digital to publish across multiple platforms, especially with platforms like Apple that are more difficult or time consuming to learn. This is also a convenient way to make your work accessible to library platforms like Overdrive/Libby, Hoopla, and Bibliotheca, if that is important to you. Library sales have never been a huge priority of mine, but I've never been opposed to them either, so I usually just flip those switches on and then don't think about it again.   The Cons for Draft2Digital are that there was a period after the Smashwords migration where they received complaints about customer service and difficulty in setting up tax information, though I think that is mostly ironed out now.   One potential hazard for Draft2Digital with a very specific subset of writers is that if you are a writer of, shall we say, very hard erotica, the sort that ends up in very restricted categories on most stores, you will probably have trouble publishing through Draft2Digital. This is not, however, a problem that's unique to Draft2Digital. Amazon has what is called the “erotica dungeon”, where if you publish certain kinds of, like we said, very harsh erotica, your book isn't searchable on the Amazon store. You can link to it directly, but it will never show up on any search results. Kobo in particular has had problems with erotica.   Back in the 2010s, Kobo was also distributing ebooks to some British retailers, and these British retailers suddenly got upset when they noticed that these kinds of hard erotica were showing up on their store pages, which was not a good look for the company. And so there was a kerfuffle until that was all sorted out. My frank opinion with that is if you are writing these kinds of erotica, the big stores and Draft2Digital will never be on your side, and so you are better off pursuing a sort of a Patreon/running your own store on Shopify or Payhip strategy, but that is a bit of a digression.   So in terms of royalties, Draft2Digital takes 10% of the book's retail price per copy sold, which is in addition to whatever amount is taken by the specific storefront. So you are paying a bit of money in exchange for convenience for just uploading your book to Draft2Digital and having it push out the book to all the different stores for you.   What I do is I use Draft2Digital for Apple mainly because for a while I was using Smashwords, but Smashwords in the 2010s was a bit more persnickety than is now, and you needed to prepare a specially formatted doc file to publish on Smashwords and sometimes getting it through the Smashwords processing onto Apple was a bit of a pain. Draft2Digital took epub files, which are much easier to work with, and after a while I switched over all my Apple publishing to Draft2Digital entirely. So that's why I use Draft2Digital for Apple and for various library services that tend to be a minor amount of sales. Because of the difficulties on publishing direct to Apple, I do find that that 10% is good trade off in terms of selling books on Apple for me.   #5: Now onto Google Play's ebook self-publishing platform, which is, I think its full name is the Google Books Partner Center, which lets you publish books to the Google Play Store for sale on Android devices.   The Pros are that for writers interested in the international market, Google Play is another strong choice for a platform since the international mobile device market is very Android heavy. The iPhone (Apple) tends to be concentrated mainly in the US and a few of the wealthier countries like the UK and Canada, but Android has a much more international reach in general than the iPhone. Google Play also has some interesting promotional options for ebooks, such as offering the buyer a chance to subscribe to a specific series.   The cons are that some authors report that their sales reporting doesn't always consistently generate reports, and others are annoyed that it only generates a CSV file, (which isn't that much of a hardship for people who are familiar with Excel).   For myself, I found that there is a bit of a reporting lag on Google Play where it will sometimes take as long as five or six days for sales to show up on the dashboard, though usually it's only a delay of two days, though sometimes during the month you'll get these bigger lags and sometimes processing new material on the Google Play Store can be slow, and it can sometimes take two to three days for things to appear, though it usually gets worked out in the end. Does Google Play have a subscription service? It does not, nor does it require exclusivity, which is another point in its favor. And the royalties, the data is quite nice here. It is 70% for all price points in the countries listed on their support page, which only excludes a handful of countries like India, South Korea, and Japan (because of currency conversion regions or other local laws).   So those are the ebook publishing platforms that I currently use, and because I use them myself, I would recommend them. Hopefully that is helpful to you as you are looking for places to self-publish your book as you set out to become an indie author.   So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the backup episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

In this week's episode, we take a look at five lessons for writers from Barnes & Nobles' turnaround. I also discuss indie author advertising results from February 2025. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves, Book #3 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store: BLADE50 The coupon code is valid through March 28, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 242 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 7, 2025, and today we are looking at writing lessons from the dramatic turnaround of Barnes and Noble. We'll also look at my ad results for February 2025 and we'll also have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing projects and Question of the Week.   First off, let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves, Book Number Three in the Dragon Skull Series (as excellent narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is BLADE50. We'll have the coupon code and the link in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through March 28th, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. The rough draft of Ghosts in the Assembly is done and I am 16% into the second phase of editing. If all goes well, I am planning to publish the book on March 14th, assuming there are no unanticipated interruptions, which is always risky to rely upon, but things are going well with it and I'm optimistic we can do that. I'm also 13,000 words into Shield of Battle and after Ghost in the Assembly is published, that will be my main project.   In audiobook news, Orc-Hoard, the fourth book in the Half-Elven Thief series (as narrated by Leanne Woodward), is now available and you can get it at all the usual audiobook stores. Half-Elven Thief: Omnibus One (which is a combination of Half-Elven Thief, Wizard-Thief, and Half-Orc Paladin, the first three books in the series) is also now available in audio (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward), and you can give that omnibus edition at Audible, Amazon, and Apple. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:01:49 Question of the Week   Question the Week is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, when you have an unpleasant chore that must be done, do you prefer to split it up into smaller parts over a number of days or just to get it all over with at once? No wrong answers, obviously. The inspiration for this question is the fact that it's tax prep time here in the United States, and I have spent a lot of time this week working on that.   Justin says: I prefer to get it over with all at once if possible. Extending your example, I have somehow become the tax preparer for other family members, so there are a few days where that is what I do. I also set aside a few hours every month for vehicle maintenance: check fluids, tire pressure, top off everything, look at belts (replace if worn). It's amazing how more reliable cars are when you look after them a bit.   That is very true. Good car maintenance advice from Justin.   Catriona says: Procrastinate. I love to procrastinate, then the mad dash to the very last second of the deadline. Retired now, so no longer need to be efficiently organized.   Jenny says: Oh, split if I can, procrastinate if I can't. Dishes? Do some or put some away, do more later or let my laundry pile up until I have no pants.   And Juana says: Let's get this over with. (Transcriptionist's note: this was posted in the form of a GIF of Liz Lemon from 30 Rock)   For myself, I suppose the answer is that I essentially get to do both since I'm technically a small business owner as a publisher, I do some tax stuff every month and then usually have a couple of days in March that are all tax prep. Other than that, it really depends on the size of the task in question. My preferred way would be to split a task up into smaller pieces and do 'em until they're done. But if you have something like snow shoveling, for example, you really do have to kind of bite the bullet and get it over with all at once.   00:03:21 February 2025 Ad Results   Now let's see how my ads did in February 2025. February is generally a better month for advertising than November, December, and January. The reason for that is that Valentine's Day and the Super Bowl drives some consumer spending, though not nearly as much as the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays, and so therefore the cost per click is often lower and you can usually have good results with ads.   First up, Facebook ads. In February, I advertised both Cloak Games/Cloak Mage and all the Ghosts on Facebook. For Cloak Games/Cloak Mage, I got back $2.98 (USD) for every dollar spent, with 6.8% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For the Ghosts, I got back $3.24 cents for every dollar spent, with 15.4% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. I also ran a few different Amazon ad campaigns. Remember that for an Amazon ad campaign to work, it needs to generate a sale or a complete Kindle Unlimited page readthrough for every six to eight clicks. For Half-Elven Thief, I got back $2.30 for every dollar spent, with a sale for every 0.68 clicks. In other words, we had more total sales than we had clicks. For Stealth and Spells Online: Creation, I lost $2.52 for every dollar spent, with a sale for every 8.1 clicks. For The Linux Command Line Beginner's Guide, I got back $1.86 for every dollar spent, with a sale for every one click and 32% of the month's profit coming from the audiobook. I think this shows how badly I misjudged the LitRPG market with Stealth and Spells Online. The ads for Half-Elven Thief actually get more search terms for LitRPG related searches than Stealth and Spells actually does. I ran BookBub ads for Sevenfold Sword and The Ghosts on Apple, and here's how they did. For The Ghosts, I got back $5.26 for every dollar spent. For Sevenfold Sword, I got back $4.35 for every $1 spent. Finally, for the Demonsouled series, which is currently in KU, I did a combined Facebook and Amazon campaign, and when you run multi-platform ad campaigns like that, the most valuable metric tends to be honestly money back for dollar spent. So for Demonsouled, I got back $2.58 for every dollar spent. So good results, all in all, and I didn't actually lose that much money on Stealth and Spells. So thanks for reading everyone and hopefully I'll have more good books for you to read soon.   00:05:47 Main Topic: Lessons for Writers from Barnes and Noble's Turnaround   So now onto our main topic this week, lessons for Writers from Barnes and Noble's Turnaround because it is fair to say Barnes and Noble has had a turnaround recently. For a while at the end of the 2010s and the early 2020s, people would have their self-publishing predictions for the year, and one of them was almost always that Barnes and Noble is going to finally close, which was a reversal of fortune for it because if you remember in the ‘90s and the 2000s and even the early part of the 2010s, Barnes and Noble was the juggernaut in the publishing industry. They had forced out of business a lot of smaller indie bookstores and what Barnes and Noble wanted in the publishing industry, Barnes and Noble got. Then just as Barnes and Noble disrupted all the smaller book chains and independent bookstores, Amazon came along and disrupted Barnes and Noble. And so for a while it looked like Barnes and Noble was going to go out of business, but Barnes and Noble's revenue actually grew 1.6% in fiscal year 2024, and their foot traffic is up significantly. They're planning 60 new stores after a wave of closures in previous years.   A few years ago, as I said, they seemed headed for extinction, yet a combination of unpredictable factors and good decisions helped turned around Barnes and Noble. What are some of those factors leading into it? I suspect one of them is that many people are forced to be on screens all day and can find this frustrating or stressful, especially when schooling and work were virtual. I've talked to some teachers over the past couple of years and they would tell me stories of, for example, younger children who will burst into tears at the site of a Chromebook just because the experience of remote learning via Chromebooks was so stressful and miserable in 2020 and 2021 (and places that held onto that policy for probably longer than they should have). So much socialization nowadays is conducted online too through TikToks and chats and text messages and so forth. Because of this, many now feel like print books are a break from being constantly online. Various social media people such as TikTokers and Instagrammers make Barnes and Noble trips and hauls, showing off giant stacks of the latest books, filling up feeds. Home book displays are also a trend online, as collectors show off carefully style collections of books. Owning physical books and browsing the shelves at Barnes and Noble has become cool again. Truly history is a wheel that keeps on turning.   So what lessons can you take from this turnaround as a writer (even if your physical books aren't stocked by Barnes and Noble and you don't sell that many eBooks through them)? How they approach their relationship with their readers and their customers still has a few lessons to provide writers.   #1: Focus on your primary mission and also double down on what actually works. Barnes and Noble started to devote much of their store space to a confusing, aimless mixture of toys and gifts mixed in with the books. The stores began to look cluttered and much of this merchandise did not actually sell to their customers. They also wasted a large sum of money trying to compete with Amazon, Apple, and tech companies with their Nook tablets and kept Nook ereaders as a strong store presence long after it was clear they had lost the battle for the ebook market. There was even an extremely ill-advised foray into Barnes and Noble restaurants. Customers were quick to reject $13 avocado toast and $7 oatmeal from a mall chain bookstore.   One, when the company focused on returning to selling print books and making the store a better place to browse, sales improved. Many stores moved the gifts and games away from the book areas and back into the dedicated sections, which cleaned up the layout and made it easier for customers wanting non-book items to find what they were looking for. Since most of the customers were actually there to buy books, that made it easier to buy books.   How to apply this as a writer? Your job as a writer is to create and sell books. Getting lost in side quests, like overly frequent social media posting, creating courses or webinars, and selling merchandises are only taking time away from what your readers actually want the most from you: more books. So double down on writing more books, just as Barnes Noble doubled down on selling more books.   #2: Target the right people. Barnes Noble's display spaces and tables were taken up by books that publishers paid to place there. This led to their prime store space being taken up by books that were often poor sellers or not a good fit for their local customers. It was better to turn down the short-term money but have more targeted displays, including putting similar books in “thematic nooks.”   By focusing much of their marketing on the BookTok/Bookstagram groups of heavy readers, they were able to find ways to appeal to a younger and growing customer base. Since this group loves books both as content and décor, showcasing exclusive or “aesthetic” special editions was a way to bring these customers back into the store and keep them from buying cheaper copies online. These readers were also willing to spend a few dollars extra for the experience and to ensure that the books they were buying weren't damaged, which is often a complaint when you buy books online, that they sometimes aren't packaged properly and arrive damaged in transit. Store space was also devoted to manga readers, another group that reads voraciously and enjoys the experience of reading the print version and later collecting the print version as opposed to the electronic one.   Now, how do you apply this as a writer? Appeal to your core audience. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, find your core “thematic nook” (as Barnes Noble puts it), meaning similar authors and titles. There are resources like Publisher Rocket that can help you do this. Focus your advertising on finding these readers instead of the general population.   For myself, I've experienced this lesson personally in the last four years because in the last four years I've tried three different new things: The Cormac Rogan Mysteries, the Stealth and Spells LitRPG book, and the Rivah Half-Elven series. And of the three, Rivah was by far the most successful because it was another form of epic fantasy, which I think is what my core audience really wants from me and not contemporary mysteries or LitRPG. So this is the lesson I can attest to through personal experience.   #3: Give customers a good experience. Barnes and Noble spent money on repainting, installing brighter lighting, and changing store layouts. The CEO James Daunt stated it was their aim to make the store feels like “places of discovery.” Chairs were even added back to some stores to allow readers to browse in comfort.   Now, how can you apply this to being a writer? First, you want to make sure that your readers have the easiest possible experience, the most pleasant possible experience in buying books from you. One way to do this is keep your website updated and check for broken links, which is easier said than done. I know, especially for me since Ghost in the Assembly will be my 160th novel, and that is a lot of links to check and my website had gotten complex enough that I finally hired someone to overhaul it and make sure all the links were working. But I think we've had good results since traffic is up and I get much fewer complaints now about dead links. It's often a good idea to refresh ad images to keep potential readers' attention. For Facebook ads, I think based on my experience, the best you can hope for is two to three weeks of good results with a single image. For BookBub, maybe three or four days. So it's good to have a supply of ad images you can rotate out often. Finally, incentivize readers to read your newsletter by keeping it brief and providing some kind of special reward, like a discount or bonus content, which is why I give away a lot of short stories in my email newsletter.   #4: Be willing to change it up or try new things. Barnes and Noble's leadership also ceded more control of the selection and displays to the individual stores, allowing them to better customize the stores towards the taste of the community. For most of Barnes and Noble's history, if you walked into the store and you saw the displays in the front and on the end caps where books were highlighted. Publishers paid through the nose for the privilege of having their books stocked that way. And while there is still some of that, obviously the new regime at Barnes and Noble has changed things around so that more local stores have greater control of what to put where, which means they can put out more books that their local community is more likely to buy. If you walk into a Barnes and Noble in Illinois, for example, you're much more likely to see a large display of Illinois local history than you would have otherwise.   For another example, I once visited a Barnes and Noble in a large suburb that had a very large teenage population that had the Young Adult section wedged in a single cramped back corner by the bathrooms. It was extremely unpleasant to browse, especially if one person was already in the aisle. And of course, if there was a line for the bathroom, which is often the case, teenagers typically want more physical space from strangers. This decision to put the Young Adult section in a cramped corner in the back of the store was clearly made by someone who did not a lot of experience talking to or working with teenagers. After Daunt's changes, Young Adult was moved to the center of the store. The aisles in the new section were extra wide to accommodate groups of teens browsing together, and it was now full of colorful displays, many of which were handmade by staff members. In the times I visited this Barnes and Noble since, it is always the busiest part of the store.   Another surprise area of growth was the refreshing of the stationery and planner section. The previous selection was stale and heavily reliant on older licensed properties like Disney. It wasn't reflective of the trends in the category being popularized (once again by Instagram and TikTok), such as dot grid notebooks with high quality paper and guided journals (like the influencer favorite, the Five Minute Journal, which offers a few brief prompts to reflect on the day). Barnes and Noble bought the stationery brand Paper Source, which brought in fresh designs to its cards and stationery. They also changed their selection to adapt to two of the biggest trends in stationery, bullet journaling and customizable Japanese planners. Stationery enthusiasts were willing to pay a premium to be able to see stationery items in person before buying, since that allows you to avoid counterfeit versions that are sold online and ensure that the product was in pristine condition and would not arrive through the mail damaged. Since the margins on stationery are way higher than they are in books, this was a wise decision.   Now how can we apply this lesson as a writer? One of the advantages of being self-published is the ability to change quickly based on data and reader feedback. For example, the Stealth and Spells Online series was originally called the Sevenfold Sword Online. Once I realized that readers were confusing this series with the main Sevenfold Sword series, I changed the title to help prevent confusion and emphasized that the series was in fact a separate one. I also changed the cover to reflect trends in the LitRPG series, such as characters' faces usually not being shown and a more diffused, animation-influenced color palette.   If one of your books isn't connecting with readers, it may be worth your time to update your blurb and cover trends based on your categories. Another similar experience I had was with the Silent Order covers where I went through five different iterations with that cover before I settled on the version I have now, which definitely sells the best.     #5: Do what Amazon can't. The new CEO of Barnes and Noble focused on what Amazon couldn't do: provide a physical environment for browsing.  Browsing aisles of books with a cup of coffee (from the Barnes and Noble Café) in hand is a relaxing experience for many people. Amazon famously tried to set up its own chain of physical bookstores, and it didn't work out because the experience for customers tended to be industrial and unpleasant in a way that made an airport newsstand seem downright cozy in comparison. The bookstores were stocked with just a very limited selection of popular books on plain shelves with electronic price tags. Nothing about it inspired browsing or finding new books, the most important way physical bookstores inspire readers to buy additional books.   This was an example of Amazon doing the opposite of our first lesson. Rather than doubling down on what was working, they tried something that was away from their core competency of low prices and fast delivery, which was a physical bookstore. In fact, one of these Amazon bookstores opened across the street from author Ann Patchett's Parnassus books, which is an indie bookstore in Nashville that provides lots of help from friendly, knowledgeable staff, autographed books from authors like Patchett, and a full calendar of events with local authors. Reviewers who have visited this indie bookstore rave about the friendly and helpful staff and the cozy atmosphere. Even though Parnassus offered higher prices than the Amazon bookstore across the street, the experience was so much better that it's not surprising that the Amazon bookstore did not work and that Parnassus outlasted this physical Amazon bookstore that opened across the street. As many people have found out the hard way, it is very difficult to compete with Amazon on price. Instead of constantly discounting books with buy two get one free promotions or providing steep discounts through its membership program, Barnes and Noble stopped trying to compete with Amazon on price and turned their attention to something that Amazon couldn't do, which is the physical experience of the store. Events like children's story times and special events (complete with gift bags) for popular releases like Onyx Storm brought in people who hadn't been to a physical store in a while.   Now, the point of this isn't to indulge in Amazon bashing because Amazon does get criticized a lot, sometimes fairly, sometimes not fairly. The point is that trying to compete with Amazon on its core competencies of low price and fast delivery is not a good idea. And so instead, you need to try and find a way to do something well that Amazon can't do or Amazon isn't interested in doing. Even if Amazon remains a big part of your business as an indie writer, you can diversify your profits and readership by looking beyond Amazon.   What can't Amazon do for your readers? You can engage with your readers directly through your newsletter and social media. That's why I try to post at least once a day and respond to comments when possible. You can find ways to provide special content for loyal readers, which I do personally in the form of free short stories, discounts, Coupon of the Week (which we always talk about every week). Giveaways, et cetera provide something that Amazon can't or won't. For example, direct sales platforms like my Payhip store can provide DRM free ebook files, multiple file formats with each purchase, and special bonus content for readers buying direct and so forth. If you buy a book off My Payhip store, you can download the epub file and a PDF file, which you can't do from Amazon anymore.   On a related note, give people who don't want to buy from Amazon a place to buy your books, whether that be other ebook vendors or your own direct sales page (or ideally both). I should mention that personally of my (soon to be) 160 books, only 14% of them are currently on Kindle Unlimited (which means Amazon exclusivity), which is a fortunate position I'm able to be in because Kindle Unlimited is also a big part of the market. I'm able to essentially play in both worlds where I have the majority of my series available wide (and available on my Payhip store with files and the other things we were talking about), while also providing some books for Kindle Unlimited readers, which also is a big part of the pool. I'm fortunate enough to be able to play in both worlds there and continue to do that.   To sum up, Barnes and Noble recovered by focusing on what it does best and finding the people who respond best to that. As a writer, I think your main focus should be on putting out new books and targeting your advertising is the best way to make that approach work for you. If you have a long series, it might be a good idea to make the first book free and advertise that if you want to connect more with your readers, giving away short stories is a good way to do that, especially in your newsletter. So to sum up, perhaps the best way forward for all writers is to remain flexible and to double down on your core competencies and core strengths.   So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 56 minutesSynopsis: Tonight (3/5/25), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we successfully and SMOOTHLY "landed the plane"! Not only did we get the main idea and purpose of the perek, but we explained nearly every phrase in the perek - except for the very last phrase, which we decided we can't fully understand without learning the previous perek. This short perek proved to be HIGHLY relevant to our current situation, and is a great way to showcase how Tehilim is critical for forming a relationship with Hashem.-----מקורות:תהלים פרק מגרב ש"ר הירש - תהלים כב:אמאירי - תהלים מג:אתרגום כתובים - תהלים מג:גר' אליה די נולהספורנו - ישעיהו כז:א-----The Torah content for this week has been sponsored by Rifka Kaplan-Peck in tribute to the Bibas family. May Hashem avenge their blood and may He grant Yarden Bibas and the extended family comfort in the love of Am Yisroel who mourn with them.-----If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you.If you would like to sponsor a day's or a week's worth of content, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone.-----Substack: rabbischneeweiss.substack.com/Patreon: patreon.com/rabbischneeweissYouTube Channel: youtube.com/rabbischneeweissInstagram: instagram.com/rabbischneeweiss/"The Stoic Jew" Podcast: thestoicjew.buzzsprout.com"Machshavah Lab" Podcast: machshavahlab.buzzsprout.com"The Mishlei Podcast": mishlei.buzzsprout.com"Rambam Bekius" Podcast: rambambekius.buzzsprout.com"The Tefilah Podcast": tefilah.buzzsprout.comOld Blog: kolhaseridim.blogspot.com/WhatsApp Content Hub (where I post all my content and announce my public classes): https://chat.whatsapp.com/GEB1EPIAarsELfHWuI2k0HAmazon Wishlist: amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/Y72CSP86S24W?ref_=wl_sharel

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 59 minutesSynopsis: Tonight (2/26/24), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we continued our analysis of the short perek we began last time. After reviewing our translation, our pivot point theories, and our questions, we came up with a few ideas and approaches. I presented the findings that my chavrusa and I came up with, which I think carry real promise. The central idea we developed today is fundamental in our relationship with Hashem, as individuals and as a nation. I THOUGHT we'd manage to wrap it up this time, but I think there's still one more session to go!-----מקורות:תהלים פרק מגרד"קאבן עזראתרגום כתוביםספורנורב ש"ר הירשRabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, "Fate and Destiny"-----The Torah content for the entire month of February has been sponsored by Y.K. with gratitude to Rabbi Schneeweiss for providing a clear and easily accessible path to personal growth via his reliably interesting and inspiring Torah content.-----If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you.If you would like to sponsor a day's or a week's worth of content, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone.-----Substack: rabbischneeweiss.substack.com/Patreon: patreon.com/rabbischneeweissYouTube Channel: youtube.com/rabbischneeweissInstagram: instagram.com/rabbischneeweiss/"The Stoic Jew" Podcast: thestoicjew.buzzsprout.com"Machshavah Lab" Podcast: machshavahlab.buzzsprout.com"The Mishlei Podcast": mishlei.buzzsprout.com"Rambam Bekius" Podcast: rambambekius.buzzsprout.com"The Tefilah Podcast": tefilah.buzzsprout.comOld Blog: kolhaseridim.blogspot.com/WhatsApp Content Hub (where I post all my content and announce my public classes): https://chat.whatsapp.com/GEB1EPIAarsELfHWuI2k0HAmazon Wishlist: amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/Y72CSP86S24W?ref_=wl_sharel

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 58 minutesSynopsis: Tonight (2/19/24), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we began a new and (to us) unknown chapter towards the beginning of Book II. I chose it because it was unfamiliar, short, and looked like it might help us to cope with the current situation Israel is in, and the despondent feelings of many Jews around the world. We spent much of the time going over various translations, then discussed where the pivot point might be, and concluded with a series of questions. Next time (בג"ה) we'll see if we can come up with a theory, with or without the meforshim!-----מקורות:תהלים פרק מגמצודת ציוןArtscrollRobert Alterהואיל משה - תהלים מג:אתרגום רס"גתרגום כתובים (trans. Prof. Edward M. Cook)פשיטתאSeptuagint (trans. Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton)-----The Torah content for the entire month of February has been sponsored by Y.K. with gratitude to Rabbi Schneeweiss for providing a clear and easily accessible path to personal growth via his reliably interesting and inspiring Torah content.-----If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you.If you would like to sponsor a day's or a week's worth of content, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone.-----Substack: rabbischneeweiss.substack.com/Patreon: patreon.com/rabbischneeweissYouTube Channel: youtube.com/rabbischneeweissInstagram: instagram.com/rabbischneeweiss/"The Stoic Jew" Podcast: thestoicjew.buzzsprout.com"Machshavah Lab" Podcast: machshavahlab.buzzsprout.com"The Mishlei Podcast": mishlei.buzzsprout.com"Rambam Bekius" Podcast: rambambekius.buzzsprout.com"The Tefilah Podcast": tefilah.buzzsprout.comOld Blog: kolhaseridim.blogspot.com/WhatsApp Content Hub (where I post all my content and announce my public classes): https://chat.whatsapp.com/GEB1EPIAarsELfHWuI2k0HAmazon Wishlist: amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/Y72CSP86S24W?ref_=wl_sharel

In this week's episode, we take a look at five tips for outlining your novel. I also take a look at audiobook sales for 2024. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Wizard-Thief, Book #2 in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: WIZARD50 The coupon code is valid through February 21, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 237 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January 31st, 2025, and today we're discussing five tips for outlining your novel. Before we get to that, we will have Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing projects, Question of the Week, and then a look at how my audiobooks performed in 2024.   First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Wizard Thief, Book Number Two in the Half-Eleven Thief series (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is WIZARD50. Both the coupon code and the link to the store will be in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through February the 21st, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook to get you through the February doldrums, we have got you covered. And now an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. I am very, very, very pleased to report that Shield of Deception, the fourth book in The Shield War series, is done. As soon as I am finished recording this episode, I'm going to start publishing it at all the stores. So by the time this episode goes live, you should be able to get it at your favorite ebook store. I'm very pleased this is done because I think this is the longest book I have written in the last four years, which of course I picked to do over the Christmas holiday and was in the process of switching over to a new desktop computer. Great planning on my part, but the book is done and hopefully you should be able to enjoy it soon at your favorite ebook store.   Now that Shield of Deception is done, my next project will be Ghost in the Assembly and I'm pleased to report I'm 20,000 words into that. So I'm hopefully on track to have that come out sometime in March. My secondary project is also going to be Shield of Battle, the fifth book in the Shield War series, and hopefully that will be in April, if all goes well.   In audiobook news, Cloak of Masks is now finally available at all audiobook stores: Audible, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Chirp, and all the others. A reminder that you can also get Ghost Armor Omnibus One, the combination of the first three Ghost Armor books (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy), at Audible, Apple, and Amazon.   00:02:15 Question of the Week   Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's topic: do you watch the special features on the DVD when you watch a movie? I'm talking about the making of and the director and cast and crew interviews and so forth. Not all DVDs have them of course, but some do. We have a few responses to this question.   Justin says: It depends on the movie. The special features in Monty Python and the Holy Grail Special Edition are a must-see in my opinion.   John says: I watched all the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition extras. Really great material. I know I've watched others, but I can't recall offhand. Definitely the gold standard.   Tom says: My general pattern is to watch the trailer, then the movie, then the deleted scenes. Sometimes I'll watch parts of the special features if their name caches my eye, not often though.   James says: With On-Demand through my cable provider, I just watch the movies. Being part of the PC Master Race, I've never had a gaming console to play DVDs on. I haven't bought a DVD in ages. I used to belong to Redbox, but they're not even in business anymore. Elizabeth says: Sometimes, or play in another language with English subtitles.   Brandy says: Sometimes. I watched The Lord of the Rings special features and enjoyed it. I also watch historical extras or look them up.   Bonnie says: I think I may have once? I usually just watch the movie, haven't watched anything in ages, though.   Juana says: Yes. After the feature things are interesting!   Tracy says: I do.   For myself, the inspiration for this question was that I couldn't think of anything to watch, so I was watching the special features on The Lord of the Rings Extended Editions box set, which a few people have already mentioned. I really think those are the gold standard for DVD special features. Not too many special features have middle aged literature professors discussing the origins of the book that inspired the movie. There's like six discs worth of special features in the Extended Edition Lord of the Rings DVDs, and if you watch all of them, it's really a very interesting and comprehensive documentary on how those three movies were made. If you get the Oppenheimer Blu-ray, the special features that come with that are also quite interesting and worth watching in my opinion.   00:04:18 Audiobook Sales in 2024   Now let's talk a little bit about how my audiobooks did in 2024. Ebook sales were down a bit from 2023 to 2024, but my audiobook sales were up from 2023 to 2024. So here are my Top 10 bestselling audiobooks of 2024. It's nice to note that audio (at least for me) was up, in 2024 in a time of general economic contraction. So that's nice. Now my Top 10 audiobooks:   The Ghosts: Omnibus One 2. Frostborn: The Gorgon Spirit 3. Frostborn: The Dark Warden 4. Frostborn: The Broken Mage 5. Frostborn: The World Gate 6. Frostborn: The False King 7. Frostborn: Excalibur 8. Frostborn: The Dwarven Prince 9. Dragonskull: Omnibus One 10. Frostborn: The High Lords   So I have to admit, it's nice to see the Frostborn books still in the Top 10 there because they've long ago made back their production costs. So now it's just a pure profit at this point, which is nice. And it's also amusing that The Ghosts Omnibus One remains my bestselling audiobook of all time just because it's so long. Now let's see how those sales broke down by vendor because as you know, I sell my audiobooks through several different platforms. And so let's see how they did:   ACX (Audible, Amazon, Apple): 76.54% 2. Google Play: 9.84% 3. Storytel: 5.08% 4. Hoopla: 2.73% 5. Spotify: 2.27% 6. Chirp: 1.05% 7. Under 1%: Kobo, Scribd, Audiobooks.com, Overdrive, TuneIn, Bibliotheca, Nook, and Anyplay     So as we can see, Audible in the form of ACX is still pretty dominant, but there is growth on the other platforms, especially Google Play. I was not expecting Google Play to come in second. I would've thought it would've been Chirp or Spotify, but it seems Google Play did very well for me for audiobooks for 2024. So thanks for listening everyone, or at least listening to the audiobooks. We're not done with the podcast yet, so let's now move on to our main topic.   00:06:34 Main Topic: 5 Tips for Creating an Outline for Your Novel   Now let's move on to our main topic, five tips for creating an outline for your novel. In the fiction writing community, there's generally two schools of thoughts, outliners (of which I am definitely one), and discovery writers, who feel that starting with outlines sort of drains the process of its fun and magic. Though I heard an interesting point from one of Brandon Sanderson's videos recently where he said that all outliners do have a little bit of discovery writer in them because if you look at your outline, it'll say something like “there is a chase scene.” Then when you get to that part of the book, you write out eight to ten pages of the chase scene or whatever that you come up with on the spot and then later refine and improve through editing. So that's a good point, but I do think outlining is more useful in general for writing than not outlining is.   So why outline? As I mentioned, many writers do not outline, but I do think outlining does help, especially with beginning writers. For one, it saves time because if you follow the outline, you're less likely to go down a blind alley and realize you have to drop the last 10 or 20,000 words you wrote. It helps prevent getting stuck and not knowing what to write next. And it also really helps because it'll save you time in editing because you're less likely to have to rewrite large portions of the book. And it's also helpful for maintaining continuity as well.   I found also that outlining in advance is good because it forces you to think about things before you start because we all know writers who get really excited about writing, get a third of the way through, and then don't know where to go next. It's because they haven't thought it through. Outlining forces you to really think through the middle, which is where a lot of writers get stuck, and it also forces you to think through the ending and make sure it properly resolves the conflicts and stakes raised in the story.   As an example, I know a beginning writer who did not create an outline when setting out to write for the first time, although she had a strong setting and liked her characters, she realized about halfway through that the conflict wasn't enough to carry her whole story and that changing the conflict or raising the stakes would change the tone of the story too much. And unfortunately, she decided to abandon the draft. You could look at that one way, that it was months of wasted effort for her that could have been prevented with a couple hours of outlining, though I think it's better to look at it as a valuable learning experience where she learned that yes, outlining really will help me with my writing and just sort of had to learn that the hard way through attempting to write without an outline first.   #1: So our first tip for outlining novels is to learn story structure. It's hard to write an outline without understanding good story structure, but the flip side is if you do understand story structure and put good story structure into your outline, it will be all the easier to write your novel. The basic story structure that everyone learns in English class when they're talking about short stories (or should learn an English class when they're talking about short stories), is introduction, conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution. That is essentially basic short story structure that's in short stories and in novels, however long. A longer novel of course we'll have subplots and sort of sub conflicts and maybe false ends and red herrings, but that basic story structure is there throughout. So our first tip for good outlining is to understand story structure. And if you try to hold to that basic five step story structure when you're first starting out, especially when you're first starting out, you'll probably find it a lot easier to go.     #2: Start with the problem. What do we mean by that? First, think of the main conflicts and then start outlining to move the characters/locations around them accordingly. Work the hardest on understanding your central conflict. Your protagonist must have a problem that results in a serious conflict. Now, serious conflict doesn't necessarily imply violence, though in genres such as a thriller and mystery, it can. The conflict must be emotionally significant and serious for the protagonist where there are real stakes involved.   The example I usually go to for this is the movie The King Speech, which is a highly fictionalized version of Britain's King George VI learning to overcome his stutter to speak in public. At no point in the movie is George VI in any physical danger. His wife and children love and respect him, and he's generally well regarded by everyone who knows him. However, the problem is he can't speak in public effectively, and this is a huge emotional problem for him. And frankly, one with serious stakes after his brother abdicates and he becomes king. He needs to be able to speak effectively in public or he won't be able to carry out his duties well. So this conflict of dealing with his stutter and his speech impediment is central to the movie. And even though he's not in any physical danger, it nonetheless has very high stakes for him, which is why I say that the problem has to be emotionally significant and have high stakes for the protagonist.   And there are ways to do that without violence, though of course, if you're writing fantasy or a thriller, you can use all the violence you want. You can help create a significant conflict and problem for your character by asking yourself a few questions. What conflicts and actions lead up to it? What is causing this conflict to happen? What are the stakes? What will happen if it doesn't resolve favorably? And why is the character involved? What must they do to resolve the conflict?   For an example from my own books, I'm going to talk about Half-Elven Thief, which is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited if you want to go read that. In Half-Elven Thief, the main character is Rivah, who is a member of a fantasy Thieves Guild in her city. She's massively in debt to her immediate superior in the Thieves Guild who hates her and has been using that debt to exploit work from her and considering selling her into slavery to recover the debt. However, a massive and very dangerous job comes to the Thieves Guild, and Rivah is the one assigned to take the job, and if she pulls off the job, her debt will be repaid and she doesn't have this debt hanging over her head anymore. But the job is to steal a spell book from a very dangerous and powerful wizard, so there's every chance she'll be killed in the process. So the central conflict of Half-Elven Thief, that Rivah needs to steal this spell book from this very dangerous wizard, and the stakes for that is so she can get out from under this debt her superior has been holding over her head for the last three years. So hopefully that is a helpful example of a conflict with serious stakes for the protagonist.   #3: Our third tip is to start with simple. What is the book's blurb or elevator pitch for this story? Write that first. There's a couple different ways you can do that. I've sometimes described my Cloak Games/Cloak Mage series as Shadow Run meets The Dresden Files, which can be a starting point. I've heard people describe the Caina series as Black Widow meets Conan the Barbarian, which is another way to do it. To return to our previous two examples, in The King's Speech, the precise pitch is “faced with becoming King George VI must overcome his speech/stutter and face his emotional problems in order to effectively exercise his office.” And with my book Half-Elven Thief, the elevator pitch was, “in order to escape a dangerous debt, a thief is forced to steal a spell book from a dangerous wizard.” So that is the one sentence starting point, and you can use that to build the conflict.   Another potential way to do this is to write the blurb for your book and then build the conflict off that. For example, here is the blurb for another one of my books, Ghost in the Serpent, which is available at all ebook stores.   Anyway, the blurb: “A deadly poison. A hidden cult of sorcerers. Only Caina can find the truth. Caina is a countess of the Empire, an advisor and friend of three powerful monarchs, but she was once a nightfighter with the Ghosts, the spies and assassins of the Emperor and faced lethal sorcerers and corrupt lords. And when a hidden cult of malevolent sorcerers emerges from the shadows, Caina will show them that she has forgotten none of her old skills.”   So what is this blurb doing? It is introducing the setting and the characters, Caina and the Empire, focusing on the conflict and stakes and focusing on how they relate to Caina. And that allows us to sort of expand out into the conflict. If you read the book, you know that the plot is someone tries to poison Caina and fails. As she investigates what happened, she discovers that her husband had two children that he didn't know about, and for some reason this mysterious cult is trying to kill both Caina and these children, which pulls her deeper into the mystery. So that is the stakes and the conflict, and that is how I was able to build the book around them. #4: Our fourth tip is to just start. Just pick a time, grab your laptop or your notebook or whatever, and just start writing down an outline for your short story or a synopsis. Don't research things about your story while you're outlining. You can just write “TO BE RESEARCHED LATER” in capital letters, which is what I do sometimes. Don't research the perfect way to make an outline, just sit down and make an outline. How I outline personally is what I usually do is I have the central conflict in mind, like the example with Rivah, and then I sit down and write a synopsis of what I want to happen and then I chop up the synopsis into chapters and I go from there. My outlines tend to be about 1,000 to 2,000 words long, depending on the length of the book.   For example, Shield of Deception, which I just published, was on the longer side. It came to about 120,000 words and the outline was about 2,000 words. And it basically started out as a long synopsis I wrote, and then I chopped up the synopsis into chapters and went from there. I included major story beats, where the characters were going to go, and what they did. It doesn't get too detailed. Each chapter…the book had 30 chapters. So each chapter generally was described with about 80 words in the outline, maybe a hundred words, depending on what goes on. The detail varies. Basically, like in a chapter outline, I'll say “Character X comes and confronts Character Y and then they fight.” Then I will extemporize and make up the conversation when I actually get to the writing.   What I try to include in all the outlines is story beats that have to be in the story. The character has to be here or the plot doesn't make sense, or they have to go this location or it's a massive plot hole, or they have to think of this or it causes a plot hole, that kind of thing, which is part of the value of the outlining process is that it forces you to think of these things in advance. What I don't include is that I don't get too super detailed because to return to the Brandon Sanderson example from earlier in the show, when you get to the actual scene, there is a bit of discovery writing, like where I'll write where Character X confronts Character Y about whatever they're arguing about. Then the actual conversation I will just write when I arrive there.   #5: And our fifth and final tip, try a different style of outlining if you're struggling. There are different outlining techniques and styles out there. Here are two examples.   There's the Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson, which is where you start with a one sentence summary, build up to a paragraph, and continue to add detail in depth. There's also Dean Koontz's story structure from his book, How to Write Bestselling Fiction. His story structure is:   Get your character into trouble as quickly as possible Their plans backfire Things escalate until defeat seems inevitable Victory against all odds   If you're having trouble starting an outline, that might be a good way to do it. That said, there is no magic bullet. There is not a magic outlining style or perfect outlining style that will guarantee success. So don't get lost in endless reading or studying different kinds of outlines. A finished outline is better than waiting for a perfect one. And in that vein, a book that you have actually written, even if it's not as cool as you want it to be, is still infinitely better than a book that exists only in your head. And all that said, those five tips for outlining, I'm about to do all that myself. There is in the tech industry a phrase called “eating the dog food” or “eating your own dog food,” which means if you make a product and sell a product, you should probably be using the product a great deal. And Microsoft in particular was known for leaning on this. And for myself, I'm going to be doing everything I just talked about here because over the next few days, I'll be writing the outline for Shield of Battle, which at the moment consists of only four sentences I jotted down when I had ideas. I'll be applying all those techniques myself to write the outline for Shield of Battle, and hopefully it will work well for me. I think it will. I think these tips, if you want to start outlining your novels before you write them, would hopefully be helpful for you as well.   So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, we continue our November Writing Challenge, and take a look at the most common roadblocks writers face. We also check in with our transcriptionist, and see how she is progressing in our November Writing Challenge. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 227 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November the 15th, 2024, and today we are discussing part three of our November Writing Challenge, which will deal with overcoming roadblocks in your writing progress. First we'll have an update on my current writing projects and then we will have Question of the Week, and then we'll get to our main topic of overcoming roadblocks. First up, writing projects. I am almost/very nearly done with Cloak of Illusion. In fact, I would have finished completely yesterday, but I had some unexpected home repairs come up and now that those are resolved, as soon as this podcast recording is completed, I'm hoping to finish up completely on Cloak of Illusion and publish it this weekend. So hopefully when this show comes out on Monday the 18th, the book should be showing up on the various ebook stores. Be sure to subscribe to my new release newsletter as well and you will get a free Nadia short story called Trick or Treat in ebook form. I am 24,000 words into Orc Hoard, which will be the next Rivah book, and I'm hoping to have that out in December as my final book of 2024. My secondary project while I'm working on that will also be Shield of Deception because I am hoping to have that out as my first book in 2025. Hard to believe we're about halfway through the 2020s already. In audiobook news, Shield of Conquest came out this week and you should be able to get it at all the usual audiobook stores, and that is excellently narrated by Brad Wills. Cloak of Spears, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy, should be out before too much longer as well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:01:36 Question of the Week Now on to Question of the Week, which had a lot of responses this week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: do you buy any hardback books? No wrong answers, obviously. I asked this question because I was reading an article about for many traditionally published authors, hardbacks used to be the primary source of royalties. Nowadays, for many authors, that has been superseded by audiobooks. Since I'm indie, my main source of revenue has always been ebooks. We had many different responses to this question. JL says: I only read ebooks now. I have not bought a physical book in over a decade. Surabhi says: Hardcovers, being very expensive, are a big no-no for me. I'd love to be able to afford hardcovers, it's always either paperbacks or ebooks. Justin says: If I'm getting paper, I will do my best to make it hardback. Paperback books have a limited lifespan and number of readings in them compared to hardback books. Most of my book purchasing is ebooks but reference works and great stories get the hardback treatment. Mary says: Only if there's no paperback. Dave says: Ebooks and audiobooks all the way. They're generally cheaper or easier to read, or with audiobooks I can do other things while I listen. Also as I get older, being able to increase the font size makes it easier to read. I definitely agree with Dave on that, let me tell ya. Jenny says: Can't afford it usually. My hardcover budget goes to RPG books. I myself do have quite a few RPG books, which is amusing because I don't actually play the game but I just like looking at the artwork. Juana says: Yes. I have 60+ signed editions of authors I like. Some paperbacks of the Frostborn series (Wonder who wrote those?). That is indeed a mystery. Catriona says: I used to collect hardbacks of favorite authors- buy each new release e.g. Terry Pratchett. But when I moved from Hong Kong to Thailand I got rid of most of my fiction books and bought the Kindle versions. Shipping after COVID was just extortionate! Morgan says: I don't really buy physical books anymore. My brain is too fried to read so I mostly do audiobooks while I work. I only have so much money, so it is hard to justify buying a physical copy of a book I already have the audio copy for when I know I probably won't physically read it. Gary says: I prefer hardbacks. When buying new though, I generally buy paperbacks unless it is for reference or one of my favorite authors. I always check though because now the hardbacks are often not much more. Jeanne says: Depends on the book. I would totally invest in hardcover copies of Lord of the Rings, for example. I am currently investing in leatherbound versions of the Word on Fire Bible, which is a step up from the hardcover. Authors I don't know or who I read for light fun, I'll get as ebooks. Marilyn says: No, but used to buy only hardback books. Ran out of room on my bookshelves and didn't like to get rid of my books. I ended up buying an ereader. I have 1,729 books. I do have a few hardbacks but not many. Not everything is in an electronic format. When I used to travel, my suitcase would be full of books. Now I have room for clothes. That is one nice advantage of the ebook revolution. Back in the day when I would pack for a trip, I would have to choose which books I would bring but now you can just bring your phone and you're set. MG says: If I can get a hardback I do, but I haven't bought any recently. Barbara says: I purchase very few print books these days and those I do purchase tend to be theology related. Whether I purchase hard or soft bound print books will depend on the availability and price. And since I'm no longer in seminary (I graduated in 2021), my theology books tend to be digital because that's what I read. If I purchase print books, I'd run out of room to store them. Especially since I'm already out of bookshelf space. Michael says: Not really, not anymore. They take up too much space. I might buy a very posh one if it looks amazing (stuff from the Folio Society perhaps) but that's it. Bonnie says: I mainly read ebooks now. I think the last hardcover I bought was Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon. Jeff says: Since I got a Kindle in 2010, I haven't bought a physical book. I am approaching 500 ebooks. I was a SF Book Club member for many, many years so I do have hundreds of hardcover books. A lot of them are stored in totes because of lack of room. Juan says: Used to. Space is a factor now. So now only for my son because I don't want him to have an electronic device in his face so much, but usually the first thing I do at a bookstore when I see a good book is look for it on Apple Books. Usually half the price or so. Always less expensive as well. Barbara says: Used to buy lots of books, got at least 3,00 but with arthritis in my hands, I'm now stuck with ebooks. Got at least 3,000 of them, too. I've got to get rid of some of my physical books, but I'll still keep the ones that aren't replaceable. John says: I only buy collectible editions at this point, or if there isn't an ebook for something I want to reread (but then it's usually paperback). Sometimes old hardbacks have been cheaper than the Kindle versions. When I reread Wheel of Time a few years ago in anticipation of the Amazon series that was the case. Ended up just donating the books just a couple of years later. Carol says: I do love the feel of a hardcover book, the smell, the sound of pages turning, but I'm fully converted to ebooks. So convenient, can read anywhere, carry everywhere, so sadly I haven't bought a physical book for years. Cheryl says: I only have hardbacks of the “classics” as collections to hand down to my grandchildren. Haven't bought any paper versions of books for a few years now and they were paperbacks. Most were on Kindle. Venus says: I will buy certain books in hardcover but only the ones I wish to have available after a collapse of society. David says: I have always preferred hardback, but space constraints have left only those of my favorite authors. I have over 2,000 books on my Kindle. Michael says: I do. For myself, I do buy hardbacks but still very, very selectively. If Timothy Zahn, Jim Butcher, and a few other select authors I've been reading for decades have a new hardcover, I'll buy it. Otherwise, it's ebooks or paperbacks. For nonfiction books, I'm a bit less choosy. If I read say, a historical ebook and liked it, I might get the hardback or possibly the paperback to keep as a reference book. It's interesting from the general consensus of the comments that it seems like ebooks are the dominant format for books now and that if you really want to know if you're someone's favorite author or not, see if they buy your hardbacks. Given the expense and space premium of hardbacks, that's how you know they really like your book.   00:07:43: Main Topic of the Week: November Writing Challenge Now on our main topic of the week, week three of our November Writing Challenge. The topic we are discussing this week is overcoming roadblocks. If you're not familiar with our podcast series for November, you can listen to the previous two episodes, and we have a short summary here. If you feel like you're missing out when others are working on bigger writing challenges this month and you want to start writing but not to feel overwhelmed, a smaller writing challenge for the absolute beginner, 300 words a day (or some other small number of your choosing). The key is that it should be small and something you can manage daily. As I mentioned on previous episodes with this topic, I wonder if National Novel of Writing Month is akin do a sort of crash diet for people where you can lose weight very quickly, let's say like five pounds in a month, but then once you do that, you go back to your old habits. In fact, you go back to your old habits with as much force as before and you end up gaining 10 pounds and you're worse off than you were before. I think a more gradual writing challenge might be akin to losing one pound a month, but you keep it off and that adds up over time. So follow along with our podcast transcriptionist who has never finished writing a book and feels overwhelmed at the ideas of starting one. We can follow her progress and see what advice I have for her as she faces writing challenges. So week three, overcoming roadblocks. If you've ever done any writing or you've ever had anything to write, as you know, there are many roadblocks that can come up to impede your writing progress. The first ones we'll address are logistical roadblocks and we'll recap some points from Episode 220: 8 Tips For Finishing Your Rough Draft. Perhaps one of the biggest roadblocks is time. It's trying to find the time to write. I found is a good idea to schedule your writing time and take advantage of smaller moments of opportunity to write. There is a difference between the perfect time to write and the available time to write. As I've said many times before, the perfect is the enemy of the possible or even the achievable. You might have in your head the image of the perfect time to write and the perfect environment. That may take a lot of work to achieve and be difficult to find. Additionally, I found that many people in their days have what tend to be wasted chunks of time that you kind of have to waste based on the circumstances, like you're in a waiting room, you're on hold, or you are sitting in a room with nothing to do. You have to watch for somebody to arrive or wait for the phone to ring, that kind of thing. There are a lot of ways to pass the time that way. If you're in, for example, the doctor's waiting room, you see everyone sitting on there on their phones reading the news or whatever, but that could be an excellent time to get some writing done. You could obtain a cheap laptop like a netbook type laptop or you could even teach yourself to write on your phone with your thumbs. Those kind of chunks of wasted time throughout the day are an excellent time to squeeze out a couple hundred words and if you can squeeze out a couple hundred words every day, that will add up very quickly. The biggest enemy of finding writing time I found are the many distractions we have in our day-to-day lives. And in fact, I was just talking about your phone. If you have your phone with you, that's a built-in distraction machine where you could maybe write 15 words and then reward yourself by checking your email or your Facebook or whatever. And then before you know it, you've been on your phone for 20 minutes and your writing time has disappeared. The same thing obviously can happen if you're writing on a laptop or a desktop computer or whatever. To manage these distractions, there's a couple of different tricks. You could just shut off the internet on your phone for a while and not turn it on again until you've reached your writing goal. If you find being distracted on your phone or your computer is a consistent problem, you could use apps or browser extensions to manage digital distractions that will prevent, say notifications from interrupting you, whether from email or turning off the internet and keeping from getting into it until a set period of time has passed. For environmental distractions (and what I mean by environmental distractions are noise, people interrupting you and so forth), it can be a good idea to find a place where you'll face fewer interruptions. At various times, I have written in a school or a university or a public library where people tend not to bother strangers too much and therefore, if you sit quietly and get on with your typing, no one's going to bother you. Some people enjoy writing in a coffee shop. I've never really found that to be an enjoyable experience. I have done that many times based on what the circumstances were at the time, but if it was up to me, my favorite writing place would be in my office with the door shut and headphones on and music playing and I'm just writing away. But life doesn't always give us that luxury, so I have written in other locations, but if you can figure out the best way to give yourself a distraction free writing environment, even if it's just noise canceling headphones, that might be the way to go.   Another thing to watch out for that can eat up your time is writing adjacent tasks, things that are connected to writing but not actually writing itself, such as researching, outlining, reading about writing, listening to podcasts about writing, et cetera. These are all keeping you from the goal of getting your words down, which is and the ultimate purpose of our November Writing Challenge, to get your words done every day. Some of these things may be necessary, but you can do them later and some of them are not necessary and not helpful to your productivity, like reading about writing or social media relating to writing or authors is only giving you the illusion of productivity rather than actual productivity. There may be value in these activities, but they are not helping you get the words down on the page.   So let's move on to what could be a more difficult type of roadblocks, the mental roadblocks, roadblocks where you just don't feel confident or you don't feel like you want to write or you don't even feel like you're good at writing and you're wasting your time by writing. So motivation is a thing to consider. It's like you might want to write down a few reasons why you started a writing challenge in November. Why do you want to write? Why is this important to you? Do you want to be able to finish a novel and say that you finished a novel? Do you want to create something cool that's similar to the vision of the creative things you see in your head when you think about it? And what's the best outcome of you writing each day and what's the best-case scenario of what will happen if you keep writing? It might be a good idea to consider all of these things. If you feel bad at writing or feel that you're not good enough, that seems to be a bigger problem for many people. There are a couple tips and tricks that you can use to work around that. The first thing is to don't revise as you go. Don't revise, don't look back. Just keep going. Get it all down on page as fast as you can and then keep going. And the secret is if you're writing a rough draft, you can ignore your inner critic because the point of the rough draft is to get all the words on the page and then you fix them later in editing. An amusing anecdote about that-one of my audiobook narrators wanted to get caught up on projects and he asked if I could send him the rough draft chapters and then as I was writing the book and then he could narrate the rough draft chapters and then he could make any changes I made in editing later. I had to turn him down because the truth is I do a lot of editing on my rough drafts, like Cloak of Illusion was originally 96,000 words, and I think when all the editing is done, it'll be like 94,000 words, maybe 93,500. So that's a lot of things eliminated. I moved around a lot of scenes. I changed a character's name six times, which is one of the reasons why I had to turn down that idea from the narrator because when I introduced a new character, sometimes I change the character's name four or five times during the course of writing until I'm finally satisfied that this is what the character's name should be. So imagine having to go back and rerecord that all the time, but that returns to my original point, where it's best to just ignore your inner critic while you are writing and just get all the words down on page and you can sort them through later. I found editing to be something of a less harrowing process than writing the rough draft. A metaphor I've used before is that a couple years ago, actually, well more than a couple years now, I moved into a third-floor apartment with no elevator, and so I had to carry all my books up those stairs to the new apartment, which since I had a lot of books at the time, was a lot of work (this was before ebooks). Once all the books were carried upstairs to the apartment, only then could I take them out of the boxes and put them on the shelves. That was a lot easier than carrying all those books up three flights of stairs, let me tell you. But I use that as a metaphor to compare the writing process, the first draft is carrying all the books up the stairs and then arranging them on the library shelves as the editing process. Another metaphor that people have found helpful is that the rough draft is like building a sand castle. You first have to drag all the sand to your sandbox and only then is it time to start building the sandcastle. You got to fill up that sandbox first. Now what to do if you hate what you're writing, you absolutely hate it. You don't like what you're doing and you're dragging yourself to the word processor every day. It might be time to ask yourself a couple of hard questions. And the hardest one is, is this really what you want to write? Are you writing something that you want to write or are you trying to write something that you think would sell well or market well to the audience? I talked a bit about this way back in Episode 191: The Worst Writing Advice, about writing to market. Writing to market, if you go too far with it, is a bad idea because by the time you finish and the book is ready to sell, the market may have already grown tired of the trend and moved on to dystopian mermaid stories or something else. Readers also have a sense of when a story is rushed or written in a way that the author hates, not always but very often sort of picked up that the writer hated what they were writing and didn't want to be doing it. It's much better to write something that you're excited to write. You can do a little bit of writing to market in that you look what's popular and say something like, hey, romantic suspense is popular and I enjoy romantic suspense and I want to write romantic suspense. So go ahead and do that. Something else to keep in mind is that tastes change. I saw an interesting article the other day arguing that sort of cynical anti-heroes and deconstruction of popular tropes is going to become less and less popular because that was very popular in the US in the 2000s and the early 2010s when the US in general was more stable and more prosperous. Although I don't think anyone would disagree to say that the United States in the 2020s, thanks to Covid and a variety of other factors, seems to be less stable and less prosperous than it was 20 years ago. And so times are more troubled, then people have less of an appetite and troubled times for cynical anti-heroes and are more drawn to straightforward tales of noble heroes prevailing over evil, whatever the genre might be, whether fantasy or mystery or thriller or whatever. That's the kind of thing to keep in mind with how taste change. So you're really better off writing what you want to write rather than chasing trends because the trends we were just talking about went over a 20 year period. But trends on a smaller level can change very quickly within the space of a few years or even a few months. So you should write in a genre that interests you and you should write characters that you respect and characters that are dealing with an action and conflict that you find interesting. That is one way to hold your interest as you're writing is because you like the characters, you like what you're writing, and you want to see what happens next.   Another problem that you might face if you hate what you're writing is that you might be writing something boring that doesn't need to be in the book. Mystery writer Elmore Leonard famously said in his rules for writing, try to leave out the parts that readers skip. In other words, leave out the boring stuff. So if you're writing a scene and you don't enjoy writing the scene, and you're not looking forward to writing the scene, and you find it boring, maybe it's time to ask yourself: does this scene really need to be in the book? We've all read books that had scenes where it was clear the writer was trying to fill space or thought necessary to go into more detail of, for example, a thousand mile river journey than was really necessary for the plot. If something's boring, just cut it out. There's a famous story that veteran actors who are really good at their craft will sometimes convince the director to cut out dialogue when they say that the actor can convey the meaning of the scene with just the look or expression rather than clunky dialogue. And that is often the case for these experienced actors and is very often the case for writers as well. So if you find yourself struggling with a particular scene, it might just be a good idea to cut it out or sum it up in a paragraph. Like if you have difficulty writing a journey, you could say, just sum it up in a paragraph that they got on a plane and went from New York to Los Angeles. There's no reason to devote two chapters to that. So those are our tips this week for overcoming roadblocks in your writing. Let's have an update from our transcriptionist on her progress with our November writing challenge. “An episode on roadblocks is good timing because I hit some roadblocks last week. There was a day where I wasn't able to get time to write because of what was happening in real life, but since I have been averaging over my goal a day, I still averaged 363 words per day this week, even with missing a day. It took me an average of 13 minutes each day. I wrote out a plan for the challenge that said I could miss a day under specific circumstances and my word count for previous days could apply to that day or if I didn't have extra words, I would make up the words on a Saturday, so I didn't beat up myself or feel like I failed the challenge for missing a day. I had a plan for if I missed a day.” So that seems like a good approach to planning the challenge. And she had a few questions for me actually. The main question for me was: how do you manage distractions? For myself, I use a couple of different techniques. I've mentioned before when I'm writing new stuff, my main method is the Pomodoro method. That's where you set up a timer for 25 minutes, turn off the internet, and just focus on your task for 25 minutes. And I found that if I adhere properly to the Pomodoro method, I can usually get about 1,000 to 1,100 words every Pomodoro for 25 minutes. To reset my brain between Pomodoros, I will usually play Classic Super Mario Brothers on the Switch for five minutes (because you're supposed to take breaks between Pomodoros) and then back to a 25 minute Pomodoro. I do try to hit a minimum word count during the day, ideally 5,000 to 6,000. If I get more, great. If something goes wrong, I tend to have a fallback position if of like 3,000 words. That's usually good on a busy day. I do revise my goals if something comes up because sometimes things come up that you have to pay attention to immediately and it can't wait. Home repair is a big one. For example, a couple times I have this very old wooden fence on my property that I really need to get replaced, and sometimes the wind will knock something loose and a couple times I've had the wind knock the beams of a segment loose from a fence post. If I spot that right away and fix it immediately, it's not a problem. But if I miss it and the entire fence segment falls over, then that's like a couple hours, maybe even a half a day repair job to fix that. So sometimes you come across things like that that need to be addressed immediately. And if that happens, I just roll with it. I try to fix the problem as quick as I can and then try to get as many words as I can in the time that's left, which is why I talked about having a fallback position of 3,000 words if something goes wrong. Sometimes you just lose the entire day to writing until something more important comes up and that's just the way it is. But if you have a no writing day, don't despair and remember the words of Scarlet O'Hara from Gone with the Wind: Tomorrow is another day. If you have a bad writing day, that doesn't mean tomorrow has to be a bad writing day and you get another swing at the ball, so to speak. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show and Week Three of our November Writing Challenge. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Local real estate legend Woody Hogg joins Paul on the podcast. Woody and Paul talked about his many business ventures in banking, insurance, real estate and jobs he had when he was getting started such as being a taxi driver. They talked about the sports he played in high school and also during his time at East Carolina University. Woody told Paul the main three things that effect a house sale and he even added the fourth key ingredient for good measure! He also gave advice to young people that either want to sell real estate, buy real estate or both! They talked about his family and he and Paul found out they love being at the Rivah and that they are both lovers of blue crabs.

In this week's episode, we take a look at the best methods for finding ad graphics for book advertising. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 224 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 25th, 2024 and today we are discussing the best methods for sourcing images for ad graphics. We'll also have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. Let's go right to that. I am currently 61,000 words into Cloak of Illusion and am hoping to have that out before the end of November, since 61,000 words puts me about halfway through the rough draft, I think. I'm also 14,000 words into Orc Hoard, which will be the 4th Rivah book, and if all goes well, the final book I publish in 2024. In audiobook news, recording is underway for Shield of Conquest. That will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills, and it's also underway for Cloak of Spears and Ghost in the Tombs, which will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy. I think probably Cloak of Spears will come out first, but we will see how things play out for the rest of the month. So that's it. That is the update on my current writing project. Next month and next week, I want to do a new podcast series for the month of November that I'm going to call Moeller Writing Tips Month as sort of a gentler alternative to National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) for a couple of reasons. The NaNoWriMo organization has had a number of problems over the years, especially recently, so I don't feel comfortable endorsing it anymore. I've also begun to wonder if NaNoWriMo is a bit like a shock diet. If you talk to doctors and other medical experts about weight loss, they say the best way is always to make small, sustainable changes that you can keep up with over time. It's better to lose like a pound a month and keep it off than it is to lose like, 5 or 10 pounds a month in a shock crash diet only to gain it all back once you go back to your own old habits because that kind of a weighty yoyoing is very hard on the body. I wonder if National Novel Writing Month, where you write 50,000 words in a month is like that for a lot of people; it's sort of a crash diet. For someone like me, Ghost in the Tombs was my 156th novel. I typically can write a rough draft or novel in a month if I don't have anything else come up. So for me, that's normal, but for most people who don't have that kind of experience, I wonder if National Novel Writing Month would be the sort of writing equivalent of those crash diets that might leave you worse off than you were to begin with. So with that in mind, next month I'll start a podcast series discussing gentler ways one can ease into the regular habit of writing. More discussion on that topic next week and next month.   00:02:45 Main Topic: Sourcing Ad Graphics Now onto our main topic for the week, sourcing ad graphics. Before we get into that, a disclaimer. I am not a lawyer and none of what I'm about to say is actual legal advice. You obtain actual legal advice by hiring a lawyer who is qualified to practice in your jurisdiction. It is very important (to continue the disclaimer) to be on firm footing with the copyright of your ad image. If you don't own the image or the right license to use it, you're infringing on someone's copyright and they can respond either legally or through the places where your book is sold. This is less of a problem with ad images than is with book covers, but it still can happen. With that in mind, some of the free stock images sites have restrictions on commercial use or modification of the images. It's a good idea to read the licenses carefully. Some of these sites have often not gotten the appropriate clearances from the models in the pictures, so be cautious of using images with identifiable faces from those types of sites. If you're not familiar with the legal term, a model release is when a model or someone in a stock photograph appears in the stock photograph. They sign a release that gives the rights for their likeness to be used for the commercial image and not all free stock image sites do that. Good stock image sites like Shutterstock or iStock Photo or Dreamstime will clearly state on the image page whether or not a model release has been included. If a model release has not been included, you can't use it for commercial purposes, and though it is not terribly likely, you can open yourself up to legal liability that way. In that vein, be also cautious about Creative Commons sites, since copyrighted work frequently ends up on those sites. This is also true of the free stock image sites, where sometimes people will pirate images and post them there. Also, many Creative Commons photos are restricted from commercial use, modification, and/or the artists require attribution. Tread carefully and make sure you understand the conditions of using images with any of the various Creative Commons licenses. And before we get into further details, it's also important to understand the difference between creating book covers and creating ad images. The number one thing to remember about ad images is that ads are ephemeral, and they should change often because you often get diminishing returns for using the same ad graphics. Ads can be tailored for different audiences. Ads can be tailored for different platforms. In fact, you kind of have to tailor ads for different platforms because, for example, Bookbub and Facebook, the two ad platforms where indie authors are most likely to use ad graphics, have very different requirements for images. People are more tolerant of AI images in ads than in book covers, but AI is very polarizing, and if you use an ad image that is easily and immediately identifiable as AI, you will probably get some pushback for that. So with all that in mind, let's first look at some free places to get images for ads and then some paid options. The number one free option is public domain images from the US government pages. It is the law of the land in the United States that images produced by the US government or federal employees in the course of their duties (with some exceptions) are in the public domain. Some of these are great as using as backgrounds or components of an ad. For example, are you a sci-fi author in need of a planet you can put behind a spaceship? You're in luck; NASA has plenty of those images and you can find them quite easily. However, sometimes U.S. government websites use stock images or government created images that have some types of restrictions. For example, NASA forbids use of images of current astronauts for commercial purposes for any reason and has some pretty strong feelings about people using their images to create NFTs. You do not want to go through life getting sued by the federal government, so you probably want to avoid that. Sources that are easiest to be confident in, images that are explicitly included in public domain collections on U.S. government websites such as the Library of Congress free to use and reuse sets website or NASA's Images Hub (this page also includes some guidance on NASA specific researchers) and the National Gallery of Art Open Access Images page. All of these have ample supplies of images that are in the public domain, and you can look over them for images you can use for ads or components of ads. Another free option is other public domain collections. Some libraries and some museums have created public domain image collections or let you filter for public domain images on their site. Very large institutions tend to be cautious about using this type of copyright language and their staff generally have training on what is or is not public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has a public domain filter on their search page and The Met museum in New York has an Open Access filter in their search page where you can look for images in the public domain. The third free option and one that I have done myself a lot is take your own photos and use your own photographs for backgrounds components in an ad, etcetera. Since you're the creator, you hold the copyright. I have done this in a lot of the books I have published in 2024 and the ad images I created in 2024. A fair bit of them have my own photos because I took some trips to some fairly scenic parts of the country this year. I was fortunate enough to be able to do that, so while I was there, I took lots of pictures with an eye towards using them in ad images and book covers because as you get more practice with graphic design, your projects tend to have more layers to them. You often come across things and think well, this wouldn't be a good image by itself but would be a great background or great foreground and I can use pieces of it to assemble a better picture. So I've done that a fair bit and since I own the rights to all the photographs, I am one hundred percent in the clear. Now let's move on to a few free or low-cost options and one that might be a bit controversial. In fact, it is controversial: AI generated images. The pros of this are that the US government has consistently ruled so far (this might change after the election, but it might not) is that AI images cannot be copyrighted in any capacity. This means you can quickly make eye-catching art that matches your specifications instead of hunting for stock art. The con is that many people will assume that the book is AI generated if they see an AI generated ad image and many people strongly dislike AI art in general, or object to AI art on principle, viewing it as a form of theft. For myself, I've decided that my personal ethical line on this (barring changes in circumstances or laws) is that I will not sell anything that was created by AI. If I am selling anything or giving away a free ebook, it is 100% written by me and the cover was either made by me or someone I hired to do it. And in the audio books I sell, they are 100% narrated by an actual human being. That said, I have, I'd say, from time to time, used AI for ad images for the reasons we've discussed. Ads are ephemeral and phased out pretty quickly, but I have found that it's generally unwise to use an unmodified AI image, because it has such a very clear and obvious AI look to it. It's a good idea if you are going to use an AI image for an ad to run it through Photoshop a bit and change the look and maybe eliminate some of the more obvious AI tells such as extra fingers or misshapen eyes, that kind of thing. So if you are comfortable using AI, it can be a good source of ad images with some work, but otherwise, if you're not comfortable with it and you think your audience would be offended by it, it's probably best to avoid it. So those are the free/slightly free options, and now it's time to move on to the official paid options. The first paid option we're going to discuss is Shutterstock. You pay by image. It's simpler than the credit systems that Dreamstime uses, and the interface is easy to use. I have not generally used Shutterstock all that much because it tends to be a bit more expensive than the other options. However, you can find some very high-quality photos there if you are patient enough to look. The second paid option we're going to look at is Dreamstime. You can either pay images a la carte with credits you buy or by subscription. I have used Dreamstime quite a bit and quite a few of my covers have images I have licensed from Dreamtime. I'd say the pros of Dreamstime is that it has a very large and very strong library. The con (and this is true of stock photo sites in general) is that it's very easy to find an image that is like 95% perfect, but that 5% would be a lot of work to fix in Photoshop or just isn't right for some reason. Additionally, I don't agree with this decision on Dreamstime where they've begun including a lot of AI generated stuff on their page. It's clearly labeled as AI and you can use filters in the search engine to filter out the AI stuff, but if you're looking for stuff for covers because like I've said before, my personal ethical line (barring changes in law) is that I won't sell anything that was made by AI. If I'm looking for elements for a cover, it's really annoying to have to double check to make sure that the image was not AI generated, which is another good reason to use your own photos because you can then be certain it wasn't AI generated. The final paid option that many authors and many professional graphic designers use is Adobe Stock. Adobe Stock is probably the gold standard for stock photos. It has a large library with a range of image types and very clear license terms. The flip side is it's expensive. You can often include it with an Adobe subscription (which is in itself quite expensive) and then you get a limited number of image credits every month and that can be quickly expensive. If you have an Adobe subscription, you can also use Adobe's Firefly AI image generating service. It's not quite as powerful as Midjourney or some of the other ones available, but that said, it is trained only on stuff that Adobe technically has the legal rights to do. In my experiments with it, I found that Adobe Firefly's AI generator is not good at generating scenes. It is good at generating components of scenes, like you could tell it to generate a forest or a beach or a mountain, or a castle or something, and that'd be pretty good. Then you can modify it and add in other elements later, but it's not so good at generating a finished scenes the way that something like Midjourney would be. Now that we've looked at sources for stock images, let's look at a couple of paid sites that can help you use the ad images you have found. Obviously, you can work on them in Photoshop or GIMP or Affinity Photo editor, but those are fairly complicated programs that can take quite a bit of effort to learn. There are websites that now specialize in helping you to create specific ad graphics. I'd say the most valuable one for indie authors is Book Brush. It is a specialized image editing website designed for indie authors. It lets you make things like 3D covers of your books or audiobooks to include as part of an ad, and it also has a variety of ad templates, where you will have ad templates that are the right size and resolution for the various ad platforms, and then you can drop in the elements you need to make an appropriate ad graphic. So if you're an indie author who just wants to make ad graphics or maybe even some basic covers, Book Brush would be well worth your time to investigate, in my opinion. A second option would be Canva Pro. Amazon has explicitly said in their guidelines they don't like people using it for book covers, but ads are a different game and Canva is reliable for this purpose. It's good for beginners and those starting out. It's quick and easy to reuse. The downside is that since Canva is so popular, people have gotten used to the Canva look and you get bored with seeing those, especially if you've only minimally modified a template, but with some creativity, you can make an ad graphic that looks fairly nice. So that is it for this week. I hope you will find that helpful for finding sources for your ad graphics. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, we take a look at four different types of story conflict, and explore three different ways to add them to your stories. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 222 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October the 11th, 2024 and today we are discussing four kinds of story conflict and three ways you can bring conflict into your books. Before we get into that, we will have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects and then do Question of the Week. The good news is that I am done with the first pass of editing on Ghost in the Tombs and I'm ready to start on the second. This is Episode 222 and if all goes well, I think Ghost in the Tombs will be out shortly around the time Episode 223 comes out. So second-half of October, we're on track for that. I am 28,000 words into Cloak of Illusion and that will be my main project once Ghost in the Tombs is published. I'm also 8,000 words into Orc Hoard, the fourth Rivah book, and that'll be the main project once the Cloak of Illusion is done. In audiobook news, Shield of Darkness is now out. You can get on Audible, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Chirp, Kobo, Payhip, and all the other major audiobook stores. That is excellently narrated by Brad Wills. Recording is underway for Cloak of Spears and that should hopefully be out before the end of the year. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:01:22 Question of the Week Let's move on to the Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics. This week's question: if you listen to audiobooks, where do you listen to them? While cooking or driving, commuting, or perhaps walking? The inspiration for this question was that I was looking at some old sales spreadsheets from 2020 (that was a fun year, wasn't it?) and I was sure the start of COVID was going to wipe out the audiobook market because a lot of commuting was temporarily going away. Except this turned out not to be the case, and audiobook sales overall actually went up during COVID. So clearly I was wrong about how most audiobook listening took place while commuting. We had a few answers to this question. David said: Mostly while I'm home prepping and eating a meal, sometimes I'm in my vehicle enjoying a coffee while I drive somewhere. Sometimes when I go out to eat by myself, I'll listen on headphones. So it's when my hands are otherwise busy and it beats listening to music or TV. JLH says: I pretty much only listen to audiobooks while driving. While home, I prefer to read. I'll listen to music when I'm at the gym. Tom says: Anywhere and everywhere. Driving car and tractor, at work, when walking (single earpiece only), and when at the gym. MW says: Usually while driving. I prefer reading and drawing to listening, but those aren't an option when driving my car, so a podcast is usually it. For myself, these days I usually listen to audiobooks when making long road trips by myself where I don't need the GPS to navigate. That's because if I'm going someplace I've never been before and need the GPS to navigate, it is highly distracting to have the audiobook and the GPS cutting back and forth between each other while you're trying to figure out where you're going. That said, long drives to places where I know I'm going happen less than it did, so I generally listen to audiobooks less than I than I did before COVID. That said, in 2023 through 2024 I listened to the new audiobooks Andy Serkis recorded for the Lord of the Rings and was blown away by how good they were. Definitely recommended. So that is Question of the Week. 00:03:21 Main Topic of the Week: Story Conflicts So now on to this week's main topic: four types of story conflict and three ways you can add those conflicts to your story. So as we all know and as I've mentioned many times before on this podcast and on my blog, a story is nothing without conflict. Conflict is what drives the story. There's a story that when he was writing The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien probably would have wound up with a 1200 page description of a Hobbit dinner party if C.S. Lewis hadn't kind of gently urged him to add more conflict and have things happen to the story. I'm not entirely sure if that's true or not, but the point is quite valid that if you want to have an interesting story, you need a conflict. You need the characters to act and respond to that conflict, and that will help drive your story. Most stories also have more than one type of conflict. You can have internal conflict and external conflict and different kinds of internal versus external conflicts. For example, my novel Half-Elven Thief contains three of the four types of conflict we will discuss. I will mention those when I get to them. So let's look at four classic types of story conflict. #1: Person versus internal conflicts. What does that mean? That means the protagonist is facing challenges that test their core values and beliefs and must face their character flaws in order to move forward. There are numerous different types: midlife crisis, a character who has to overcome self-doubt, or a character who is confronted with a strong temptation or an otherwise moral test. There are numerous good examples from fiction. A relatively recent example would be the movie Inside Out, which shows a child trying to handle major changes in her life. She tries to face them by shutting out Sadness in favor of Joy, but finds that accepting all of her emotions is actually what's healthy and the internal conflict in that movie is the character in question learning to accept all of her emotions rather than trying to suppress sadness, and you know, live with sort of false joy. Another very classic example would be Lord of the Rings, where several different characters have internal conflicts. Perhaps the biggest one, of course, is Frodo trying to resist the power of the ring throughout the trilogy. Another big one that decides, of course, the book is at the end when Sam really, really wants to kill Gollum. As the narration in the text suggests, killing Gollum is probably the smartest thing he could do in that moment, but he can't within himself bring himself to strike Gollum. So he lets him go, which turns out of course to be very decisive to the plot. We mentioned before that Half-Elven Thief contains three of the four conflicts types below. Half-Elven Thief does have an internal conflict for Rivah where she has to balance her desire for financial stability and security with her conscience, because, though she's a thief, there are many more ruthless and immoral ways she can make money. She thinks about this throughout the book and the sequels, but never can quite bring herself to do that. The second major type of conflict is person versus others. And what it is a person's goals are being thwarted by another person. This is easily the most common kind of conflict, because in many ways it's the easiest to write. You can have anything ranging from a superhero fighting a super villain, you know, Iron Man versus Thanos. Most of us in our lives aren't going to hopefully experience conflict on that scale, but that is essentially person versus others in the form of Ironman versus Thanos. It could be not such a severe or violent conflict but a rivalry between, say, two sales reps or two City Council people where they will never come to blows, but they're both competing for the same goals or trying to promote harmony or trying to get someone to collaborate. Examples are numerous. Sherlock Holmes versus Professor Moriarty. Conan the Barbarian versus Thulsa Doom. Batman and The Joker and many other range of potential conflicts ranging from like we said before, super villains fighting each other to smaller and more intimate conflicts where two people are competing for the same goal in a way that won't result in, you know, violence or supervillainy, but is then nonetheless emotionally significant for both of them. And once again, we can use an example from Half-Elven Thief here and in Half-Elven Thief, Rivah's main adversary in the book is Marandis, who is the sort of official of the thieves' guild that she reports to who hates her and wants to find any excuse to sell her into slavery. She's managed to avoid that so far. So that is another example from Half-Elven Thief of person versus others. #3: The third common type of conflict is person versus environment. And what does that mean? It means the person is facing a conflict based on something that's happening in the environment. Types can include tornadoes, floods, hurricanes (which we are sadly seeing in real life right now), a pandemic, or getting stranded on desert island or a remote alien planet, that kind of thing. A famous example would be the 1995 movie Twister about surviving tornadoes. Twister is a little bit of a ridiculous movie, though I am looking forward to seeing the sequel Twisters, which I actually rented and will watch tonight. In my own books, I have not used conflict based on the environment too often, since I tend to prefer person versus others or person versus internal conflict. Probably the closest thing I have done would be some of the dungeon crawls, like in Frostborn: The Broken Mage where surviving a dungeon is a part of the plot, but in Ghost in the Tombs, there will be some person versus environment and what it will be we shall have to read and find out. #4: The fourth type of conflict is person versus supernatural and what that is, where the protagonist of the story must face a god or supernatural force of evil. Obviously, a fantasy book where someone fights an evil wizard is one of those. It also turns up in horror novels pretty frequently, where the protagonist is haunted by ghosts or haunted by vampires or werewolves, or Cthulhu or something like that. Examples are abundant. Maybe one of the oldest ones is The Odyssey, where Odysseus battles supernatural forces attempting to keep him from returning home. In Half-Elven Thief, once again we have a supernatural threat where Rivah is compelled to steal an item from a powerful wizard, and she has to face that wizard's powers and find a way to survive them. So with four types of conflict, let's see if we take a look at three different ways to add those types of conflict to your stories. #1: Put your characters in an unfamiliar or hostile environment. For example in my books, in Frostborn, Calliande in Frostborn: The Gray Knight wakes up in a world far different from the one she has known and must act to protect herself and her original quest. There are many different ways you can do that. If you are writing a mystery novel, for example, you could have your protagonist be transferred to another police precinct where no one likes him or her. If you're writing science fiction, the options for hostile environments are abundant, considering that most of space is lethal to humans. There are other genre suitable ways you could do that. #2: Force your characters into making decisions, and if you really want conflict, have them start off by making the wrong ones. This can be a good way to do that, so long as you don't make your character out to be an idiot. People make bad decisions all the time for what they think are good reasons, and if you can convincingly convey that, that is a good source of conflict. An example from my own books in the Dragonskull series, Gareth faces conflict with his parents over his rather ill-considered romantic relationship with Lady Iseult Toraemus. Then he has further conflict when that ends very badly. #3: Have your characters face an external conflict in different ways, which then creates an additional conflict. When two different people face an external conflict, they may undergo a different internal conflict over the problem and decide to react to it in different ways that create additional conflict. For example, in Stealth and Spells Online: Creation in the back story, the protagonist Noah Carver finds out that the game he was working on, Sevenfold Sword Online, was being used for illegal activities. He wanted to blow the whistle on it, but his wife didn't want to lose her job over it, so she immediately divorced him. That led to a new external conflict between the two of them, since they both wanted to deal with the problem in different ways and more internal conflicts for Noah since of course, he is our protagonist. So those are four different types of conflict and three ways you can apply them to the story and hopefully you will find that helpful as you think about writing your own stories and books. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. I reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's special autumn episode, I share samples from four of my audiobooks. Each audiobook is the second book in its series! 1.) Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, narrated by Brad Wills. 2.) Ghost in the Flames, narrated by Hollis McCarthy. 3.) Wizard-Thief, narrated by Leanne Woodward. 4.) Cloak of Wolves, narrated by Hollis McCarthy. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 221 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October, the 2nd 2024 and today we are sharing a second Audiobook Sampler Platter. Back in June in Episode 204, I did not have time to record an episode that week so what I did was I made a quick update and then assembled the samples together of four of my audiobooks, and then patched that together as an episode. People seemed to like that. Once again four months later, I find myself without time to record a full-length clip. So this week, what I'm going to do is put together a second Audiobook Sampler Platter. This time will be 4 samples from the second audiobooks in some of my series, so we will have that coming up later in the show after I offer an update on my current writing projects right now. I'm pleased to report that the rough draft of Ghost in the Tombs is done at about 93,000 words. I have also written a companion short story called Ghost Tablet and my newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Ghost Tablet when Ghost in the Tombs comes out. So now is a good time to sign up for my new release newsletter. If all goes well, Ghost in the Tombs should be out in the second half of October. I'm also 25,000 words into Cloak of Illusion, which will be the 12th Cloak Mage book and that should probably come out in November, if all goes well. I am 5,000 words into Orc Hoard, which will be the fourth Rivah book and I'm hoping to have that out in December In audiobook news, I'm pleased to report that after some processing delays, Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling is finally available at all audiobook stores. It's excellently narrated by C.J. McAllister. You can get it at Audible, Amazon, Google Play, Apple, Chirp, Spotify, and all the other usual audiobook stores. Recording just started yesterday for Shield of Conquests. That will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills. Shield of Darkness, the audiobook of that is done and is currently working its way through processing. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects and now on to our audiobook samples. We shall have four audiobook samples this episode from the second book in four of my different series. The first sample will be Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, the second book of the Dragonskull series (as narrated by Brad Wills). The second audiobook sample will be Ghost in the Flames, the second book in the Ghost series, as narrated by Hollis McCarthy. The third sample will be Wizard Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series as narrated by Leanne Woodward. The final sample will be Cloak of Wolves, the second book in the Cloak Mage series, again narrated by Hollis McCarthy. So those will be coming up very shortly. Before we get to that, I'd just like to say thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and enjoyable. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week with hopefully a full-length episode. And until then, here are our four audiobook samples.

In this week's episode, I take a look at why I don't set up preorders and I usually don't write prequels. I also share my thoughts about the video game STARFIELD. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 219 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September the 20th, 2024 and today we are discussing why I don't set up preorders for my books and why I prefer not to write prequels. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have an update on my current writing projects, Question of the Week, then we'll talk about a video game I recently enjoyed, and then we'll plunge on ahead to our main topic. First up, current writing and audiobook projects. I am pleased to report that Shield of Conquest is now completely finished and available. You can get it at all the usual ebook stores. It has been selling quite briskly and has been receiving good reviews. So thank you all for that. My next main project, which you can probably guess if you've been listening to the show for the last few months, is Ghost in the Tombs. As of this writing, I am 62,000 words into it, which I think puts me about 62% of the way through it, because I believe the rough draft will be around 100,000 words. I'm hoping to have that out towards the middle of October, if all goes well. I'm also 21,000 words into Cloak of Illusion. That should hopefully be out in November and I've just started what will be the fourth Rivah book, Orc-Hoard. It originally had been entitled Elven Sorcerer for the fourth Rivah book, but I decided to change the title to Orc-Hoard and that will be out in either December or January, if all goes well. In audiobook news, Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling is completely done and currently working its way through processing and the various audiobook platforms. You can get it at my Payhip store right now and it should be available at all the other stores in a couple of weeks. Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling was excellently narrated by CJ McAllister. Recording is almost done on Shield of Darkness, and hopefully we can approve the final version of that next week and then that'll work its way through processing and be available before too much longer. So that's where I am with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:02:00 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is the most annoying video game enemy? Obviously, there is no profound reason behind this question, since we're talking about video games. I happened to be reading an article about the upcoming Starfield expansion, and the comments devolved into a rambling discussion of game design and most annoying enemies, which inspired this question. We had a good range of responses. Reader AM wrote in to say that her greatest video game enemy is her own hand-eye coordination. We've all been there, AM; we've all been there. Justin says: The Legend of Zelda series is a great bunch of video games, but they do have their annoying bits. I nominate the Like Like worm. To get sucked in and spit back out (minus your shield) is incredibly aggravating. I cannot count the number of shields I've lost to this adversary. Later versions steal money or health, but for me, you know, the annoyance of having to go back to town to get a replacement shield (while trying to avoid encounters) ranks up there. Legend of Zelda also has annoying characters. Navi is the most so- her cry of “Hey! Listen!” quickly becomes painful. I too remember the Like Like worm from the Legend of Zelda days and that was indeed very annoying. JD says: Cliff racers from Morrowind. Do I need to say more? Juana says: the vampire guarding the sewers in Vampire: the Masquerade-Bloodlines. You have to be maxed out in at least two disciplines to take them out. It's really difficult to get maximum disciplines. Ross says: at least for me, it's Cliff racers in Morrowind. They're so far out ahead of anything else, I can't even think of what I'd put in second place. Morgan says: not sure of all time, but in terms of more recent games, the Zoanthropes in Space Marine 2 are an absolute nightmare, especially when they come in pairs so one is always shielding the other. Jesse says: Seymour in Final Fantasy 10. Only boss I remember that you have to beat five times. Jenny says: that drum boss in Ocarina of Time. William says: Zelda 2 has no shortage of troublesome enemies, like the Iron Knuckles. It's probably for the best I never had the chance to play it back in the day without save states. Brandy says: The first multiplayer run through Diablo, where you're through the Easter Egg levels and every other flick of the mouse you're screaming “run away, run away!” or “hold still, so I might smite thee!” For myself, my answer would be those stupid Medusa Heads from the Castlevania series. If you've played any Castlevania game, you know what I'm talking about. You'll be climbing the stairs and the Medusa Head will somehow come in at exactly the right angle to avoid all your weapons and to knock you off the stairs to your death at the same time. Honestly, a lot of the old school Castlevania Games are much more enjoyable with save states on modern systems. A very strong runner up would be Lakitu from Super Mario Brothers. He's the guy in the cloud who drops all those Spiny Shells on your head. So we had quite a good range of responses this week, thought it appears that the Morrowind Cliff Racer may take the championship. 00:04:49 Thoughts on Starfield Speaking of video games, I actually wanted to talk about Starfield a little bit because I beat the main quest in Starfield this month. By my standards, this is fast. I first started playing Skyrim in 2011, and I finally beat the main quest in autumn 2020 on the Switch version, since that was during the height of COVID and there wasn't much else to do. By contrast, Starfield came out in September 2023, so I beat the main quest in just a little bit over a year. So here are my thoughts on the game. Overall, I would say I really liked it. It does capture the feel of being a competent space adventurer wandering around the galaxy. You can do bounty hunting, pirate hunting, mining, exploring, and a variety of other stuff. Back in the ‘90s, I really liked Wing Commander: Privateer, which had infinite random missions and Starfield kind of feels like an enormously expanded version of Privateer, or like Privateer with a Halo game attached to it, given the wide variety of firearms you can obtain. In the grand tradition of Bethesda Games, you don't even have to do the main quest or any of the scripted side quests. You can just wander around visiting random planets and fighting space pirates forever. Honestly, I probably spent more time playing randomly generated side missions than any of the scripted quests. That said, I very much liked some of the scripted side missions. The Vanguard plotline was the best of them, in my opinion. You have to help the United Colonies find the origins of a super deadly alien predator called the Terrormorph, and at the end there's a genuinely hard moral question: does the greater good justify the means for people in positions of authority? The game also improved quite a bit since launch with new patches. The updates added a city map feature which is massively useful and a Space Car you can use for driving across planetary surfaces, which makes a lot of the game's missions quite a bit simpler and easy. Now, while I enjoyed Starfield, I concede that many of its critics had a point about its weaknesses. The game relies a lot on procedural generation. Every time you land on a planet, a bunch of nearby dungeons and features are randomly generated. This can get repetitive, though honestly I don't mind that very much. It makes it easier to play the game in bite sized chunks when it's late and I'm tired and I just want to mow down some Space Pirates or something. What is annoying is that sometimes the procedurally generated locations don't match with the procedurally generated quests, which locks you out of finishing some of the randomly generated quests. That was really irritating, though it only tends to happen at very high levels. The game's main plot revolved around multiverse stuff, and as I've mentioned frequently before, I am not a big fan of the multiverse as a storytelling concept. However, it works better in a video game than in a movie or a book, and Starfield's implementation of it is quite clever. Many games have the New Game Plus concept where you beat the game and then you start a new game, but things are slightly different. In Starfield, when you beat the game, you go to a new universe, you lose all your possessions, but you keep all your skills and knowledge, so you're starting the new game at level 65 or whatever. Additionally, a lot of the quests are subtly altered because your character knows in advance what is going to happen from the previous universe, so you can get a better outcome than you did the last time, which is honestly a kind of a clever game mechanic, which makes it a compelling journey to go from universe to universe and to put right what once went wrong. Anyway, I enjoyed Starfield and I will definitely play the Shattered Space expansion, which comes out at the end of September, but enough talk about video games. 00:08:14 Main Topic of the Week: Preorders and Prequels This is writing podcast, so let's move on to our main topic, preorders and prequels. I have to admit preorders and prequel sounds like a really lame tabletop RPG for indie authors. Like if you roll a 20, your book gets picked up as an Amazon Daily deal for the US, but if you roll 1, your book file gets corrupted and you can't figure out how to fix it. Anyway, the inspiration for this alliterative title was that someone asked me about preorders, and someone else asked me about prequels within 24 hours. So let's start with prequels. Reader Juan writes in to ask about preorders: something I noticed about your books. There's never a preorder option on Apple Books. Is this by design? I know you self-publish so I didn't know if that was a publisher feature or if there's a way to preorder there. If not, no worries, I just know Apple takes a little longer to load the book. Preorders are available to self-publishers, but the reason I don't do preorders is by design. I never do preorders for a couple different reasons, which we'll go through right now. #1: the consequences of missing a preorder date are moderately negative. If you miss a preorder date on Amazon, you get locked out of doing another one for the following 12 months. I'm not sure what happens if you miss a preorder on Apple Books, but I suspect it's about the same level of penalty and this ties directly into reason two. #2 is that life is chaotic and unpredictable, and I absolutely hate making promises I end up unable to keep. Like if I get sick or something in Real Life comes along that I have to deal with immediately, I could easily miss a week of writing time, which would make hitting the preorder date either very stressful or impossible. #3: If I wrote like only two books a year, I might do preorders. That would give me enough of a cushion of time to make sure that everything is ready to go well in advance of the launch date. But I usually write and publish like ten books a year, sometimes more. With books coming out so frequently, organizing that many pre-orders would be a serious headache and sometimes I don't actually decide what I'm going to write next until the day comes and I actually sit down to start writing. Like at the end of 2023, I pretty much decided on impulse to finish writing Half-Elven Thief and had that be my last book of the year in 2023. So with the amount I write and publish, managing the logistics of so many pre-orders would be a serious headache. #4: And finally, reason number four and the most important reason: the worst consequence of missing a preorder is a loss of reader confidence. Without going into details, let's say there's been enough of that in the fantasy genre already, so preorders have too many negatives and not enough positives, at least for my situation. I'd rather just make a good faith effort of having things come out when I can and announcing them via my newsletter. Speaking of which, if you sign up for my newsletter, you get regular free short stories. Now onto prequels. Concerning prequels, reader Danny writes in to ask: May I suggest writing a series of prequels to the Cloak Game series? Shield of Conquest made me hope that it would be a prequel book to the Cloak Game series, a book that speaks about the invasion of Earth by the elves and brings some backstory of the relationship between Kathran Morvilind and Tarlia- a teacher and a student, and the discovery and invasion of Earth, or other back stories that were not developed enough. For example, what about Aiden, brother of Riordan, or Riordan's experience as a Shadow Hunter? Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of writing prequels. I have written a couple of prequel novels out of the 155 books I've written (Frostborn: The First Quest comes to mind) and sometimes I'll do short stories as a flashback. Probably the most recent example of that is Prophecy of the High Queen, the short story that describes the first meeting between Nadia and the High Queen written from the High Queen's perspective. The High Queen uses magic to look into Nadia's past and her various potential futures, and so the short story bounces all over the place in time. I have also written novels that kind of jump around in time. In Cloak of Iron, the scenes from Lauren Casey's perspective go back to even before the Cloak Game series actually started to set up why Lauren was desperate enough to save her brother that that she was willing to deal with someone like Mr. Shang of the Deathless Society. Or in the very first Nadia book, Games: Thief Trap, where we blur through the first twenty years of Nadia's life in the first chapter. That said, I do write the short stories in mind as bonus materials like the extra scenes on a movie DVD. However, at this point I don't think I would write a prequel novel, and I certainly wouldn't write a prequel series. Why not? It feels like prequels are sort of like procrastinating before you continue on the main story, which is likely what most readers really want. I've noticed some writers (again, without going into details) have a bad habit of writing prequels instead of getting on with the main story. Making yourself continue the main story instead of getting sidetracked by prequels or side quests is difficult, but it must be done for the greater good of the story. Additionally, a big problem with prequels is it's extremely difficult to generate narrative tension because you know in advance that certain characters are going to survive or certain situations are going to play out in a way you've already read in subsequent books. If I did, for example, my Andomhaim series as a prequel series, it would be set in a region of the world we've never visited and with characters we never encountered before, so that way there is a dramatic tension that the reader doesn't know how things are going to end and that will make the book more enjoyable. Also, some things are really better left to the reader's imagination, and that can include back stories. Writing fiction is in some ways an exercise in creating a line drawing and letting the imagination of the reader provide color and shadow. Like, since we've been talking about Nadia, here's someone describing her from a first-person perspective:  "A woman in a dark coat and black jeans sat across from me. She had red-tinged brown hair tied in a loose ponytail and pale grey eyes the color of knives. I thought she looked like she could stand to eat more. That, combined with the eyes, gave her a look of feverish, almost unsettling intensity. I probably outweighed her by a good ninety pounds, but I felt the sudden urge to reach for the gun I wasn't carrying." Now that's just a line drawing, right? Yet every reader will fill in that line drawing with something from his or her own imagination. In the same way, I think it is sometimes (even frequently) best to let the reader's imagination fill in the details of the character's backstory. Like Riordan- we know he tried to save his brother Aidan and failed. We know that he became a Shadow Hunter and that his first wife joined the Rebels and tried to murder him to score points with her new friends. I could write out a prequel series describing those events, but I think at this point it wouldn't be as vivid as the one that readers have generated in their imaginations. Besides, writing a prequel story would be a distraction from the main story. So that is why I don't set up preorders and I don't usually write prequels. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, we take a look back at one of 2022's most popular episodes and discuss how to use dialogue to create distinctive characters. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates (August 2024) Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 212 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August 1st, 2024 and today we're looking back at one of our old episodes, specifically Episode 120: Using Dialogue to Create Distinct Characters, which I first aired back in May 2022. I am afraid I don't have time to record a new episode this week, so it seemed like a good idea to look back at one of the more popular past episodes and run it again, so that's what we're going to do this week. Before we get to that, let's have an update on my current writing projects. The final draft of Half-Orc Paladin is just about done. There's only a couple more tweaks to do and this episode, if all goes well, goes live on August 5th. I'm hoping to publish Half-Orc Paladin on August 6th, if everything goes well. So hopefully we'll all have that book before much longer. Like the first two in the Rivah series, it will be in Kindle Unlimited, and then once all six books are done in the series (probably next year sometime), then I will take it wide to all the other platforms. In audiobook news, the audiobook of Wizard-Thief is finished. That would be the second Rivah book, as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward. That is some very good timing because as I mentioned before, Half-Orc Paladin is going to come out shortly and Wizard-Thief is available at all the usual audiobook stores. Once Half-Orc Paladin is done, my main project is going to be Shield of Conquest. I am currently 5,500 words into it. Hopefully, that should come out in September, if all goes well. The two books I write after that will be Ghost in the Tombs and then Cloak of Illusion. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. And now let's have a flashback to May 2022 when we talked about different tips for creating distinct dialogue for your characters. 00:01:57 Episode 120's Introduction and Writing Updates (May 2022) Hello, welcome to Episode 120 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 6th, 2022 and today we're going to discuss how to use dialogue to help with characterization. I'm also going to talk about something I didn't think I would ever do: buy an Xbox. Before we get into all that, let's have some updates on my current writing projects. I am exactly 59,000 words into Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves, and I am definitely going to get to 60,000 before I have to call it a day. I'm also about 3,700 words into Cloak of Spears and that will be the book that hopefully comes out after Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves. I'm hoping to have Blade of the Elves out in June and Cloak of Spears out in July. I am also proof listening to Frostborn: The Shadow Prison the audiobook. I've listened to the first six chapters of it and I'm very excited to have that series complete in audiobook and available for you to listen to, and that should be probably June or July when that's finally done, hopefully sooner. 00:03:03 Thoughts and Reader Comments on the Xbox Now for our first of our topics: the Xbox. I recently joked that it was old enough for a midlife crisis now. I thought about it and I bought an Xbox. Other than the Nintendo Switch, which I got in 2019 to celebrate my 100th book, which was Dragontiarna: Knights (the audiobook book version of which is now free to Audible members). It's the first traditional game console I've used since 1998, and I didn't play any console games at all from 1998 to 2019. The technology has changed just a little bit since 1998. The reason I got an Xbox is because back in the old days, one of my jobs was doing tech support for college dormitories. I used to get very annoyed when students complained about connectivity problems with their Xboxes and PlayStations- college is expensive, and I thought at the time was you should be doing homework and networking career opportunities, not playing games. But I'm older now, maybe marginally wiser. Traditionally, a midlife crisis is when you reflect back on your life and try to relive your youth or experience things that you missed out on the first time around. That said, I'm pretty happy with how my life turned out, and I think I'm blessed to be able to say that. If Doc Brown pulled up in his DeLorean and offered me a chance to go back and change something, I'd tell him nah, I'm good. Also, I've seen enough time travel stories to know that if I tried to change something, one of the people who complained to me that Xbox Live was running slow would wind up becoming the tyrannical supreme leader of the dystopian imperium of global harmony or something, so no going around messing with the past. That said, I did wonder if I missed out on something in terms of console gaming. Perhaps I denied myself what would otherwise have been an enjoyable and enriching experience, so I got an Xbox Series X brand new game console. What's the first game I play? Skyrim, obviously. I have to admit playing Skyrim this way is very comfortable and I'm going to finish a quest I never played on PC or Switch, the Imperial Storm Cloak Civil War. I flipped a coin and it landed on Empire, so I sided with the Empire. Once I win the Empire's war for them, it will be on to the Dawnguard expansion. I have to admit the Xbox ecosystem is very impressive. Granted, I still remember playing PC games by swapping out a stack of five and 1/4 inch floppies and very carefully configuring emm386.exe, so maybe I'm easily impressed, but still. When I talked about this on Facebook, a couple of people had opinions. William said: the original Halo is the only Xbox game I've ever really played, but the pace is very good and goes well with the sci-fi story. I have tried Halo since it came with Game Pass. So far I've managed to figure out how to run in circles while shooting at the wall and how to accidentally roll the car down the hillside into the stream. Hopefully if I have time to play it more, I will get better at it. Scott says: Elden Ring is currently popular. You may enjoy if you like Skyrim. I play Elder Scrolls Online on PC, however, so I can't vouch for the console experience. I've heard good things about Elden Ring from many different people, and I was considering giving Elder Scrolls Online a try next month after I'm a little less busy. I don't really like multiplayer games because to be perfectly frank, computer games are where I go when I get tired of people and I want to unwind a bit, but I've heard there's a ton of excellent solo content in Elder Scrolls Online, and if you want to, you don't ever have to interact with another human while you're playing the game. I may have to give that a try. Jesse says: Dawnguard was excellent. Dawnguard is one of the expansions for Skyrim, and unfortunately it turns out I won't be able to play it on the Xbox because I finished the Civil War plot line and then I tried to start the Dawnguard plot line. However, there's a bug in the Xbox version of the game where if you find the location of the vampire lord's castle before you come there for the quest, the quest line breaks and doesn't continue, so I don't think I'll be able to play Dawnguard on Xbox. If I want to play it, I'll probably play the Switch because of my Switch save state for Skyrim. I haven't visited the vampire lord's castle yet, so I think I'm going to play Dragonborn instead once I have a little more money in game saved up. 00:07:12 Main Topic: Dialogue and Characters Now on to the main topic of this week's show, which comes from a question that Scott asked. It was a very interesting question that got me thinking, which is why it's now the topic of this week's podcast. Scott's question is: “a question on making dialogue for individual characters unique to them. It's very common for all characters to sound so homogeneous that attribution is the only way to know one speaker from another's. Awkward accents aside, what are some techniques that help separate social classes and regions in speech?” I think Scott's absolutely right- accents aren't a great way to differentiate characters in books. That's different in audiobooks, of course, but that's a whole different kettle of fish. There's this example in HP Lovecraft's short story of The Color Out of Space of a farmer talking a phonetic accent, and it's so bad in what's otherwise a very interesting horror story. And everyone should read that story just to read that farmer's dialogue as an example of how not to write phonetically accented dialogue. That said, I've found in my own writing, in my own experience, that varying sentence structure and length and vocabulary are better as a method of distinguishing characters' dialogues from one another. Like a teenage girl might talk in long, rambling sentences that usually reference the opinions of her friends, while an elderly farmer might speak in laconic sentence fragments. A college professor might have more complex sentence structure with a greater vocabulary, while a human resources professional might talk entirely in business jargon like this: “I'm reaching out today to touch base on performance evaluations.” An actor or a standup comic or performer might talk entirely in motive based language, such as when offering opinion, they'll say “I feel that” or “my feeling is that.” They'll have very emotion-based language. A doctor or accountant might be more clinical in their speech, such as, you know, “the prescription is”, or “the evidence suggests”, or “the numbers say.” Police officers and members of the military will often have their own jargon with a lot of acronyms that can be impenetrable to outsiders or people unfamiliar with that specific kind of culture. So if you're writing characters who are in the military or are police officers, it might be worthwhile to learn the common terms they use and work that into your dialogue. Profanity is a tricky one. It's very easy to distinguish speech patterns among characters using profanity. But profanity often grabs readers, though in one way. I recently had someone complain that Nadia in the Cloak Mage book says “goddamn” a lot. And the truth is I kind of dialed down her profanity. I think that if Nadia existed in real life and was a real person, every third word would be a profanity once she got ticked off and when she got really mad, she'd swear a lot more than she really does in the books, where I do dial it back a bit. When reading dialogue, it's also important to remember that people rarely give direct answers in conversation and frequently go off in tangents, like I just did when I was talking about Nadia and profanity. For that matter, the subtext of a conversation is often more important than the actual words that are actually being said. You can frequently see that at major life events or traumatic life events like a funeral or a mass layoff, where people will spend a lot of time discussing trivialities about the weather or how the drive was or minor matters, rather than the enormous glaring fact in front of them of the funeral or the mass layoff or the other unpleasant event they're at. Now on to examples. Let's imagine a detective is investigating a murder in a bank lobby and asks five witnesses where they found the body. The way that the five witnesses talk can differentiate them from each other and provide insight into their character. In this example are Tanya (a teenage girl), Braden (a teenage boy), Rick (an imperious bank executive), Janet (a candidate for state senator), and Robert (an elderly farmer). So here is what Tanya, the teenage girl said to the detective:  “like, I came inside because I need to withdraw some cash in the stupid ATM wasn't working like again, and oh my God, this dead guy was just on the floor in the middle of the bank. So I texted Zoe and Zoe was like, we need to get this on Facebook Live like, right now. But then Zoe's mom heard what was happening. She told me to call the police, so I called 911 and the guy was like, “what's your emergency?” I'm like, dude, there's a dead guy on the floor.” And as you can imagine, she'd go on in this vein for quite some time. By comparison, this is what Braden the teenage boy would say while mumbling and looking at the floor. “People started screaming. I saw this guy on the floor. He was like, dead. Can I go now? This is what Rick the bank executive would say: “I heard a commotion in the lobby and I got up to see what was happening and the dead body was on the floor. I want to assure you that Mutual Fidelity Credit Banking takes all criminal matters very seriously and cooperates with the authorities to the fullest extent of the law. However, any further questions will need to be referred to our corporate counsel, and I'm afraid I have several other meetings scheduled this afternoon. Good day, officer.” So you can see this is a very distinctive and precise way of speech for Rick the banking executive, while providing insight into his character. Our next response is from Janet, the state senate candidate: “The thoughts and prayers of my family and I are with the victim's family in this terrible time. This tragedy only further proves that the policies of my opponents are actively harmful for the most marginalized communities in our state. When I'm your state senator, I will proudly stand for all communities.” She pauses. “Wait, is that the victim's parents? I need to get a picture with them for my Twitter.” So you can see, Janet talks very much like a politician. I think her dialogue period pretty much has been copied and pasted from Twitter. And it also provides insight into her character. Our final example is Robert, the elderly farmer, who says to the detective: “Came in. Fellow was on the floor. Poor bastard looked like he'd been shot in the head. Checked his pulse anyway, and then called the cops.” That's all he has to say. So these five characters, as you can see, all talk in very different ways. I didn't use any fancy accents or slang, only a little bit of profanity, but not all that much. But those were five distinct speech patterns, and the dialogue actually provides further insight into their characters. We can see that Tanya likes to talk. Brayden doesn't like to talk. Rick has a high opinion of himself if he thinks he can brush off police officers conducting a murder investigation. Janet, the state senate candidate, is pretty ruthless and willing to exploit someone's personal tragedy for her advancement. Of the five, Robert, the elderly farmer, was the only one who actually tried to help the guy who was dead on the floor. So I hope that is a good example of how to differentiate characters using different vocabulary and speech patterns. When I talked about this on my blog, Grace said, “this is where stereotypes in writing come in handy. Even if you had only given the list of characters at the beginning and attributed each paragraph, I would have been able to guess who was speaking, because in this case each one is a basic stereotype. Obviously, not all characters fall exactly into a stereotype (see Tythrilandria from Cloak Mage), but it probably helps for one appearance characters.” That is true. A longer-term technique, I think, is to subvert the expectations produced by the first impression of characters. Maybe the banker is secretly obsessed with graffiti or the teenage boy shovels the driveways and mows the lawns of his elderly neighbors without payment. Or the teenage girl is massively into Bitcoin mining. That makes for more realistic characters because in real life people often possess many different contradictory qualities, though for characters who have just one scene, you can probably get away with just the initial impression. William asked about this (going off on a tangent like we did earlier): Where did Nadia pick up the habit of swearing a lot? I know Morvilind assigned some rather rough ex-military types to train her. So I guess it might have started there and grown worse issues left on her own and started mingling with criminals in general. It's one of those things no one seems to have pointed out to her and she hasn't self-reflected on it. William is exactly right. That is where Nadia picked up her habit of swearing, because most of her teachers when she was a child were very rough people. And then when she got older and started out going out and doing missions for Morvilind and she met even more rough people. That said, Nadia isn't particularly self-reflective but she does have enough self-control to dial back profanity in appropriate situations, whereas you know, sometimes you meet people in real life who have gotten so much in the habit of using profanity to pepper their speech that they can't shut it off even when it's like grossly inappropriate, like at a job interview or a situation like that. Nadia doesn't have that problem. She is able to switch off profanity on her off as necessary, but if she is really angry then that's when it will come out. So that's it for this week, and I should mention as a final one for this episode, the podcast will be going on hiatus until the middle of June or so. The reason for that is I need to finish Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves. I also need to proof the audiobooks of Frostborn: The Shadow Prison and Cloak of Shards. I also have a ton of real-life stuff I gotta do in May, so I need to prioritize, which means we'll have a break from podcasting until mid-June when things calm down. So thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show this week. I hope you found the show useful. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next time.

In this week's episode, I look at six ways indie authors can effectively work with audiobook narrators to produce great audiobooks. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Update Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 208 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July the 5th, 2024, and today we're discussing six tips for working with audiobook narrators. Before we do that, we'll have an update on my current writing projects and Question of the Week. For my current writing projects, I'm very pleased to say that Shield of Darkness is finally done and published. By the time this episode goes live on Monday, the book should be live at all the ebook stores and you pick it up at your ebook store of choice. It took a bit longer to write this one because I was obliged to take quite a bit of time off during the writing process, but I'm pleased to report it is finally done. My next project will be the third Rivah book, Half-Orc Paladin and I am 35,000 words into that one. I think the final book will end up being around 80,000 words, give or take. I'm also about 18,000 words into Ghost in the Tombs. Not sure when I would do that one. Possibly after Half-Orc Paladin. I might do another book after Half-Orc Paladin first, but we will see. In audiobook news, nothing has changed from what it was last week. Both Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling and Wizard-Thief are currently underway for production, which would ironically tie into my main topic of this week about working with audiobook narrators. 00:01:14 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics. This week's topic: your home Internet goes out, which means you can't use the Internet until your Internet service provider gets around to fixing it. What do you do instead? The inspiration for this question was that I wanted to play Starfield, but the Xbox Network services were down and I didn't feel like going through the settings to get the offline mode to work on my Xbox. So I wrote the blog post for Question of the Week instead. We had an interesting range of responses this week. Our first response is from Justin who says: if the Internet is down, I have many things to do. During leisure and recovery time, I can read, play games, and watch movies just fine without the Internet. Most of my computer games are old and do not require connection in order to function. World of Warcraft is the only exception to that, and I keep that around as much to chat with friends and family who play it. If I need to use the Internet (banking, ordering, directions, etcetera), my phone can act as a hotspot and as long as there's phone service, I have slow connectivity. Adrian says: I am lucky enough to live on an island where all the Internet is via fiber network and we have a minimum connection of 500 megabits per second and only have failures once a year at most and our phone network is about to change to 5G. Adrian is quite lucky here, I have to admit, because 500 megabits is very fast. Jonathan D. says: mostly I listen to my son complaining that he cannot watch YouTube videos and then tell him that when I was his age, we only had four TV channels. After that, I would wonder when I became more like my parents. I do have plenty of books, board games, DVDs, and offline computer games if it's a long-term outage. Joaquim says: this would be my day. Over the years we've amassed nearly five terabyte worth of movies and TV shows from tape video recorder, DVD video recorder, and online video recorder. Also, we have a lot of DVDs. My family would rather stream, even if we have it offline already. For music, we have a lot of CDs and MP3s. We would have an outage if a Caterpillar would cut the cable during driveway refurbishing. The last time this happened before smartphones were available, I used a Mini WLAN router as backup. Now I just bought a 5G smartphone, which can act as hotspot for up to 10 devices and has USB tethering for my router. I tested both modes and the speed was quite good. Surabhi says: my data was over for the day, so I read one of your books. I often have these days. I usually catch up on more homework or read some books. Have you watched Oppenheimer yet? I sadly missed the opportunity to watch it in theaters, but I streamed it recently and it was honestly well worth the hype. I read the screenplay before the movie for some reason and it added the experience for some reason. Nolan's screenplays always make for a nice experience. In fact, I did watch Oppenheimer in the theater back in July or August, when Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods was done, and I published it and finished the Dragonskull series. That was how I celebrated. I took a half day off and went to the theater to watch Oppenheimer and because it was like a three hour movie, you kind of have to take a half day off work to go watch Oppenheimer. I thought it was quite good and one of my favorite movies of 2023. Our next comment is from William, who says: this is also a good reminder to buy physical copies of games you really like. On a side note, I have had very few Internet outages that lasted very long since I switched to fiber, and nowadays you always have your phone for backup Internet anyway, so work can continue. Power outages, on the other hand, present more of a challenge, especially in winter. Becca says: do some gardening or read. Michael says: yeah, as others have said, I just tether to my phone instead if I wanted to use the Internet. If my phone signal is also gone, I just assume a global apocalypse and go hide in bed. Probably a sensible reaction to the situation. Mike says: well, I have books downloaded on my iPad and hundreds of other paper books to read and go outside and see the world. Braq says: I hope on my adventure motorcycle (Triumph Tiger 1200), then I find the nearest back road and a cold clear water stream and I fly fish till the sun goes down. Adeline says: hotspot off the phone, if I need to be online. It's happened before. It'll happen again. If I don't need to be online, I really just read one of your books on my phone, either on the sofa or wander out to the nearest park if the weather is good and read it there. Todd says: there's plenty to do without the Internet. I grew up in the ‘80s. Pet my dogs, read a book, play cards or dominos or another board game, make some tasty food. Work on a hobby. Go for a walk or bike ride. Maaike says: if the Internet goes down, I'll be drawing, painting, reading, or kayaking. Or maybe practicing martial arts or going for a run. Plenty of stuff left to do. Jenny says: my phone becomes a mobile hotspot. Juana says: read. Jesse says: guitar, paperbacks, and the occasional card game or tabletop game. I realized that for me, the question breaks down in two ways: if the Internet goes down while I'm working, or if the Internet goes down while I want to relax. If the Internet goes down while I'm working, it's not necessarily a huge deal. If I'm writing or editing, everything is downloaded locally anyway, so I would just keep on writing and editing until the Internet came back up. If the Internet goes down while I'm uploading an ebook or an audiobook or setting up ads or changing my website, that is in fact super annoying. However, I usually work on multiple books at a time. Right now, I'm finishing up the publishing process for Shield of Darkness, and I'm also writing Half-Orc Paladin and Ghost in the Tombs. So if I'm working on an online task, and the Internet goes out, then I'll switch to one of the books I'm currently working on and make progress with that. If the Internet goes down while I want to relax, I'll read a paper book (I still have lots of those) or watch a DVD. When Oppenheimer came out on Blu-ray (to tie it back to Oppenheimer), Christopher Nolan rather famously said that you should get it on Blu-ray so no evil streaming service could take it away. Obviously, Mr. Nolan had a financial motive for that statement, but he wasn't wrong. So if there is a movie I really like, I will attempt to get it on DVD or Blu-ray. 00:06:14 Main Topic of the Week: Working with Narrators on Audiobooks Now on to our main Topic of the Week: six tips for working with narrators on audiobooks. I decided to do this as a topic because at this point, I have had quite a lot of experience at this. I did my first self-funded audiobook back in 2018, so over half a decade now. You occasionally hear horror stories of indie authors and narrators that don't get along well or the entire thing falls apart and it turns into this mutual cycle of bitter recriminations and so forth. So with that in mind, I thought I would share six tips for how to have a good relationship with your narrator if you are an indie author who is producing audiobooks and how to work well with a narrator and hopefully have a good professional relationship. Tip #1: As with so many things, manage your expectations and understand what the narrator actually does. An audiobook narrator is a skilled professional, and it's not the same thing as reading a book aloud or having AI do it. A narrator has to perform the story and bring it alive (or if you're doing a nonfiction book, read it in a crisp and professional manner) and bring nuance and help to punctuate the story's emotional beats, which is, as with so many things in life, a lot harder than it looks from the outside. Be wary of doing it yourself or having a friend or relative do it if they don't have experience and don't know what they're doing. Joanna Penn, who is sort of an indie author guru, rather famously does a lot of her nonfiction audiobooks herself. However, I should point out that's not for everyone, and she took a bunch of classes and has practiced really hard to do it. She works hard to pull it off. If it's not something you have a passion in doing yourself and you're not willing to put in the work to become good enough to do it, then it is really better if you hire a narrator. For myself, I would not ever even remotely think of narrating my own audiobooks. If you're listening to this podcast, if you have a regular practice of listening to this podcast, I think we can all agree that nobody wants to pay $15 or spend an Audible credit to listen to me talk and attempt to narrate an audiobook for ten straight hours. Part of the reason for this is that the audiobook community is very savvy and has very high expectations for quality and narration. If the narrator isn't good, if there are technical problems with recording, the reviews will let you know and your audiobook won't sell. The flip side of that is a good narrator isn't cheap. Many audiobook narrators belong to the SAG-AFTRA/The Screen Actors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA has rules for everything. Audiobook narration is no different. If you are a member of SAG-AFTRA and you're an audiobook narrator, you are expected to charge between $200 and $400 per finished hour of audiobook narration. Now this might seem very high if you don't know about the work that goes into it. Like, oh, I'd like to get paid, you know, $350 an hour for work, but quite a lot of work goes into it. There's a lot of preparation for each individual hour. And then based on the way that ACX and Findaway are set up, the audiobook narrator is responsible for producing finished, mastered, and leveled files that will pass the quality standards of both ACX and Findaway and all the individual audiobook stores. This can be very hard if you don't know what you're doing, and many narrators will hire someone to, you know, master and level and edit their audiobook files. If they put the time in to learn the skills, they'll do it themselves. That still is quite time consuming because you've got to sit there and edit the files and get out any weird spaces and make sure everything sounds good and so forth. All that said, ACX does offer a program called royalty share, where instead of paying the narrator upfront, you and the narrator split the royalties of the audiobook for the next seven years. The plus of this is you can get the audiobook off the ground for very little cost to yourself if you're an indie author. The downside of this, from the narrator's point of view, is that it's a lot of work that they're basically doing on spec and if the audiobook doesn't sell any copies, and many audiobooks do not sell very many copies, then the audiobook narrator is out of luck. Additionally, a great deal of the very skilled narrators will not do royalty share. They will only work for payment on completion, and if they do royalty share, they will only do it as part of another deal where they're getting paid per finished hour anyway. Because of that, a lot of beginning narrators and narrators who just started out do royalty share. I'm not going to say that you can't find a good narrator doing royalty share because there are good talented narrators starting out doing royalty share. However, it is harder to find a good narrator who is doing royalty share and a lot of the very experienced narrators will have switched to doing payment per finished hour instead of attempting to do a royalty share. If you want a professionally done audiobook, odds are you are going to be paying between $200 and $400 per finished hour. If you are paying more than that (and you really shouldn't be), that means you have hired a celebrity narrator, you know, someone who would be recognizable from a movie or a TV show or whatever, and they're doing your audiobook. If you have a celebrity narrator, you are probably beyond the level of needing to listen to me for advice. So that is our first tip: make sure you understand what the narrator does. Make sure you have a good way of paying for your audiobook and make sure you know the difference between royalty share and payment per finished hour. #2: Our second tip is to do your homework before holding auditions. Typically the way both ACX and Findaway work is you put up the posting for your book, and then you say this is what I'm looking for and then narrators have the chance to audition. Findaway used to have a more guided process for that, but I'm not sure they do that anymore. And for the last couple of times I've looked for a new narrator, I've done it off ACX. I recommend the first thing you do before you write out your posting for your audiobook is to research narrators in your genre. Some narrators specialize in certain genres, but it's not unusual for narrators to work in several genres at once. And now the reason for this is because narrators (and I've had actual narrators actually tell me this is that) find it very helpful. The more specific you can be in your posting for your audiobook auditions, the more helpful they find it. So that to that end, it's a good idea to find short samples of narrators and books that fit the desired tone of your book. The Audible website is very useful for this, because if you've spent any time browsing the Audible website, you can play a sample of any audiobook that's up there, and you'll get a little three to five minute sample of the audiobook and the narrator that you can listen to. I find a good practice to be is when you're putting together an audiobook is to include a list of the kind of narrators and narrator styles you want. The last time I did a posting for a new audiobook, I said I am looking for something a bit similar to the way Michael Kramer narrated Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson and the way that Jonathan Davis narrated the Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew Stover. Narrators do find that kind of thing very helpful, because that helps them dial in on what you are looking for. It's also a good idea for you as the author in producing this audiobook to know what you are looking for, because some narrators try to have a different voice for characters. Probably one of the more famous examples is Marc Thompson, who does a lot of the Star Wars novels. If you listen to them, like if you listen to his narration of Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn, he does a pretty good impression of Luke Skywalker. He does a pretty good impression of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian and all the other classic Star Wars characters and he tries to give distinctive voices to all the other characters in the book. When you're auditioning narrators, you also have to post a short excerpt of your book in order to give the narrator something to audition with. I found that it's best to keep this under 1,000 words or so. Auditions should not really be more than 5 minutes, I think. Remember, the narrators are doing this on spec. They don't get paid for auditioning and it's good to be respectful of everyone's time and not waste anyone's time. What I usually do is I pick for those 1,000 words (though sometimes it goes up to about 1,500 words) is pick three different scenes from the book. What I try to do is pick a dialogue heavy scene. I try to pick an action scene and then maybe a more emotionally heavy scene to see how the narrator handles each one of these different tones. That would give the narrator something to work with and show off their chops and then they know what I'm looking for, an audiobook that sounds like, you know, these other sample audiobooks I've mentioned. Here is about 1,000 words of the book for you to try it with and give it a try and we will see what happens. It's good to be very clear with what you want when you audition audiobook narrators. I think this is important. Not everyone does this, but I think they should. It's very good to have a specific deadline and a specific deadline by when you're going to make a decision. The last couple of times I've auditioned new narrators, I've said usually something along the lines of, the posting is live now, it's going to be open for a week (which will be the 12th) and I will listen to every audition I get before the 12th. By the time I close the auditions on the 12th, I will make a decision and make an offer by the 14th or 15th. That way no one's kept in suspense and is waiting forever. They know if they haven't heard from you by the, you know 14th or the 15th or the 16th, that they're not going to get the audiobook. I used to reply to every audition I got, but unfortunately that was just not possible. The last time I auditioned a new narrator, we got nearly 100 auditions, and it did take a lot of time to sort through them all, and I'm afraid there just wasn't time to respond to everybody. That said, I think it's also important when you put up the audiobook posting and say this is what I'm looking for, it's also important to be as open as possible during that process, so if narrators have questions for you, you can answer them. I've had narrators during this process email me and say, does this book have like explicit adult scenes or explicit scenes of, you know, violence or cruelty against animals or women or children, or anything of that nature? It's important to be open and you don't want anyone to narrate who's uncomfortable with that. I think being as open as possible during the audition process and answering any questions from narrators is important, but I definitely didn't have time to respond to nearly 100 different auditions, and you may not as well. #3: So we go on to Tip #3 now: actually choosing a narrator from the auditions. If you get a lot of auditions, it may take some time to sort through them all. Like I said before, the last time I held open auditions for a narrator got nearly 100 auditions for the book, and sorting through them would take some time. There are easy ways to eliminate, you know, potential auditions quite quickly, like if you specified an American accent and you got a British accent or if you specified a female narrator and you get auditions from male narrators and that kind of thing. Usually, I've found you can narrow it down to about maybe 10 or 12 of the best ones for the for the book, and then at that point you look a little more closely at them. What I usually do is look at how much they charge and how many Audible credits they have (by that mean how many audiobooks they've done). The more audiobooks a narrator has done, the more likely they're able to be reliable and that you can expect confidently that they'll be able to finish the work. It's less of a gamble to hire a narrator who's done 150 audiobooks as opposed to one who has done 3. This isn't to say that you can have a good result with someone who has done 3, but there is a different track record and potentially a different level of expectation there. Also, and this is just Due Diligence 101, it might be a good idea to Google the narrators and look over the search results. Make sure that, for example, they haven't been convicted of serious crimes or are wanted in a different state or expressed strong opinions that you yourself are not comfortable with. Like I said earlier in this episode, you want the narrator to be comfortable working with you and you want to be comfortable working with the narrator. If the narrator is expressing very strong opinions on social media that you happen to find personally distasteful for whatever reason, it might be best to choose someone else. Once you have narrowed it down and found a narrator who has the style you're looking for and the kind of track record in terms of completed credits that you're looking for, that is the time to make an offer. The offer will also include a deadline for when you want the audiobook done by. I've found it's best to be a little flexible in that deadline, if possible. Maybe extend it out two or three months into the future. That way if you've chosen a narrator who can't do it right away but it has time in that time space, they can do it. It might also be a good idea to go back and forth a bit and pin down the schedule exactly. Once you have chosen the narrator and you've extended an offer and once the narrator has accepted it, this is the point in the process where you do need to get them the book. They obviously need the manuscript of the book if they're going to read it, and I've also found it's best to send a spreadsheet with all the major character names and locations and a pronunciation guide. If you're just doing thrillers or mystery or contemporary romance, you probably don't need a pronunciation guide. You do need a guide for the characters and how they sound. For example, Julia is a middle-aged woman with a raspy voice and a thick Midwestern accent. I write science fiction and fantasy, and I frequently have names like Xothalaxiar, Agrimnalazur, and Seziravorna. Obviously the narrator is going to want a pronunciation guide, so what I usually do is I also read aloud the names in each in the location spreadsheet and the character spreadsheet and send that along to the narrator. #4: Let's move on to our fourth tip, which is understand that narrators all work differently. I've had some narrators who will send me the chapters over right away when they're done, and so then we tend to listen to the chapters in clumps of three to four the time until the book is done. I've had other narrators who wait until the entire book is done and send that all over at once, and then we listen to it. It's important to respect someone else's workflow in a way that you are hiring an expert and there's no point in hiring an expert if you don't listen to the expert's advice. Some narrators may have questions or want suggestions, while others may not have as many. It's always a good idea to answer these questions promptly so that there aren't delays in recording. Again, that's part of maintaining a good professional relationship with someone where if they have questions, you're available to address them promptly and as quickly as is reasonably possible. #5: Now on to our fifth tip: how to be a good collaborator. First, don't micromanage and don't ask for updates before the agreed upon deadlines. When you set up the book through ACX or Findaway, there's a default contract in there, and there's supposed to be a 15 minute sample by the first date and the finished book by the 2nd date. And if it's still not up to the deadline, that's not the time to send pestering emails. If you haven't gotten the book by the deadline, that's the time when you ask if anything is everything's going okay, if there's any questions, and so forth. Don't micromanage before that. Don't micromanage at all, and don't pester the narrator before the initially agreed upon deadlines. Additionally, don't be too picky. The time to be picky is in the audition process. Once you have gotten through the audition process and made your offer, you have hopefully selected the narrator you think will work best with what you want, and that is when you let the narrator get on with it and don't be overly critical. I've heard horror stories where the authors would reject the book because like the Welsh accent wasn't Snowdonia enough. It's before you choose a narrator during the audition process, that's when you're picky. Treat the narrator like a fellow professional and trust their judgment. Be willing to accept their suggestions. If you listen this podcast quite a bit, you know, my vocal performance skills are not necessarily the best, so if someone who has more experience with vocal performance than I do is going to make suggestion, I'm going to seriously consider it. Once you have received the finished audiobook, ideally you are supposed to have listened to it within seven business days, and by then you can either approve it or ask for changes, and ideally you want to do this as quickly as possible because the narrator doesn't get paid ‘til you finish and until the narrator's paid, you can't post the audiobook and sell it. You should only ask for corrections and changes if you have a very good reason for doing so, like there's something actually wrong, like a sentence was dropped, or a paragraph is missing, or the chapters are in the wrong order and that kind of stuff, you know, the usual kind of glitches and small problems that prop up in any major projects like this. Sometimes the software just derps and a sentence drops out, that kind of thing. You should not ask for changes that are not for good reasons, and by this I mean if you don't like a character's accent or you don't like the pronunciation of something. You should have addressed all of this before, when you sent over the pronunciations and when you sent over the character list and any other information. This kind of information needs to be shared before and the proofing process is not the place to address it. It should have been done before. Be quick when responding to questions, if possible. If you do find things that need to be fixed, like a missing word or a character has the wrong name, that kind of thing, the best way to send that to your narrator is to give a timestamp of where precisely where it is in the chapter. And then probably the sentence before and the sentence after that. That will let them quickly zoom in on any errors in the recording and fix it promptly. So be precise as you can with the requested changes. Give the chapter numbers and time stamps, and probably the sentence before and after that sentence. #6: Our sixth and final tip: once the audiobook is done, be sure to acknowledge the narrator's work. I believe the requirements for ACX or Findaway is that the narrator's name has to be on the audiobook cover, but I occasionally hear stories where the narrator isn't credited, which strikes me as absurd because the narrative put a lot of hard work into this audiobook. It might cost you a lot of money, but it was still a lot of hard work. The narrator should be credited for that. Be sure to make sure that you have read by or narrated by, and then the narrator's name on the cover for the audiobook. Also when you mentioned it on your social media and your website and your blog posts and so forth, you want to say this is the audiobook of whatever as narrated by the narrator. Because the audio narrator, in my very strongly held opinion, does deserve very strongly to be credited for the work on the audiobook. So that is it for this week. Those are my six tips for working with audiobook narrators. I hope you found them helpful. I suppose this episode by its nature is a rather limited episode because of the large mass of indie authors out there, only a small subset of subset of us are currently doing our own audiobooks. If someone is thinking about doing their own audiobooks and wondering about how to approach it, I hope this podcast episode was helpful. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. I remind you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. A quick note of thanks to my transcriptionist for helping me to organize my thoughts for this episode. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, I take a look back at my SILENT ORDER science fiction series, and answer twelve of the most common questions from readers about the books. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 205 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June the 14th, 2024 and today we are doing a question and answer session on my Silent Order science fiction series. Before we get to that, we will have an update on my current writing progress and then Question of the Week. My main project right now is Shield of Darkness, a sequel to Shield of Storms and the second book in the Shield War series. Progress has not been as quick as I would like, but there still has been progress and as of this recording, I am about 84,000 words into the rough draft. It really helped that I had a 10,000 word day on June 12th. That really propelled things forward. I'm not entirely sure how long the rough draft is going to be. I think it's probably going to end up around 120,000 words, maybe 115,000 words. We'll see when get there. But I'm still hoping to have it out in July, sometime after the 4th of July. After that is done, my next project will be Half-Orc Paladin, the third book in the Rivah series, and I'm currently 24,000 words into that and I think that one will be around 75,000 words (give or take) once it's done. I'm also 9,000 words into Ghost in the Tombs, but that will come out later in the year. In audiobook news, I'm pleased to report that the collection Tales of the Shield Knight, which contains sixteen stories from the Sevenfold Sword and the Dragontiarna series, is now out in audiobook, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills. You can get that at Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books at the moment, and should gradually be making its way onto the other audiobook stores as it gets through processing. Be sure to subscribe to my new release newsletter because sometimes I will give away individual audio short stories for free from that collection in my newsletter. 00:01:50 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Our Question of the Week segment is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: if you read mystery novels, what was the first mystery novel you ever read? No, wrong answers obviously, and as you'd expect, we had quite a few different responses. Justin says: A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I was 12. I had chicken pox and was confined to my room. I begged my father for something to read, and he handed me a massive book, The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Two days later, I asked for other books by him. I'm still not a fan of mysteries, but Doyle was a great author. Our next comment is from Ray, who says: Hardy Boys, also Sherlock Holmes for school. As an adult, the first I recall by choice were the Father Blackie Mysteries by Andrew Greeley. Our next comment is from Jake who says: can't remember. It had to be back in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. But I agree with you, it's great to diversify in reading. Someone gifted me a copy of Water for Elephants. I would never have read that by choice, but I'm glad I did. Our next comment is from Jeff, who says: Tom Swift books and Hound of the Baskervilles. Tom Swift was even science fiction-ish with their far-out inventions. Our next comment is from Jonathan (not me), who says: the Hardy Boys Hunting for Hidden Gold. The reprinted Flashlight edition was my first mystery read for me by my mom when I was about 8. This would have also been my first mystery that I read independently. When I was 10 through 11, I read the original Hardy Boys While the Clock Ticked. I was too young to know about the different editions of novels until much later, but I was always dissatisfied with the Flashlight version because it lacked the ending that I remembered. It was years later that I discovered the history of the series, which led to me finding and purchasing all or most of the original novels. Our next comment is from Becca, who says: Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys in early grade school. No idea which one, but I had quite a few of them. First adult mystery series was probably middle school and was The Alphabet Series by Sue Grafton and the Joe Grey series by Murphy. My mom really encouraged me to read pretty much anything and everything. Wish you would write more mystery books. They're so great. Thanks, Becca. I am glad you liked the mystery books, so I don't think too many other people did, which is why I have not written more of them. Our next comment is from Justin who says: first mystery novel was The Hardy Boys in grade school. Michael says: not my first, but I really like the Pendergast series by Lincoln and Child. Worth the read if folks haven't tried. John says: The Three Investigators series by Alfred Hitchcock. I don't know where I got the first one. My mom probably got it at a yard sale or something, but I was hooked. Was able to check out the others in the series for my school's library. I was probably in 3rd or 4th grade. Juana says: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Our next comment is from Ann-Marie, who says: Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and The Boxcar Children. Jeremiah says: Sherlock Holmes. Andrew says: As a young'un in grade school, I read The Mystery of the Green Ghost. It has stuck with me all these years. As a little more mature reader, I got a hold of The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Quite entertaining indeed. My own answer to this was I think it was Tell No One by Harlan Coben. This was way back in 2001 and I had a long car ride coming up. At the time I didn't read anything except fantasy and science fiction, but I got Tell No One as a present and I didn't have anything else to read while in the car. So I started reading Tell No One during the ride. The book is about an ER physician whose wife was murdered eight years ago. Then one day out of the blue, the physician gets a message that could only have come from her. Suddenly people show up to kill the physician and he finds himself on the run from the agents of a sinister billionaire. I was definitely hooked, and I've read mysteries and thrillers on and off since. I think this was good for me long term since I ended up a writer and it's good for writers to read widely in different genres. You always tell what a science fiction novel, for example, was written by someone who has never heard anything but science fiction. Additionally, when I wrote out the Question of the Week, I did not have Hardy Boys in mind because I was thinking of them as you know, books for children and I was thinking about adult books, but I did indeed read a bunch of The Hardy Boys books when I was a kid, but it was that was long enough going out that I can't clearly recall the plots of any of them, I'm afraid. 00:06:04 Main Topic: Silent Order Question and Answer Time (Note: Some Spoilers for the series in this section) Now on to our main topic of the week, Silent Order question and answer time. Why talk about this now, about a year after I finished the Silent Order science fiction series? Well, the reason for that is Silent Order Omnibus One had a very successful Bookbub feature deal at the end of May. Silent Order Omnibus One was briefly the number 2 free ebook on Amazon US and the number 1 free ebook on Amazon UK. So thanks for that, everyone. As you can imagine, this resulted in a lot of new eyes on the series, which inspired many reader questions, which is funny because I've been getting most of the same questions about the series and its particular idiosyncrasies for about seven years now. So let's have some answers below. First, some basic facts about the series. I published the first five books in September and October of 2017. It ended up at about 14 books, and I published the 14th and final book in September of 2023. All books are available on all ebook platforms. I've dabbled with Kindle Unlimited for it in the past, but not anymore. It's available wide and will remain so. There are also six tie-in short stories to the series that I've given away for free to my newsletter subscribers at various times. Now, with the basic facts out of the way, let's proceed to the most common questions from the last seven years of Silent Order. Question #1: Why do the characters still use kinetic, chemically propelled firearms 100,000 years in the future? By this question, people are usually wondering why at times the characters in the Silent Order are using, you know, traditional guns that fire metal bullets as opposed to like blasters or lasers or plasma cannons or whatever. And the answer is, not to be flippant, but why wouldn't they? People forget that firearms technology has been used for military applications, at least in the West, for at least nearly 700 years. Cannons were used in the 100 Years War and the 100 Years War started in 1337. Firearms technology has been refined and improved considerably since then, and no doubt it will continue to receive refinements and improvements in the future. Additionally, chemically propelled firearms offer many advantages over more advanced weaponry like lasers, rail guns, blasters, or particle weapons, especially for handheld levels of weaponry. A chemically propelled firearm doesn't require electricity or a power source and can't be disabled by an EMP. It's also more durable and rugged than a more advanced weapon, which would almost certainly require delicate electronic components. In fact, some models of firearm can famously be exposed to harsh conditions and continue to function. There's just no way you could do the same thing with a laser. Some devices, some machines are just the apex of their technological niche. Despite all the advanced weaponry available in the 21st century, soldiers still carry combat knives because in a situation where you need a knife, it is the best tool for the job. I suspect chemically propelled firearms dominate their niche in the same way. Question #2: Why isn't the technology in Silent Order as advanced as I think it should be? Well, they do have faster than light travel, artificial gravity, inertial absorption, anti-gravity lifts, shields, plasma weaponry, and ion thrusters. You can't exactly order any of that stuff off Amazon today. Medical technology is rather more advanced as well. The average human lifespan in Calaskar and other “developed” worlds at this time period is about 160 years due to advances in genetic engineering and better understanding of mitochondrial DNA. Cloned replacement limbs and organs are common medical procedures. When a replacement limb can't be cloned, installing a cybernetic one is typically a one day medical procedure. In the back story of the series, there are five very large Terran empires that rose and collapsed before the start of the series, which is about, as I've said, 100,000 years into the future. Those Terran empires each tended to have more advanced technology in certain areas than is common at the start of the series. One was a lot better at genetic engineering, another built super advanced sentient AI (more on that later) and so forth. When the particular empire fell or disintegrated into smaller successor states, there was some technological backsliding, and some of the more super advanced technology was lost. Question #3: The protagonist Jack March has the same initials as the author, Jonathan Moeller. Was that deliberate? Oh no, it wasn't. One of the original inspirations for the series were the James Bond books, so I chose a name that was the opposite of James Bond. After all, March is kind of the opposite of Bond in the sense of movement versus stasis and stagnation. In the original books, James Bond was always a sort of self-destructive alcoholic who gets somewhat worse as the series goes along and he doesn't have much in the way of character development. By contrast, I wanted March to have much more character change and growth. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that gave Jack March the same initials as me until three or four years into writing the series. The obvious is only obvious in hindsight, alas. Occasionally people say March is an authorial self-insert, but I guarantee you that he is not. If he were, he'd be a cranky middle aged former IT worker who doesn't like to go out very much. Question #4: Why doesn't March sleep with any of the beautiful women he meets in the first four books? Because he didn't want to. Like I said, he's sort of the opposite of James Bond and doesn't like unprofessionalism like that on the job. Also, by the time the series starts, he's old enough that casual flings no longer interest him and ultimately, he would really rather be on his own. It isn't until he meets a woman who truly understands him that this starts to change and the woman understands him because she hates the Final Consciousness just as much as he does. Question #5: Why do the characters still use phones? Well, they're not “cellular telephones” in the way that we think of them. They're more like personal handheld telecommunication and computing devices that are significantly more powerful than anything available today. That said, words sometimes long outlast the original purpose. The word mile originally came from the Latin language and described the distance a Roman soldier could cover with 1,000 steps. There is no longer a Roman Empire or Roman legionaries, but the term remains in use. There's a good chance that the word phone will outlast our current civilization and continue to refer to a telecommunications device just as miles still refers to a unit of distance, even though it doesn't have anything to do with marching soldiers or the Roman Empire. Additionally, phone was the simplest word available and using a sci-fi ish term like a mobile data pad or personal communicator or handheld computer just seemed a bit try hard. I used the metric system for distance in the series because the majority of Earth's population uses it today, so I assume it will eventually win out over time by pure weight of numbers. Question #6: Why does March work for repressive government like Calaskar? Whether or not Caesar is repressive depends on one's perspective. I expect someone from the 1850s or even the 1950s United States would find the Calaskaran government rather liberal and shockingly egalitarian. But many people from 2024 America would probably find it repressive. That said, I think Calaskar is better described as conformist. If you don't criticize the king or the official doctrines of the Royal Calaskaran church, you can say pretty much anything you want, and Calaskar doesn't have anything like the social problems of the 21st century United States, though that is partly because dissidents are eventually encouraged to leave and seek their fortunes elsewhere. Some of Calaskar's neighbors like Rustaril and the Falcon Republic were originally Calaskaran worlds that split off due to ideological differences. Rustaril opted for a form of socialism that led to its stagnation and ongoing decline, while the Falcon Republic is more hyper-capitalistic and libertarian and therefore very unstable, albeit with a cloned army that steps in and takes over when things get out of hand. Calaskar claims that its government combines the best aspects of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, though opinions differ among the characters in the books whether or not this is actually true. However, the series is mostly written from the perspective of Jack March, and he doesn't much care about everything we just discussed in the previous paragraph. He primarily works for the Silent Order, which is a Calaskaran intelligence agency that answers only to its own leaders and the King. The ultimate mission of the Silent Order is to monitor the elite and upper classes of Calaskaran society, whether political, business, or entertainment elites. If they start acting in a destructive way that will harm Calaskar and civilization, the Silent Order either discredits them, sabotages their careers, or arranges an accident (depending on how severe the particular elite's brand of corruption is). Obviously, many people would have severe moral qualms about arranging the fatal extrajudicial accident of a corrupt government or judicial official. Since March's own home world of Calixtus was betrayed to the Final Consciousness by its elite classes, he has no problem doing this kind of work. For March's perspective, Calaskar opposes the Final Consciousness and has been the primary rival to the Final Consciousness for some time, which is good enough for him. The fact that life on Calaskar is vastly better than anywhere ruled by the Final Consciousness just reinforces his decision. Question #7: Was this series inspired by the computer game Starfield? I have to admit I LOLed at this question. I started writing Silent Order on New Year's Eve in 2016 and the final book in the series came out in early September 2023. In fact, if I remember it, Starfield came out like two or three days after I published the final Silent Order book. So I can confidently say that the series wasn't inspired by Starfield in any way. That said, I would say that the video games which did help shape my thinking about the books were Wing Commander: Privateer, TIE Fighter, and Master of Orion 1 and 2. All those games were from the 1990s, of course, so I suppose I'm dating myself. Question #8: What actually did inspire the Silent Order series? The video games I mentioned above, for one. Also, the original James Bond books. When I started thinking about writing a science fiction series, I decided that I wanted to do a spy thriller, but in space. The Final Consciousness was sort of the idea of cybernetic space totalitarians. James Bond originally went up against SMERSH and then SPECTRE in the books, but March would go up against the covert agents of the sinister cybernetic Final Consciousness. There are also Lovecraftian themes in the books, as is gradually revealed throughout the series, that the Final Consciousness is in fact controlled by cosmic horrors from another universe. Believe it or not, the various malfunctions of ChatGPT also helped inspire some of the later books. I had established way back in Silent Order: Iron Hand that a true AI always goes homicidally insane. So when I actually did have to run an AI supercomputer character from one of the later books, I based its behavior on some ChatGPT and Bing Chat's more hilarious public meltdowns, though if I had waited a little longer and based it on Google's AI, the AI supercomputer character could have suggested that the protagonist add glue to their pizza cheese or perhaps eats are real small rocks a day for minerals. The day I wrote this paragraph (which was June 10th, 2024), Apple announced they're adding a bunch of AI stuff to both the iPad and iPhone, and no doubt more AI will soon reach meme status on the Internet. Needless to say, my opinion of generative AI in general is quite low. Question #9: Have the covers for the series changed? They look different on Goodreads. Not only have the covers changed over the last seven years, they have changed a lot. The covers went through five different iterations. At first I did them myself in GIMP and then I tried a couple different variations. During COVID I took a Photoshop class which I admit leveled up my cover design skills significantly, so I tried some character-based covers but they never had the results I was hoping to see in terms of sales. Then in 2022, I saw a Penny Arcade comic that made a joke about how science fiction readers want to see book covers that show spaceships and planets in close proximity. And while this was a joke, I realized it was nonetheless true, so I redid the covers to the current look that features spaceships in close proximity to planets, and the series has sold the best overall with the new set of covers. Science fiction writers take heed: the readers want to see planets and spaceships in close proximity on their covers. Question #10: Why aren't there audiobooks for the series? In all honesty, it would just be too expensive. At a rough back of the envelope calculation, I think it would take about $30,000 U.S. dollars to bring the entire series into audio, and it would take years to see that money back. Plus, I think the series would end up at about 85 hours long, give or take, and that's like 2 full work weeks just to listen to the audiobook for proofing. So to sum up, it would cost too much and I don't want to take on another project of that magnitude at this time. Question #11: What is your favorite book in the series? Silent Order: Eclipse Hand, for reasons unrelated to the plot. I read an article in 2017 saying that the iPad was a better productivity computer than a Linux desktop, and I thought that was just nonsense for a variety of reasons. So I wrote, edited, and did the entire cover on a Ubuntu Linux desktop for Silent Order: Eclipse Hand just to prove a point. I work less with Linux now than I did back in 2017, though given how bad Windows 11 has gotten with all the AI integration, I might go back to writing on a Linux desktop at some point. Even though it's my favorite book for reasons other than plot, I do quite like the plot of Eclipse Hand as well. The basic idea was something that's been knocking around inside my head for a while, so I was glad I was finally able to get to write it down. And now our 12th and final question: Weren't they originally only supposed to be nine books in the series? Why are there fourteen? Yes, I had planned to stop at nine because the Silent Order books never sold quite as well as I had hoped. However, there were enough dangling plot threads, specifically the mystery around the Pulse weapon of the Final Consciousness, that I was persuaded to continue and bring the series to a more epic ending than it had in book nine. I started working on book 10 in late 2019, but then COVID happened and derailed things for a while. At the end of 2021, I was able to pick it up again and in 2023 I decided would be my “summer of finishing things” and I pushed on to the final book in the Silent Order series. Hopefully it was a suitably epic ending. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who read through to the end of the series, encouraging me to continue with it. The years 2020 through 2023 were frustrating ones for a variety of reasons (and I'm sure everyone listened to this had their own frustrations in those years as well) and one of the ways I tried to reduce those frustrations was to put Silent Order on the side for a while, but I'm glad I persevered and continued on with the series, even if it took me a while. Now that it is finished, I can look back on it with a sense of pride for all the hard work that went into it. But mostly what I feel when I look back at it is gratitude for all the readers who read the books and enjoyed them. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A remind you that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts (note: transcripts are for Episodes 140 to the present episode). If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, I look back at the movies I saw in Spring 2024 and rate them from least to most favorite. To celebrate the arrival of CLOAK OF TITANS, this coupon code will get you 25% off any of the CLOAK MAGE ebooks at my Payhip store: MAYTITANS The code is valid through June 3rd, 2024. So if you're looking for a new book to start the summer, we've got you covered! PODCAST 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 201 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 17th, 2024, and today we are looking at the movies and streaming shows I watched in Spring 2024. Before we get to anything else, let's do Coupon of the Week. To celebrate the arrival of Cloak of Titans, naturally, this coupon code will give you 25% off any of the Cloak Mage ebooks at my Payhip store. That coupon code is MAYTITANS spelled MAYTITANS and of course, as always, the coupon code will be in the show notes for this episode. This code is valid through June 3rd, 2024, so if you're looking for a new book to start the summer, we've got you covered. Now for an update on current writing and publishing projects. I am pleased to report that Cloak of Titans is done and it is now out. It should at all the ebook stores and get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. It looks like it's off to a good start, so thank you everyone for that. In audio news, Ghost in the Veils is out, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. As of right now, it should be available at Audible, Amazon, Apple, Kobo, and my Payhip store. It should be showing up on Google Play, Spotify, and Chirp shortly. Now that Cloak of Titans is done, my next big main project will be Shield of Darkness, the second book in the Shield War series, picking up from Shields of Storms earlier in the year. I spent the last couple days writing the outline for that, and if all goes well, I should start on it on Monday the 20th or Tuesday the 21st. It depends on what the weather is, since there are some things I'd like to do outside if the weather is good, but anyway, that will be my new main project. Hopefully that will be out before the end of June. My secondary project right now is Half-Orc Paladin, the third book in the Rivah series, and I am currently about 14,000 words into that. That should come out fairly quickly after Shield of Darkness is done, so probably mid to late July for that book. 00:02:10 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics. This week's question is inspired by the various comments whenever I post the picture related to grilling: specifically, what is your favorite thing to grill? And we had a variety of responses this week. Our first response is from Justin, who says: my favorite thing to grill is a well marinated sirloin. Garlic, pineapple juice, soy sauce, and herbs in a Ziploc bag for two to four hours, then on a hot grill for a couple minutes per side. Yum! Alas, nowadays it's mostly chicken legs and pork loin sliced up for chops. Even the cheapest hamburger meat is getting to be too expensive to buy on a regular basis. Sadly, this is definitely true, and I've seen that myself. Our next response is from ABM, who says: is it even camping in the Midwest if you're not grilling a pudgie pie over a fire? For those unfamiliar with this regional delicacy, either sandwich or pie fillings are put between bread in the special sandwich shaped iron before it goes over the fire. It really puts the grilled in grilled cheese sandwich. Jenny says: steak, but only because I have a charcoal grill now. I used to use gas. I think it is better because I find it to be slower and tastier. Bonnie says brats and burgers were my favorite when Hubby was around to grill. Gary says: a pork loin is one of my favorite things to grill. I prefer smoking stuff over grilling. Grilling and barbecue are definitely two different things. There is nothing better than a dry rub pork shoulder smoked for about 10 hours and then shredded. Mark says: we love good old-fashioned burgers and lately have been adding teriyaki grilled chicken thighs to the cooking plan. John says: Chinese style plum sauce ribs. Family recipe. Country style ribs, which is just pork butt cut onto thick strips, marinated 3 days. Catriona says: Lamb chops and sausages. A different Mark says: ribs are my favorite, followed by barbecued chicken. Jesse says: spicy Italian sausages for the most part. Michael says: I find the grilling post interesting because over here in the UK, we tend to call it barbecuing and the term itself is a barbecue. Grilling is what you do under grill in your oven indoors. But regardless, I would say hamburgers! Joseph says: Porterhouse and lobster tails on charcoal grill. Second would be shrimp, scallops, and fish fillets of any kind on charcoal. Breakfast on the griddle, pork and chicken on the smoker all year round. Jonathan says: steak and nothing but steak. A third Mark says: prisoners. I hope he meant that tongue in cheek. For myself, I think it's a good old-fashioned burger. I find half the battle in terms of flavor is to spend ninety seconds melting cheese onto the burger in the final phase of grilling. Toasting the bun separately also helps a great deal. It is remarkable how proper cooking can improve the flavor of many foods. Like, I had eggs for lunch. Eggs by themselves are kind of bland, but if you add some ham and cheese and some pepper to the eggs, it really tastes quite a bit better. I suppose the realization that food tastes better when you prepare it properly is the foundation of five and a half thousand years of cooking and civilization. 00:05:15 Main Topic: Spring Movie Roundup And it's now titled for my Spring Movie Roundup for 2024, our main topic of the week. As usual, everything is sorted from least liked to most liked, and just a reminder that my opinions are in no objective or qualified and are based solely on my own taste and whether or not I like something. The least favorite thing I saw this spring would be Hot Tub Time Machine, which came out in 2010. This is one of the very rare movies I didn't finish. It was just too stupid. Like sometimes if I don't like movie, I'll start playing Starfield or Skyrim or something with the movie still playing in the background, but Hot Tub Time Machine was too stupid even to merit that treatment. I don't object to crude humor on its face. Indeed, much of the absurdity of the human condition comes from the various indignities to which human bodies are inherently subjected. There is something both hilarious and egalitarian in the fact that an emperor and a peasant have to relieve themselves in the same way, and many jokes have made use of that truth. You can get away with a lot of crudity if you're actually funny. But the Hot Tub Time Machine movie, just threw crudeness on the screen in lieu of attempting actual humor. Besides, crude humor ultimately is to storytelling as garlic salt is to cooking: best used sparingly. Anyway, the protagonists were all unlikable. I simply got annoyed enough with movie that I gave up around 40 or 50 minutes into it. Overall grade: F Next up is Wish, which came out in 2023. I did not see that in the theater. I saw it when I turned up on Disney Plus a few months ago. I liked the animation and the voice acting was good, but the movie just did not make a lot of sense. Like there's this wizard-king and people give him their wishes, but then they forget what they wish for, and he does this to prevent civil unrest, or so he says. The protagonist gets mad that the wizard-king isn't handing out free stuff in the way that she likes, so she wishes really hard and then a magic star falls from the sky to help her. This upsets the wizard king, so he switches from using good magic, which is apparently blue and sparkly to evil magic, which is green and sparkly. I guess that that color makes all the difference. Then everyone in the Kingdom sings at the wizard-king until he turns into a mirror. I have to admit that made even less sense as I spoke it aloud. There are movies that don't make a lot of sense but work because it's like a dream or a magic trick since the movie suspends the viewer's disbelief during the tale, and it's only afterward that you realize it didn't make much sense, but that by then it doesn't matter because you're entertained. Unfortunately, Wish doesn't even make sense while you're watching it, and a benevolent wizard king who hoards wishes sounds a lot like the Disney Corporation. It would be hilarious if Disney made Wish as a parody of themselves, but I think their interpretation happened by accident. Overall grade: C-, maybe D+ if I'm in a really bad mood. Next up is Green Lantern, which came out in 2011. This turned up free on Tubi, so I gave it a watch. It was interesting because all the pieces were there to make it a great movie, strong cast with good performances, reasonable CG computer graphics for 2011, and a potentially compelling plot. However, it didn't really gel. I suspect Ryan Reynolds works better as a comic actor than a dramatic one. Additionally, the movie relied way too heavily on a lot of ponderous infodumping to explain the elaborate mythology of the Green Lantern Corps. The classic axiom of fiction writing is to show don't tell, and since movies are a visual medium, it's especially true in movies. The problem was that Green Lantern spent a lot of its runtime telling instead of showing, but I suspect the studio didn't want to take a lot of risks with a movie that cost $200 million to make in 2011 money (before a lot of inflation). Additionally, the movie leaned a little too heavily into its CG. So overall, I would give it a grade of C-. Next up is Avatar: The way of Water, which came out in 2022. The Avatar films are visually beautiful, but they're also profoundly misanthropic, which is sort of a “it would be better if humans were all dead” strain of environmentalism running through it. It's also unfortunate how the movies portraying “living in harmony with nature” as morally upright, because in real life, living with nature means dying before the age of 30 of sepsis, dysentery, various contagious diseases, endemic local warfare, and starvation, often all at the same time. Basically, the history of civilization is five and a half thousand years of humanity trying to find ways to get screwed less by nature. Of course, then we're getting into profound philosophical questions. Do you believe that humanity is made in the image of God with a soul, or is humanity particularly simply a particularly clever breed of destructive chimpanzee? Obviously one's worldview will diverge profoundly based on how you answer that question, which, let's be honest, is a rather deep philosophical/religious discussion for a movie about blue space elves made by the director of Terminator. On the other hand, maybe I'm just overthinking it and in the world of Avatar, the Na'vi are blue space elves and the humans are just space orcs. Anyway, incoherent philosophical questions aside, the movie is visually stunning, the apex of computer graphics. It's what you get with a $400 million budget overseen by a perfectionist director who directed three of the four top-grossing movies of all time. The plot is a straight continuation of the previous movie. The humans have returned to reconquer Pandora, including a clone of the charismatic Colonel Quaritch from the first movie. It's up to Jake Sully and his family to unite the squabbling Na'vi forest and water clans to fight off the invaders. Unlike the first movie, Way of Water is not a self-contained story, but helps tee up the third movie, which is definitely happening since this one made like two and half billion dollars. I also admire James Cameron's unswerving devotion to the Papyrus font, even after two Saturday Night Live sketches about it. Overall grade: B Next up is The Cutting Edge, which came out in 1992. I watched this because I was told it is considered a classic in some corners. Since it was also free on Tubi, I decided to give it a watch. It's basically the ideal form of the very popular enemies to lovers romance story trope. Olympic hockey player Doug suffers a head injury that damages his peripheral vision, which means he can't play hockey anymore. Meanwhile, Kate is a spoiled and demanding figure skater who alienates every single potential partner, thereby ruining her chances of winning Olympic gold. Kate's coach Anton seeking out a partner willing to put up with Kate's difficult personality, tracks down the desperate Doug and convinces him to give figure skating a try instead of hockey. As you might expect, sparks and conflicts immediately fly when Doug and Kate meet, and they must learn to overcome their initial mutual dislike (and their obvious mutual attraction) to win the Olympics. Enemies to lovers romance tends to follow a very specific story structure, and this movie nails it perfectly. The actors all did a good job with their parts. Fun fact, Anton was played by Roy Dotrice, who narrated the A Song of Ice and Fire audiobooks. Even more fun fact, the movie was written by Tony Gilroy, who also wrote several of the Jason Bourne movies and created Star Wars: Andor, which are about as totally different from The Cutting Edge as you can get. This man has some range. Overall grade: B. Next up is Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which originally came out in 2021. After the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot didn't work for a variety of reasons, it seemed that Sony they settled on a different tactic, instead decided to continue the original continuity of with the new movies, which in my opinion was a smarter choice. Single mom Callie is having a rough time with her teenage children, Trevor and Phoebe. Callie is out of options when her estranged father dies and leaves her a farm on the outskirts of Summerville, Oklahoma. With no better options at the moment, Callie and the kids pack up and move to Summerville and the bored Trevor and Phoebe began poking into their relics of their grandfather's life. However, it turns out that their grandfather was Egon Spengler, one of the original Ghostbusters, and he had moved to Summerville to keep an eye on a dangerous supernatural threat. With Egon dead, the threat is waking up once more, and it's up to Phoebe and Trevor to finish their grandfather's work and save the world. This was a very well-constructed comedy/horror action thriller. Admittedly, it starts a bit slow in the same style as the original Ghostbusters movie from 1984, but overall, it works. There's a gradual sense that something is increasingly wrong in Summerville. Unlike Green Lantern, this movie doesn't do a lot of infodumping, but instead uses the much better storytelling technique of gradually revealing the worldbuilding as the kids start to investigate the mysteries around their family and their new town. Phoebe and Trevor had the right combination of teenage brattiness and curiosity and Callie was believable as a single mom who had made some questionable life choices and was trying to hang on as best she could. Paul Rudd was also good as an incompetent summer school teacher/seismologist who has nonetheless figured out that something strange is happening in Summerville. The movie leaned a little too hard into to nostalgia, but I liked it. Overall, grade: B+. Next up is The Sign of Four, which came out originally in 1987. I finally had a chance to watch the Jeremy Brett version of the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Sign of Four. Brett was, in my opinion, the best Sherlock Holmes actor of all the actors who have played versions of the character. Amusingly, I think Mr. Brett would have made a good Grand Admiral Thrawn, which is funny because one of the inspirations for Thrawn was of course, Sherlock Holmes. But unfortunately, Brett died two or three years before Heir to the Empire was even written. Anyway, back to the main point. In The Sign of Four, Miss Mary Morstan calls upon Holmes and Watson asking for Holmes's help in unraveling a strange mystery. Her father disappeared soon after returning to England from India, and once a year since then, she has received an extremely valuable pearl in the mail. Her mysterious benefactor wishes to meet her at last and Morstan wants Holmes' advice as to what she should do. Naturally, there's quite a bit more going on beneath the surface, and Holmes soon finds himself investigating a case involving a pair of eccentric brothers, a one-legged man, a deadly assassin, and treasure that seems cursed to bring misfortune to whoever obtains it. All of the performances were excellent, though given the state of 1980s sound technology, I definitely recommend watching the movie with the captions on. The only thing that I didn't like was that the adaptation removed the fact that Morstan and Watson get engaged at the end but given that the actors wanted to deemphasize Sherlock's cocaine use (the original story has the famous line “for me there still remains the cocaine bottle”), that's probably why it was cut. Overall grade: A-. And now for the favorite things I saw in spring 2023 and for the first time, it came out to a three-way tie. The first of my three favorite things was Fall Guy, which came out this year, in 2024. I didn't intend to go see this initially, but then I saw the hilarious Saturday Night Live opening Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling did about Barbie and Oppenheimer, and I decided to give it a shot. This is a romantic comedy action thriller and it nails all those genres excellently. The protagonist is a highly regarded film stuntman named Colt, in love with an assistant director named Jody, but Colt is seriously injured in an accident. In the aftermath of the accident, Colt abandons his career and breaks up with Jody. Eighteen months later, the producer of a big budget science fiction epic contacts Colt. It turns out that his ex, Jody, is directing the movie and her career is riding on its success. So he goes to do the stunts for the movie to help her out. However, things soon take a turn for the worse when the movie's egotistical lead actor disappears, and if Cole can't find him within 48 hours, the studio will shut down the movie and destroy Jody's career. What follows is a romantic comedy that remains funny and turns into a pretty good thriller movie. The running joke about seeing the unicorn was great and there's a bit with Colt crying in his truck that becomes absolutely hilarious. Definitely recommended. It's really regrettable that this movie apparently didn't do well in theaters, but I predict it will have a long and healthy life on streaming. Overall grade: A. The second of my three favorite things is Clarkson's Farm: Season Three, which also came out in 2024. This show has stumbled into a genius formula: display the extreme difficulties of the modern farmer through the lens of an unsympathetic comedy protagonist in the person of Jeremy Clarkson. Like, Jeremy Clarkson is not a terribly sympathetic figure because he's very rich and unquestionably prone to quarrelling because he got fired from one of his old jobs for punching a dude. But by having him run his own farm and deal with all the many, many headaches and heartaches of farming, he becomes a sympathetic figure because he suffers through the same things as every other farmer: failed crops, bad weather, badger-spread diseases, animals dying, government red tape, and so on. And it also demonstrates how hard farming is. If Clarkson's farm loses a lot of money, it doesn't really matter to him because he can rely on his media career. But that isn't true for most farmers, obviously, and Clarkson himself and the show go out of their way to point out that fact again and again. Anyway, if you're not familiar with the concept of the show, in 2019 Clarkson decided to run his farm himself rather than hiring a professional manager and since he was under contract to produce a show for Amazon, he figured he could make a documentary and get paid for working on his farm. In the first season, Clarkson was shocked when a year's work on his farm brought in a profit of about $150. In the second season, he battled local government to open a restaurant on his farm. In the third season, the team continues. Clarkson attempts to raise pigs and find new ways of making revenue from the farm. The show manages to be both entertaining and educational about the difficulties of farming at the same time. Definitely worth the watch. Overall grade: A. And now for the third of my three favorites: Dune Part 2, which came out in 2024. As a writer of novels, I really, really hate to admit it, but I think Dune Part 2 improved somewhat on the original book. This is rare in film adaptations, but it does happen. Goldfinger the movie is better than Goldfinger the book in my opinion, since Auric Goldfinger's plan makes much more sense in the movie than it does in the book and the movie also has James Bond's climatic showdown with the deadly Oddjob. The Godfather movie is pretty close to the Godfather novel, but it's tighter because it does omit some needless subplots that honestly I thought the author threw into the book to pad out the length. So as a writer, it really does pay me to admit this, but I think some of the changes to Dune Part 2 are an improvement over the book. It's a bit tighter, a little less deus ex machina. The novel Dune, beyond all doubt, is a very weird book. It's also very dense, with multiple interlocking themes. You can honestly say that Dune is about ecology, religion, politics, declining empires, the cyclical nature of history, oil-based politics, social dynamics, and of course, truly enormous quantities of mind altering drugs. Any movie adaptation would probably have to take just one of those themes and lean hard into them since there won't be enough time to address all of them. The director, Denis Villeneuve, chose to go with the mostly political themes. Anyway, I think Dune Parts One and Two combined are probably the best possible adaptation that could be made of the seminal (but still very weird) science fiction book. Various parts from the novel have been omitted, altered, or emphasized, but that's necessary in adaptation. The trick is to do it in a way that preserves the spirit of the original work, and I think Dune Parts One and Two have done it well. Part of the problem with the 1984 version of Dune was that the ending totally subverted the message of the book, which Frank Herbert himself said several times was “beware of charismatic leaders.”  Dune Part 2 most definitely does not subvert the message of the book. Indeed, Paula Atreides's final line in the movie is downright chilling. Part 2 picks up in the second half of the story when Paul joins the Fremen and embarks on his gradual transformation (or perhaps descent) from the son of a destroyed noble house to the blood drenched warrior prophet Muad'Dib. All the performances are good, the effects are excellent, the desert shots are sweeping, and you could tell Hans Zimmer and his team enjoyed cutting loose with the soundtrack. Overall, I think Dune Parts One and Two are probably the best possible adaptation of the Dune book in movie form, which is probably was the other problem with the Dune 1984, since there was just one movie and Dune Parts One and Two required over five hours of very expensive big budget movie to tell even a condensed adaptation of the complicated original book. Overall grade: A. So that's it for this week. On my writing podcasts this week, we talked about grilling and movies, so next week we will try to have a more writing themed topic. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, I celebrate the 200th episode of The Pulp Writer Show by asking readers which book of mine they read first. The episode also has a preview of the audiobook of GHOST IN THE VEILS as narrated by Hollis McCarthy. To commemorate the occasion this coupon code will get you 25% off EVERY SINGLE ITEM at my Payhip store: 200THEPISODE That's right, the coupon code will get you 25% off every single ebook or audiobook on my Payhip store, and it's good through May 20th, 2024. So if you're looking for something to read or listen to, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT Audio file Episode200.mp3 Transcript   00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 200 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May the 10th, 2024 and today we are celebrating the 200th episode of this podcast by taking a look back at how people have found my books. We'll also close out the show with a preview of the upcoming Ghost in the Veils audiobook. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. To celebrate the 200th episode of this podcast, we're going to have a special coupon code that will get you 25% off every single item at my Payhip store. That coupon code is 200THEPISODE, which is spelled 200THEPISODE and the coupon code and the link to my Payhip will be included in the show notes for this episode. That's right, the coupon code will give you 25% off every single ebook or audiobook on my Payhip store and is good through May 20th, 2024. So if you're looking for something to read or listen to, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on current writing projects. The rough draft of Cloak of Titans is done, and I am about 2/3 of the way through the first editing pass. If all goes well, I am hoping to have that out before the end of May. I've also written a short story called Blood Walk and newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of that short story when Cloak of Titans comes out. So this is an excellent time to sign up for my new release newsletter. You'll get 3 free epic fantasy novels when you do. Once Cloak of Titans is published, my next main project will be Shield of Darkness, which will hopefully come out towards the end of June or the start of July. I am also about 11,000 words into Half-Orc Paladin, the third Rivah book, and I will make that my main project after Shield of Darkness is done, so that book will probably come out before the end of this summer, if all goes well. 00:01:57 Main Topic/Question of the Week And our Question of the Week is also this week's main topic. It's a question that I can't answer myself, but I asked because I wanted to talk about it for this episode of the podcast, and the question is, which book of mine did you first read, and how did you come across it (since Cloak of Titans will be, I believe, my 152nd novel)? I expected a wide range of responses and we got them. Our first response is from Roman who says: first one was Demonsouled. I looked for free books when I downloaded the Kindle app for my new iPad and have read everything you've written since. I guess your plan of giving away the first book for free worked on me. That is why I give those books away for free. Our next response is from Dave, who says: I found Child of the Ghosts on BookBub. The title was intriguing. It was also free. I now have an extensive Jonathan Moeller collection on my Kindle Library. Our next response comes from Joachim, who says: Ghost Omnibus One and Ghost Exile Omnibus One were $0.99, so I purchased both. I continued with Ghost Exile, backfilling the Ghost stories later. You would not be able to answer your own question obviously, but would you be able to answer us the following question: what was the first fantasy book you published? That would been Demonsouled back in 2005, when it was traditionally published and later I got the rights back and self-published it for the first time in 2011 and then later made it free. Our next response is from Mark, who says: I found Child of the Ghosts on Kindle. Sam says Frostborn: The Gray Knight. I was looking for a new fantasy series to read after I finished the Codex Alera. Came across it while scrolling through Amazon and thought, huh, why not? Little did I know all these years later I would have an addiction to your novels. Well, there are worse problems to have. I agree very much. Our next response is from Tarun who says: read Child of the Ghosts first on the Kindle web app. Todd says: Child of the Ghosts. Caina is a great Ghost nightfighter. Mary says: Frostborn. I forget why. That seems entirely appropriate, because I wrote Frostborn 11 years ago now. Yes, eleven years ago now, because I wrote it in 2003, so I can barely remember writing it at this point, let alone how someone might come across it. Our next response is from Justin: Demonsouled. Free book offer. Steve says: Iron Hand. If I remember right, it came up as a suggestion on the Kindle app. Sara says: Frostborn. It was $0.99 and then after I finished that series, Child of the Ghosts on a 99 cent deal. Thuvia says: Thief Trap-finished it on September 14th, 2016. I don't recall how I found it, but maybe BookBub? I know the book covers amused me since they're nothing like how Nadia dresses. I have since changed the Cloak Games and Cloak Mage covers, but the original covers definitely did not reflect how Nadia dresses in the series. Our next response is from William, who says: Iron Hand, which I discovered through William King's blog when you posted your blog post on how to write and publish an ebook at no cost using free software. I remember that blog post. That got a lot of traction, especially because I've written an entire book, Silent Order: Eclipse Hand, in order to prove that point. Our next response is from Kermit, who says: the Ghost Omnibus. I was researching the next fantasy author I wanted to read because David Eddings had died. I came across your Ghosts series and decided to try it. Ann-Marie says: Child of the Ghosts. The title caught me. It was part of Kindle's recommendations for things I should try next. I was also getting off of a mystery genre binge so I wanted something different to dive into. I love Caina. She's so cool. Whoops, forgot to add Goodreads says I read it back in July 2017. Kevin says: the first books of yours were The Frostborn Omnibus One on the 21st of April 2017. I came across it on Amazon search while looking for stuff to read in the car whilst waiting for my son to come out of school. It was £0.99, so throw away money really and worth look. Since then I have, amongst others, read a further 103 books of yours to date. So it seems that making Frostborn Omnibus One $0.99 turned out to be a really good idea. Our next response is from Lee, who says: Frostborn the Gray Knight was the first ebook I picked up to read. I started because of the book description. Since then I have read almost every book you have published. Perry says: Demonsouled with the original public domain cover art (the best of the covers, in my opinion) searching for books to add to my Kobo. And I stumbled across Smashwords. I searched for free fantasy books, and your books were near the top of the results. This was just shortly after you started self-publishing. I originally grabbed a whole slew of your books there. I have since purchased and continue to buy your ebooks through Kobo. I get points for being a VIP plus a free book every year from a select list. All your short stories I buy on Kobo as well. Audiobooks I get through your Payhip store. Ah, that takes me way back because way back. In 2011 when I started self-publishing, I couldn't afford cover art of any kind, so what I had to do was look for classic artwork scenes that were in the public domain since you can reuse public domain art freely. You do in fact see a lot of traditionally published books that have old like Renaissance or Baroque paintings, for the cover. That was the original covers Demonsouled and Child of the Ghosts, public domain artwork from the 19th century. Our next response is from Lauren, who says: Child of the Ghosts on Smashwords, but I read primarily through Kindle these days. Nadia is my favorite, but I hope to use the Ghost and/or Demonsouled settings one day in our group's tabletop RPGs. Our next response is from Jesse, who says: Frostborn Omnibus One. I was sitting in an IHOP and I had just finished the last ebook in my queue. Google Books suggested it. It was a dollar for three and half books, so I figured why not? Still had half a plate of food to go. I have subsequently bought and read pretty much everything of yours is readily available and actively tracking all the series. Good stuff. I'm glad that worked out because that is one of the better stories I've ever heard of what happens in an IHOP. Our next comment is from Becca, who says: Demonsouled, when it first came out on Kindle. I can remember waiting eagerly for each book in the series. Still one of my favorites. Thank you for all the writing! Rhion says: Demonsouled. I just finished a bunch of Quantrell and Peloquin books and it popped up under suggested reading on KU. Since then, I've read quite literally your entire fiction bibliography, which is just ridiculous. Our next comment comes from Jonathan (a different Jonathan than me) and he says: first book I actually read was the Frostborn Omnibus, the first three books plus The First Quest all bundled into one. I got them on Google Play because I got a gift card for Christmas and I think the omnibus was on sale. So I couldn't resist getting four whole books for cheap, which of course led into the rest of the series and to Sevenfold Sword and to Mallison and to Dragontiarna. Mandy says: I read the Frostborn prequel and found it on the freebie list on Amazon at the time. I read everything released in that universe, as well as the Demonsouled series and am now working my way through the Ghosts series. Our next comment is from Randy, who says: Child of the Ghosts was my first. I was desperately searching for new authors and it was one of about a dozen free novels I picked up several years ago. Caina's story was so good I finished in one sitting. After I devoured what was available at the time for the Ghost books, I moved on to Frostborn. Then I found you also wrote science fiction. I've read all the different series to date and I haven't been found wanting yet. Well, not true. I'm always wanting the next book. That's why I'm working hard on the next book. Our next comment is from Martin who says: I started with the Gray Knight. I instantly loved it and the rest of the series, at least what was published at the time. When I ran out of them, I looked you up and read the Demonsouled books. After that, moved on to Caina and only recently I moved on to Nadia. I also find they have a lot of readability. Our next comment is from Lauren, who says: Child of the Ghosts, after the third book in the series was out. Found it when searching for a new read on Amazon. Was hooked from there. Marta says: I'm sure it was a Bookbub deal. I think it was the Frostborn Omnibus. Jacob says: The Gray Knight. Came across it after looking for a new series to read after I caught up on the Half-Orc series by David Dalglish. Barbara says: Demonsouled or Child of the Ghosts. It's been so long. I'm not sure which was first. Having been the one to write those books so long ago, I totally understand where she's coming from. Our next response is from Cheryl, who says: the first Ridmark Arban book. Can't remember the name, may have been The Gray Knight? That is entirely correct. It was, in fact Frostborn: The Gray Knight. Our next response is from JKM who says: the first Ghost book and I cannot remember where I came across it. John says Demonsouled on Kindle. Amazon suggested to me way, way back. I picked up a used printed copy I discovered at my local fantasy and science fiction store, Dark Carnival. Shortly afterwards gave it to my son, who enjoyed it as well. That is a deep cut, because Demonsouled was originally published in 2005 in hardback and very quickly went out of print. So I'm impressed that John managed to find one of those copies still floating out there in the used book market. Cathy says: Frostborn Omnibus One. I saw the $0.99 price and thought if I don't like it, I'm only out a dollar. Once I finished it, I started looking for other books by you and have read almost every series you've written. Michael says. I think it was Ghost in the Flames. It was early 2010s (2013 maybe?), and I just discovered the joy of self-published fantasy authors on the Kindle store. As soon as I read it, I was hooked. Bonnie says: Frostborn omnibus. It was cheap, looked interesting, so I gave it a try. Then Tower of Endless Worlds- totally hooked and now I have all the books! Michiel says: Demonsouled. It was free, so I gave it a go and started collecting everything you wrote since then. Jason says: I honestly can't remember. I think it might have been the first Caina omnibus with an Audible audiobook that I played in my car while driving to work. Then the second and I ran out of audiobooks, so I had to start reading them myself. Phillipe says: The very first Caina book, been hooked since. Susan says: Demonsouled. I was searching for something to read, and it sounded good. I have now read everything and am patiently waiting for more. Melinda says Child of the Ghosts. It was free and I was broke and bored. That is why I give away the free books: to entertain people who are broke and bored. Our next comment is from Juliana, who says: the first Ghosts book. Judy says: Child of the Ghosts. I was on Google Play and was recommended. Tom says: The Frostborn Omnibus One, on sale on Amazon. The rest is history. Justin says: The Gray Knight was a suggestion based on what I read on Apple Library. Ashley (who I believe is in fact engaged to Justin) says: My first book was also The Gray Knight and Justin was the reason I started reading this series. So thanks for the recommendations, Justin! James says: Demonsouled on Kindle way back when. It was free and a good name. I mean how Demonsouled isn't a band name yet, I have no idea. The rest, as they say, is many, many series later. I fully understand. Our next comment is from Juana who says: Frostborn: The Gray Knight. It was in a BookBub offering. Shandy says: I was in a book hangover and saw your Frostborn series on sale on Google Play Books. Omnibus got me and like 100 plus books later, safe to say I'm a fan. Beverly says: Demonsouled. It's been so long. I don't know what led me to get it. Most likely just window shopping for next read and I thought it'd be something I would enjoy. Andrew says Frostborn series. Suggested by Kindle. I've read most of what you've written since. Just can't get into Demonsouled, so don't know why. I've got those books. Just doesn't click. Christopher says: Demonsouled. I got the first book free on my Nook, like I found most of my favorite authors. I also read another one of the first book free ones at the same time, but I didn't like it. I don't remember something about a tower and magic. Then I read the Frostborn series. You were far enough into it that by the time I started I was playing catch up as you released books. I may have had to wait a week or two for the last book to come out. Then I started Cloak Games. That is still in my top three favorite series of all time. Probably top two with Spinward Fringe by Randolph Lalonde. I have read pretty much everything you've written by now. David says: Thief Trap. Found via Facebook ad. Venus says: Thief Trap. Found it doing a search for free urban fantasy on my Nook. So those are some of the first books of mine that people have read and the ways in which they found them. I think we can safely say that giving away the first book in your series for free turned out to be a very good idea. I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has read any of my books as, as you probably guessed, have been doing this for a long time. Demonsouled was first published in April 2011 (for self-published, rather); it was initially published in hardback way back in May 2005. So I clearly have been doing this for a long time and I am very grateful to everyone who has read a book or listened to an audiobook or come along for the ride. I'm also very grateful to everyone who has listened to this podcast over 200 episodes. And here's to more interesting episodes in the future. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes with transcripts (transcripts are available from Episode 140 onwards) on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe. Stay healthy and see you all next week. And now let's close out the show with a preview of the audio book of Ghost in the Veils, as excellently read by Hollis McCarthy: Caina gazed at the wrapped bundle in the back of the wagon. Thankfully, no blood had leaked from it. Though perhaps she shouldn't have worried. Only a few people in Malarae would have recognized the dark green liquid as blood. The wagon itself was nothing remarkable. A bit old and worn, though none of the planks had rotted and the wheels were in mostly good shape. A pair of placid draft horses pulled the vehicle, the animals well-accustomed to the noises and smells of the Imperial capital. The only thing unusual was the bundle resting in the back.It was almost the precise size and shape of the corpse of a grown man. To be fair, it was a corpse. Just not of a grown man. Or a grown woman. Or indeed anything human. Caina didn't know what it was, but she intended to find out. “Will there be anything else, Countess?” said her seneschal, a Saddaic man named Talzain. He wore the formal black clothes of a Nighmarian servant. Combined with his wan complexion, the outfit always made him look a bit corpselike. “No, thank you,” said Caina. “I should be back in time for dinner with Lord Kylon and Lady Kalliope.” “Yes,” said Talzain. He cleared his throat. “That ought to be…interesting.” “You have a gift for understatement,” said Caina. Kylon and Kalliope had their own errands in the city. When Kalliope had fled New Kyre with her children ahead of the Cult of Rhadamathar, she had taken some money and baggage with them, but she had been forced to leave it behind at the Wrecked Warship near the ocean harbor of Malarae. Fortunately, the innkeeper had kept all of Kalliope's baggage on hand. Partly because Anastasios was an honest man and partly because he feared the vengeance of Kalliope's father. Lysikas Stormblade had a formidable reputation, even among the Kyracians living in Malarae. So Kalliope had gone with some of Caina's servants to retrieve her baggage and buy such things as Nikarion and Zoe might need. Kylon himself was keeping watch over the twins. Caina suggested that he take them riding to see the city, and he agreed. The children, in awe of the father they had never known they had, had made no protest. Ardakh, Sethroza, and the other Cultists were still out there, but if they tried to attack the children in Kylon's presence, they would regret it bitterly.

In this week's episode, we take a look at some ergonomics and health tips for writers and other sedentary workers. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: SPRINGFURY The coupon code is valid through May 25th, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 199 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May the 3rd 2024 and today we are talking about ergonomics for writers. Before we get to our main topic, we will do Coupon of the Week, an update on current writing projects, and then Question of the Week. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SPRINGFURY. As always, that will be in the show notes with a link to the Payhip store. This coupon code will be valid through May the 25th, 2024, so if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Next up, updates on my current writing projects. I am almost done with Cloak of Titans. I'm currently at 98,000 words. I am hoping to wrap it up after I finish recording this episode (either this afternoon or tomorrow), and so we are well on track to having the book out before the end of May, if all goes well. I am also 8,000 words into Half-Orc Paladin, which will be the sequel to Wizard-Thief and Half-Elven Thief, and the third book in the Rivah series. That will probably be out towards the end of July because once Cloak of Titans is done, I want to go full speed ahead on Shield of Darkness (the sequel to Shield of Storms from earlier in the year and the second book in the Shield War series). If all goes well, the next couple of books I publish will be Cloak of Titans, Shield of Darkness, and Half-Orc Paladin. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is recording the anthology of Tales of the Shield Knight for me. We're about 1/3 of the way through it, I think and making good progress. I'm looking forward to sharing that with you all. I just got the notification that the files for the audiobook of Ghost in the Veils (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) were uploaded, so just a little more proofing and then that should hopefully be available to you as well. So lots of good things to look forward to. 00:02:07 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is the board game that you've been playing the longest? Board games have many advantages in the modern age. They don't require electricity, they don't need to be charged, and they also have a pleasingly tactile feel that you just don't get from tapping a screen. Sometimes you learn a game when you're a kid and sticks with you ever since. We have some interesting answers this week. Our first answer is from Jesse, who says: I have to say Labyrinth. Played it as a kid a lot with siblings. A year or two ago, my kids got it randomly from a relative, and now it's back. The real precursor to Mario Kart in terms of learning to hate your friends and discovering life is unfair. For myself, I only started playing Mario Kart with my siblings when I was already well into middle age, so we thankfully avoided squabbling over that. If we had played Mario Kart when we were kids, we definitely would have squabbled. Back to Question of the Week. Michael says: I don't really play them anymore, alas. I played chess in school but only so I didn't have to do physical education class. I used to look at the board and immediately resign and then just sit and read a book instead until the teacher wandered over. It used to annoy my opponents who took the game seriously. So congratulations to Michael for devising a chess stratagem that did, in fact get him what he wanted. MacKenzie says: hands down, chess. I may be awful at it, but it's definitely the record holder. Mark says: checkers, because my mum is good at it. Adelaide says: Scrabble for me. Venus says: backgammon. My mother taught me to play. I don't know how old I was. She never let me win. Every time I beat her it was because I had a better game that day. David says it's probably Shoots and Ladders, followed closely by checkers. Grace says: I no longer play the same board games I did as a kid so the ones that I play now with friends. I've played I think Arkham Horror and Quacks of Quedlinburg the most. Both are fun, though Arkham Horror, we've won all of two times. For myself, I think the board game I've been playing the longest is chess. I first learned to play when I think was I was ten and I've been playing on and off ever since. Amusingly for a post about tactile board games, I recently discovered chess.com and I like its large supply of chess puzzles, which are kind of like bite sized chess when I don't have time to play a full game, which is most of the time. However, last night I did have a bit more time to play and so I was able to play six games against actual human opponents on chess.com in about 40 minutes and I lost six times in a row. So it's a good thing I enjoy the game because there's definitely room for improvement. 00:04:45 Main Topic: Ergonomics for Writers Now on to this week's main topic, ergonomics for writers. And let's start this with a disclaimer. I am not a health professional. I am not a doctor. I'm not a nurse. I'm not an ergonomics specialist. For medical questions, you should seek medical advice and verify anything I say with the opinion of actual medical professionals. When starting a new movement or exercise routine, it's a good idea to start gradually, both for reasons of health and to prevent burnout or getting overwhelmed. So that is your disclaimer. I am not a medical professional. But I don't think you have to be a medical professional to notice that desk jobs have a serious problem, and that includes writing. If you're sitting for a long period of time, that can cause a host of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, potentially diabetes, etc. Sitting for long periods reduces your energy levels and can be detrimental to your mental health. Sitting for long periods in the wrong position can make joint, wrist, and back problems worse and cause pain. As an example, back in the old days when I did IT support, I was talking to a coworker who said that he was having back problems and so I made, you know, sympathetic noises and told him I hope he felt better. Then about an hour later I was walking down the hall and I happened to walk past his desk and I saw that he was using his laptop by sitting at the very edge of his chair, and his back was bent at like 45° angle to type on the keyboard. And I was like dude, this explains your back problems. So thankfully he improved his posture a bit after that. If you do have a job such as being a writer where you are sitting for long periods of time, how can you sit in the most healthy way? Changing how you sit is a relatively quick thing to do that will reap long term rewards in terms of potentially avoiding back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain and so forth. Make sure that your chair and desk are set in the correct positions. There are lot of diagrams available to show you, that demonstrate how to have an ergonomic desk set up. You want your elbows to be at a 90° angle. You want your wrist to be neutral or supported. You don't want them to be bent like T Rex hands. Your back and neck should not be leaning forward. The top of the monitor should be around eye level for neck health and in fact I have my main desktop monitor on this monitor stand I got off Amazon Basics just for the purpose of raising it to proper eye level. You want your knees so your legs are not pulled underneath your chair or resting on your chair casters, since this stresses knee joints. If your legs aren't long enough to go comfortably to a flat position when sitting normally, footrests work well and aren't very expensive or a large book will work, too. For your eye health, you want to look away from your monitor occasionally to reduce eye strain. Another good solution for the health problems that sitting too much causes is moving. You can have walking breaks where you get up and move for at least a minute every hour. This is an excellent time to get some water to drink or to use the bathroom. Fitness and smart watches or a cheap kitchen timer can be used to remind you to get up or stand. It might be a good idea to pace while taking a phone call, since you're going to be on the phone anyway and if it's not a video call, there's no reason not to stand up and walk around a little bit, so long as you're not irritating your officemates. Sometimes it's a good idea to take a brief walk daily. Some people who work from home use a walk around the block at the beginning of the day and the end of the day to mentally transition away from the workday in the absence of a work commute. Some people have the kind of work where they can do it while on a walking pad (like a low power treadmill) and an adjustable standing desk combination. This setup is a bit more expensive and can cost about like $350 USD for a basic setup and just like standing desks, they don't work for everyone. If you already have a treadmill, you can get a desk attachment for it for around sixty U.S. dollars. The transcriptionist of this podcast has used a walking pad/standing desk combination for about six months now and finds that it helps with afternoon energy crashes. She usually uses it for webinars, Zoom meetings where she don't need to be on camera, and tasks that involve more reading than typing, such as research for these podcast episodes. She can type while she walks, so long as she keeps her pace to under about two mph. She says the key is to think of walking as a supplement to working and not expect it to be the same as walking on a treadmill at the gym. For myself, I've mentioned before that pretty frequently that I use the Pomodoro technique while I'm writing where I'll write intensely for 25 minutes and then take a 5 or 10 minute break. That's also an excellent time to stand up and move around or if you're me, drop and do some push-ups to help keep carpal tunnel syndrome at bay. Another potential thing to think about is strength training/mobility. People tend to be scared of strength training because they're afraid of injuring themselves, but they really shouldn't be so long as they, you know, do the forms correctly. Strength training, as the name implies, strengthens muscles that support your joints and becomes even more important as we get older, since the human body tends to lose muscle mass as we get older. As little as two sessions of strength training a week have been shown to lead to fewer injuries and greater longevity. Strength training is important in the sedentary job like writing since we don't have tasks to build muscles already built into the workday. Writing is a lot of things, but it's not particularly great for building physical strength. Having a consistent strength routine also means that your body can instantly adapt to challenges like shoveling heavy snow or helping to carry a person in an emergency or getting the bag into the overhead bin on the plane without having to ask for help. As people get older, that kind of thing gets harder to do otherwise. In the case of shoveling, it can put a lot of strain on your heart, so it's best to prepare for these kind of life challenges with consistent strength training. There's a lot of strength training that doesn't require a lot of money or a gym membership. Body weight and resistance band strength training are beginner friendly and free or inexpensive. And as I mentioned earlier, you can totally do push-ups for free with no equipment. Another potential strength training exercise that may work for you is resistance band training. That's great for those who travel often or live in a very small space, such as a typical modern urban apartment. Latex or cloth bands that provide resistance for body weight movements can be found quite cheaply on most major retailers. Some are in the shape of a loop, while others have attached handles. Resistance band training includes exercises for those who are unable to stand at all or for long periods of time. Another good technique is dumbbell only strength training. Dumbbells can actually be used for lower body exercises like squats as well as well as upper body exercises. They are relatively inexpensive compared to a full barbell or strength machines and they don't take up a lot of space, which again is useful if you're living in a small space or place where space is constrained. Sample routines with video demonstrations abound on YouTube, if you're not sure where to start. Otherwise, you can find online training programs from companies like Street Parking or CrossFit Linchpin for about $20.00 USD per month, and they have structured training routines that have been scaled down to work with just dumbbells. Sitting correctly and moving often sounds like things that shouldn't matter to someone in a job that relies on the mind but physical health and a strong mind are strongly intertwined. People in intellectual jobs, I've noticed, tend to think of themselves as a mind that happens to have a body attached, especially people who are very often heavily into the sciences and engineering. But it's really, I found, the opposite. We are essentially a physical body that happens to have a mind attached to it and the better shape you can get your physical body and physical health into, the clearer your mind will be. I mean, just think about how hard it is to think clearly when you have chronic pain or chronic illness or some kind of medication you have to take to manage those things that interferes with your thinking, gives you cloudy thoughts. Truth is, this has been known for centuries and still confirmed by endless research studies. The Romans had a Latin phrase, “mens sana in corpore sano”:  a healthy mind in a healthy body. That sums up how interconnected the goal of both are. Ideally, when you're a writer, you want to prolong your career and increase your energy levels by spending at least a small time each week moving and strengthening the body. Sitting correctly also goes a long way towards preventing back and joint pain, which can definitely hurt your productivity and cause problems in other areas of your life as well. Finally, the most important thing with any exercise program is consistency is more important than perfection here. Start small and keep going. I've often said in this podcast, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the possible, and this is definitely true with exercise as well as writing. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. Once again, a word of thanks for my transcriptionist for helping me pull together the research for this episode. As you might have guessed, she has a strong interest in physical fitness for people who sit at a desk and work a lot. A reminder you that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

“For us to get to Grey's Point campground, we had to pass through Urbanna. So one day I made a left just to explore and I was like, 'Wow! It's so beautiful!' The boats and the waterfront, dining and nice houses. It's this vibe that you just have to experience for yourself.” – Rivah Sistah Patricia ClementWelcome to the charming port town of Urbanna, in the heart of Virginia's river realm.  Step aboard as we navigate Urbanna's river lifestyle with Rivah Sistah Patricia Clement.  From fishing and boating, to paddling and crabbing, Patricia shares her journey from her first experience waterfront camping to getting hooked on this small town's big adventures.  Together, we'll share why Urbanna is a must-visit for seafood lovers and history buffs alike.  Whether you're seeking the solace of a sunset paddle or hoping to reel in a big catch, get ready to shuck your stress and hit the open water.  This is your passport to Virginia's Adventure Towns. Let's Go! Follow VAOA Podcast:Instagram I Facebook I Newsletter Sign Up Support the Show! Buy Me A CoffeeShop the Virginia Outdoor Adventures Merch Store! VAOA Podcast is Sponsored by:Virginia Association for ParksBreaks Interstate ParkVirginia State Parks Advertisers:The Chesapeake Inn Mentioned in this Episode:Explore Middlesex AppVisit Middlesex CountyBoating Safety and EducationThe Chesapeake InnGrey's Point CampgroundBethpage Camp-resortUrbanna Town MarinaKayak Rental KioskWC Sportfishing CharterAll Dining OptionsWake BeachWaterman's Park Heritage Trail Holly Point Nature Park (Deltaville Maritime Museum) Dragon RunUrbanna Oyster Festival Support the Show.

In this week's episode, I take a look back at my ten favorite scenes to write in 2023. I also discuss how my advertising efforts fared in December 2023. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 182 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 5th, 2024, and today we're going to talk about the favorite scenes I wrote in 2023. We also have an update on how my ads did for my books in December 2023. This is the first episode I'm actually recording in 2024, so Happy New Year to everyone. If you are listening now, however 2023 treated you, I hope 2024 treats you even better. Before we get to our main topics, let's have an update on my current writing projects. My main project right now is Shield of Storms and I am 71,000 words into it. I'm hoping I can get that out in January. It might slip to February. We will see how the rest of the month goes. My side projects right now: I am also working on Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling and I am 55,000 words into that. That will come out after Shield of Storms, so February or March depending on how long Shield of Storms takes to write. And I am 8,500 words into Wizard Thief, which is going to be the sequel to Half-Elven Thief from December. Not sure when that one's going to come out. I have to write Ghost in the Veils first because I have a recording slot scheduled for that in April that I really need to meet, but so it will probably be late spring, if all goes well. In audio news, the audiobook for Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation is now available at all the usual audiobook stores except Apple, and it should be showing up there later. It's narrated by CJ McAllister, comes to just under 10 hours long, and it's a very good audiobook and worth the listen. So if you have spare credit to or some audiobook money to use, I recommend giving that a chance, and that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. Before we get to the main topic, let's see how ads did in December 2023. Advertising in December is always tricky, both for authors and regardless of what business you're in because every consumer facing business in the world is dumping a ton of money into ads for Christmas and so the cost gets all screwy. But I'm pleased to report some good results for December. First, let's see how the Facebook ads did. For the Ghost series, I got back $4.82 for a dollar I spent, with 16.7% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For Cloak Games and Cloak Mage, I got back $6.42 for every dollar I spent, with 6% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For Malison and Dragontiarna, I got back $1.82 for every dollar spent. For Silent Order, I got back $1.98 for every dollar spent. I think for January, I will shut off the Facebook ads for Malison and Dragontiarna and Silent Order and let them rest until the next time and get a Bookbub for one of them. Next up, let's see how my Bookbub ads did. As before, I advertised Frostborn on Bookbub and for Frostborn I got back $6.52 for every dollar spent, with 37% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. Complete series of audiobooks seems to do really well on Bookbub. I need to expand my targeting data for the platform so I can advertise Ghosts there as well, and maybe urban fantasy and perhaps science fiction at some point. Finally, let's look at my Amazon ads. This month, I advertised Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, Cloak Games: Omnibus One, and Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation on Amazon ads. I'm not entirely sure how Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation did, because the audiobook came out and I'm not entirely sure what the per sale rate for that is going to be, but I think that ad doubled its money, but I'm not entirely sure. For the ones I am sure about, here's how they did. Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire got back $3.06 for every dollar spent, with 18% of the profit coming from audiobook. Cloak Games: Omnibus One got back $3.63 for every dollar spent, with 22% of the profit coming from the audiobook. So, overall I think it is safe to say that my December campaigns went pretty well. So thanks for reading the books, everyone and hopefully we'll have more books to come very soon. 00:04:15 Favorite Scenes of 2023 (SPOILER WARNING FOR REST OF PODCAST) Now our main topic of the week: my ten favorite scenes that I wrote in 2023. First, I should note very strongly that this podcast episode will have spoilers for every single thing I published in 2023, so stop listening right now if you're not caught up and you want to avoid spoilers. That said, I thought it would be interesting to look back at 2023 and talk about some of the favorite scenes to write from the past year. As an added bonus, when I prepared this list, it turned out to be 10 scenes, which is convenient since all the news sites from their top ten articles in December and January anyway. Reminder: spoilers, and there are spoilers after this point. And here are my favorite scenes of 2023, in no particular order. Number One: when Nadia bursts through the roof with Delaxsicoria in Cloak of Dragonfire. That was a fun one to write. I used to joke that I originally intended Nadia's character arc to be a bad person, reluctantly and against her will slowly turned into a good one. But what her plot arc actually turned out to be was Catwoman slowing turning into Gandalf. Exploding through the roof of an athletic complex to save the day while riding a dragon was definitely one of the more Gandalf-esque things that Nadia has done. The scene immediately after that where Nadia, Delaxsicoria, Varzalshinpol, and Tarthrunivor all chase Ferrunivar through the skies of southern California was pretty great as well. Number Two: Caina deduces who Kalliope Agramemnos is in Ghost in the Serpent. I have to admit, for a while I knew it was likely that Caina would have stepchildren she didn't know about since she's married to Kylon, who used to strive to be a model Kyracian noble and Kyracian nobles in general tend to regard abstinence as something to be avoided at best, and a disgraceful vice at worst. Not their most admirable character trait. But for a while I didn't know how to write that situation in a way that would be interesting. If the mother died and Caina was left to raise the stepchildren, that would be lazy writing. It would also be lazy writing if everyone got along. There is an apocryphal story that for a while in the 2000s, all these newly remarried middle-aged screenwriters kept pitching sitcoms where a screenwriter, his new younger wife, and his ex-wife all lived in harmony together. The studio executives, who as a class are not always known for their firm grasp upon reality, always rejected these ideas because they knew a majority of the female half of the audience would absolutely hate it. So a scenario where Caina, Kylon, and Kalliope all got along seemed likely equally lazy writing. But what if Kylon and Kalliope couldn't stand each other? And Kylon had further grievances against Kalliope because she had never told him about the children? But Kalliope ends up being in awe of and a little frightened of Caina? So the dynamic is that Kylon and Kalliope can't stand each other, but Caina keeps the peace between them? I thought that might turn out to be pretty interesting to write and Ghost in the Serpents sold enough that I think people agree with me. It's also interesting to write because this is happening while Caina is one of the few people who know how dangerous the Cult of Rhadamathar really is. But more about that to come in future Ghost books. Number Three: Delaxsicoria tells Nadia not to be so hard on herself in Cloak of Dragonfire. The unlikely friendship between Della and Nadia has been fun to write throughout the Cloak Mage series and side stories. From Della's perspective of course they would be friends – Nadia caught the murderer of her uncle, and Nadia is wound up tighter than a spring and doesn't relax very much. Nadia, of course, is a little baffled by this, especially since she doesn't really have any interest in music, which is Della's great passion. So they have a great dynamic, and we'll see more of that in future books. Number Four: Sir Telemachus and Niara kill Mharoslav in Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock. This was fun to write because Mharoslav always got away from or at least got the best of the heroes in their previous encounters, including nearly killing Telemachus in the process. Telemachus decided that he would sacrifice himself in seeking vengeance against Mharoslav and save his friends in the process. Then he met Niara. Niara comes from the General Patton school of warfare – dying for your country is a fine thing, but it's way better to make the other jerk die for his country. Her utter loathing for all wielders of dark magic played into that as well, allowing her to show the way for Telemachus to defeat Mharoslav at last. Number Five: Myotharia versus Xothalaxiar in Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress. I have to admit Myotharia was originally going to die in the final battle of Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians, but she was such a great character that I felt I could get more narrative mileage out of the poor woman. I always knew from the beginning of the series that Niara was going to have to fight Xothalaxiar for the final time, and Myotharia lost everything to the urdmordar. So I realized that having Myotharia join the fight against Xothalaxiar would give her a sort of emotional catharsis, and help set Niara onto a path other than seeking her own death in battle. Number Six: Thunderbolt. I lucked out with Thunderbolt's character in the Silent Order series. I charted out the rest of the Silent Order series way back in 2021, which is when Thunderbolt was first mentioned in Silent Order: Royal Hand. I originally envisioned her as the sort of classic Star Trek Evil Sentient Computer, the sort of computer Captain Kirk would have to talk into a logic loop every other week. But then in 2022 and 2023 ChatGPT and Bing Chat came along, and they were terrible! For a while, the various insane ramblings of ChatGPT and Bing Chat regularly made the news. So when it was time to write Silent Order: Thunder Hand, I based Thunderbolt's personality off some of ChatGPT's more hilarious public meltdowns, though I left it ambiguous just how insane Thunderbolt actually was and how much of her behavior was just screwing with people to put them off their balance. By the end, Jack March definitely suspected the latter. Number Seven: The Battle of Calaskar. The entire Battle of Calaskar sequence in Silent Order: Pulse Hand was fun to write because I've been thinking about it for ages, since I've had a clear endpoint for the Silent Order series in my head for a while. I liked how it was able to bring back Admiral Stormreel, the Navigators, the Calaskaran Navy, and a bunch of other elements from the series for the Grand Finale. Number Eight: Gareth Figures out the Dragonskull. I also liked the final confrontation with Azalmora in Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods. Azalmora was such a self-controlled and intellectual villain that I wanted her demise to be intellectual, a sort of a moment of revelation that kills her. When Gareth figures out the nature of the Dragonskull itself and the way the xortami twisted it with their dark magic, he's able to use that against Azalmora, and in her final moment she understands the true nature of the Dragonskull, albeit briefly. Number Nine: Riordan MacCormac vs Michael Durst. This was a fun scene to write in Cloak of Embers. Durst had been an arc villain over the last few books. He proudly considered himself a monster, but then he had the bad luck to start working for Maestro, who was just as evil as he was but without any of his self-destructive indulgences. So it was little wonder that Durst found himself dragged into Maestro's orbit, even if he didn't realize what was happening. (The scene where Durst goes to kill Maestro and instead she talks him into doing exactly what she wants was also pretty great to write.) Even if Durst didn't want to kill Nadia, Riordan would still have fought him to the death, because Durst represents a rejection of self-control and responsibility, something Riordan finds utterly abhorrent. And unlike Durst, Riordan knew that a moment of reckoning was coming, which was why he practiced and trained so much with Sir Trandor, while Durst simply went begging to the Dark Ones for power, so the final showdown between Riordan and Durst was quite fun to write. And finally, Number Ten: Rivah and the Magister's Tower. When I plotted out Rivah's heist of Ramarion's tower in Half-Elven Thief, I didn't get too detailed in my outline as to what the inside of the tower would look like. I just knew I wanted it to be as weird and freaky and unsettling as possible, with a lot of Evil Wizard Stuff cluttering up the place. Several people have told me Rivah's venture into the tower was their favorite part of the book, so I think I succeeded. So those were my ten favorite scenes that I wrote in 2023. Thanks for reading, everyone. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, I examine my reasoning for putting HALF-ELVEN THIEF in Kindle Unlimited. I also discuss THE SHIELD WAR, my upcoming epic fantasy series. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 179 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December 15th, 2023, and today we're going to talk about why my new book, Half-Elven Thief, went into Kindle Unlimited. Before we get into that, let's have an update on my current writing projects. First up, as you might have guessed from the opening of the show, my new book, Half-Elven Thief, is out. The last book I will publish in 2023 is now available at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, so if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can read that for free as part of your Kindle Unlimited subscription. Now that that book is out, my next big project will be Shield of Storms, the new Andomhaim book, which I will be talking about more later in the show. Hopefully that will come out in January. I'm also almost 50,000 words into Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, and I think that will probably be out in February, if everything goes well. I've also written about 1,500 words of the sequel to Half-Elven Thief, but I haven't decided when that's going to come out yet. It depends on what happens over the next few months and what the coming year brings us. In audiobook news, Dragon Skull: Crown of the Gods just went live as of the time of recording. It is currently on Audible and Amazon. It should be showing up on Apple in another few days and then hopefully it should be showing up on Chirp, Google Play, Kobo, and the various library services in a couple of days after that. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:01:39 Shield of Storms News/ 12 Days of Short Stories Christmas Let's talk a little bit about more about one of those, Shield of Storms. I am now (as of recording) about 11,000 words into it and it will be the first book of my new The Shield War epic fantasy series. If all goes well, it will be the first book I published in 2024 on Kindle, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and Payhip.  I think the series is going to be about six books long. It might get up to seven, but I'm going to try to keep it at six and will be set in Andomhaim immediately after the events of Dragonskull. So what will this book be about? Well, we will have four protagonists and three chief villains. The protagonists: the first protagonist will be Ridmark Arban, who is returning again. He knows that while the Heptarchy might have been repulsed, someday the Armies of the Seven Temples will attack Andomhaim again and that they will use their stronghold on the Isle of Kordain as a base for a new invasion. Will Andomhaim be ready? Ridmark doesn't know, but if you can find a way to wrest the Isle of Kordain from the Heptarchy's grasp, that might go a long way to deciding the coming war. The problem is that the Heptarchy has more warships than Andomhaim and attacking the Isle of Kordain from the sea might bring disastrous defeat unless he can find another way. The second protagonist will be Lika, the leader of the thieves of Teramis, the chief city of the Isle of Kordain, currently ruled with an iron fist by the Exarch of the Heptarchy. Once Tyrannus was the city of the Corsairs, free men who bowed to no king, and certainly not to the High King of Andomhaim. Then ten years ago Warlord Agravhask, exterminated the Corsair Lords, and the Heptarchy has ruled the Isle of Kordain ever since. Lika needs to protect her people until her father is returned, for her father went to the abandoned halls of the Mountain House to seek a weapon to defeat the Heptarchy. She knows that he will return, even though he left eight years ago. Our third protagonist is Niara Arban, who has returned to Andomhaim far different than the one she left, far different and far weaker. The modern Magistri are weak and feeble and no match for the first Magistri who drove back the ancient urdmordar (at least in her opinion), but the realm still has enemies and Niara will show them what war is really like. And our final protagonist will be Nikomedes. He was once an assassin of the Heptarchy, and now he serves the Master of the Mountain House. He still isn't entirely sure about the difference between right and wrong, but he's trying really hard to find out. All he knows is that the Master will make a better world in the end, and if Nicomedes has to kill a lot of people to make that happen, it will all be for the greater good. Now on to our three main antagonists. The first antagonist will be Seziravorna, the Exarch, the High priestess of the Temple of the Crimson and the head Tarkey governor of the Isle of Kordain. It is her task to make the isle a stronghold of the Heptarchy to prepare for the return of the Seven Temples in the decades to come. But so many senior priestesses and battlemages perished in Agravhask's invasion that Seziravorna sees her chance of complete victory. She will lure the armies of Andomhaim into a final catastrophic battle, and then she will be the exarch not just of the Isle of Kordain, but all of Andomhaim. Our second antagonist will be the Master of the Mountain House. The Mountain House is a dangerous ruin beneath the mountains at the center of the Isle of Kordain, and long the Corsairs have had legend about the mysterious wizard who dwells there and the terrible powers he wields. No one who ever crosses the ruined gate of the Mountain House ever returns, for the master of the Mountain House has been laboring for millennia to prepare a new and better world, even if he has to burn away the old one to make it. Our final antagonist is Urzo and Urzo is…. well….Urzo is hungry. We will find out more about all these characters soon. Anyway, if all goes well, Shield of Storms will be my first book of 2024, hopefully coming out sometime towards the end of January. Before we get to our main topic, I also want to mention our 12 Days of Short Story Christmas. In the lead up to Christmas, I am giving away twelve of my short stories for free through my Payhip store and then will wrap it up with a coupon for a big discount on any of the paid items on the store. So if you go to my website, Jonathanmoeller.com, and look at the top page, there will be many links to the 12 Days of Short Story Christmas and you can get quite a few free short stories. The short stories will remain free on my Payhip store until December 31st, the last day of 2023. So head on over to jonathanmoeller.com and get yourself some free short stories to read during your holiday travels. 00:06:15 Main Topic: Half Elven Thief and Kindle Unlimited Now let's come to our main topic of this week's episode: why I put my new book Half-Elven Thief in Kindle Unlimited. First, I want to say it had a very strong launch, especially for something new and unconnected to any of my previous settings. It wasn't a tie in for The Ghosts or Nadia's world or anything in Frostborn and Andomhaim. It was a completely new setting with completely new characters. The last two completely new things I've tried in the last couple of years were Covering Fire in 2021 and Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation in 2023 and Half-Elven Thief had a stronger first day than both of them and came within two copies of having a stronger first day than both books combined. So thank you for reading, everyone. That means Rivah Half-Elven will join Caina, Nadia, Victoria Carrow, and Moriah Rhosmor as one of my Angry Thief Girl characters. The series with Rivah will have six books. I'm going to work on them as I do other stuff in 2024. I did, as I mentioned, put Half-Elven Thief in Kindle Unlimited, which means it's only available on Amazon. I do regret that it's only on Amazon, but once the series is complete, I will take it wide. I think I have good reasons for this decision, which I will now enumerate in the Internet's performed format for discourse: a numbered list. Number one: I did this before in 2020 and it worked pretty well. We all dealt with the great COVID panic in different ways, some for better, some for much worse. Myself, I spent 2020 learning how to use Photoshop and writing an entire epic fantasy series (specifically, Wraithshard). I ended up writing all five Wraithshard books in 2020, and I originally put them in Kindle Unlimited and then phased them over to all the other stores in 2021 once their Kindle Unlimited term ran out. This had a very good result in terms of sales and I'm hoping to have something of a repeat with Half-Elven Thief. Reason Number Two: Amazon and its AI problems. Amazon had a bad problem with ChatGPT over the summer of 2023. Scammers were using ChatGPT to churn out content formatted as ebooks uploaded to Kindle Unlimited and then used click farms to harvest page reads. This caused widespread problems, since the best seller lists on Amazon were filled with this AI generated nonsense and the page payment rate for authors plummeted because so many of the page reads were going to these AI generated click farm books. Amazon finally responded by limiting the number of new books an individual author could publish to three a day. Some of the scammers were uploading hundreds or even thousands of new books every day, so this put a serious crimp in their operations. I had avoided Kindle Unlimited entirely for that time, but since it seems to be stable again, I'm willing to give it another try. We'll see how things go. The third reason why I put the short story The Jeweled Curse wide and not in Kindle Unlimited is because then I can give it away for free on my Payhip store. Everyone gets something. Reason #4: The bad economy. Don't believe what you see on the news about good job numbers or investments and so forth. The real economy is very bad and has been that way for some time for many complicated reasons, so subscription services are a really important part of people's entertainment because the value for the cost is in fact pretty good. That's why nearly all of my books are in the Kobo Plus subscription program, and most of my ebooks and audiobooks are in Scribd or whatever Scribd is calling itself now (I think it's like Everand or something like that) and many of my audiobooks are on Spotify. Even though the money from those particular channels isn't always super great, it does add up over time, and it's nice to have a lower cost option for people on tight budgets. Reason #5: Everything else will stay wide. Indie authors sometimes gets stuck in binary thinking about Kindle Unlimited and wide, but why not both? I write enough that I can put books into both on a pretty regular basis. The Shield War series we already discussed, the new Nadia books, and the new Caina books in 2024 will be wide and not exclusive to Amazon, which is similar to what I did in 2020. Wraithshard was in KU, but Dragontiarna and Cloak Mage were wide, and in 2024 the Shield War, Cloak Mage, and Ghost Armor will be wide, but Half-Elven Thief will be in Kindle Unlimited and I think Sevenfold Sword Online will perform better in Kindle Unlimited than it did wide, so those books will be in Kindle Unlimited as well. So that is my reasoning. Hopefully that makes sense. If you are a wide reader, I apologize for the inconvenience, but once the Half-Elven Thief series is finished, it will go wide and the Shield War, Cloak Mage, and Ghost Armor will also all be wide in 2024. Hopefully we will soon see more from Rivah Half-Elven in 2024 as well. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. And don't forget also to go to jonathanmoeller.com and get your free short stories from now until December 31st, 2023. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and see you all next week.

On this Episode of the Fueled By Joy Working Dog Podcast Co-Host Mike Greene sits down with Adam Nesbitt of Rivah Time Beagles.  They talk Adams unique start into the Beagle World, Joy Dog Food, and much much more!  So Sit back, relax, and enjoy another fantastic episode of the FUELED BY JOY, Working Dog Podcast

On this Episode of the Fueled By Joy Working Dog Podcast Co-Host Mike Greene sits down with Adam Nesbitt of Rivah Time Beagles.  They talk Adams unique start into the Beagle World, Joy Dog Food, and much much more!  So Sit back, relax, and enjoy another fantastic episode of the FUELED BY JOY, Working Dog Podcast

Viernes = Capítulo estreno de #SomosPelaGatos

Paul takes the podcast mobile for Episode 150 and interviewed Bobby Malone at the Rivah. Bobby grew up in Chesterfield and rode motorbikes and played sports growing up. He said he wasn't big on school, but it allowed him to play sports and he explained why football was his favorite. Bobby also told Paul about a crazy injury he suffered playing baseball. After high school, Bobby had a successful career at Reynolds Metals and then decided to leave and go into real estate. Bobby has been coming to the Rivah for almost thirty years.  He and Paul talked about the Rivah, why Bobby loves it so much and Bobby even told Paul a couple of examples of the interesting wildlife that he has seen over the years. They discussed crabbing, fishing and how Bobby gardens oysters … some of which Paul gets to eat! Bobby told Paul some of the secrets about crabbing and fishing on the Rappahannock and dropped a couple of life lessons during the episode as well.  Finally, they talked about Bobby's wife, Carolyn, and their blended family which includes seven grandchildren.

Happy to introduce Episode 26 of Environmental Professionals. This episode is about Forestry in the Philippines. Rivah Shane P. LLano is from Pilar, Cebu, Philippines. She a licensed forester. She took my Bachelor’s degree in Forestry at Visayas State University, Baybay City, Leyte. She graduated last June 2019 with Latin Honor. She worked as a Forester and a Geographic Information System Operator at Department of Environment and Natural Resources- Community Environment and Natural Resources Office in Palo, Leyte for 11 months. She conducted compliance and monitoring to Community-based Forest Management areas within the office’s jurisdiction and made reports of her observations. She also organizes the Information Education and Communication (IEC) Campaigns to areas prone to illegal logging and deforestation and conduct interviews and series of seminars to communities within CBFM areas. She is also in-charge to form a Multi-sectoral Forest Protection Committee (MFPC) to a chosen municipality within our office’s jurisdiction. Furthermore, she also joined the extension officers conduct surveys and validation on National Greening Program. When she is in the office, she make maps of watersheds, hydropower plants, Community-based Forest Management (CBFM) and National Greening Program (NGP) areas. What she does is analyze and compare the maps of the NGP areas if there are changes in forest cover from the year the project began up to present and submit reports in monthly basis. On August 2020, she was offered a scholarship by the office of the graduate school and last December 2020, she had to leave her job to further my studies. At present, she is a 1st year Master student in Forestry in the same University where she finished my undergraduate program. She can be reached through these social media platforms: Instagram (@ms.shaney ), Twitter (shanellano) and Facebook (Rivah Shane Llano) or this contact number +639464196936.

American Fans Discuss The Global Sport

On today's podcast, we have another student panel, and the focus is on transitions. What a lot of people don't realize is that when you're going to graduate school, finishing your undergrad, or even looking for your next step in life, it often requires a little bit more guidance and forethought. This journey might test your patience and you may open up and find new discoveries about yourself. In this podcast with students Anna, Rivah, and Diana you'll hear candid transition stories of travel and living abroad, homeschooling, and preparing for full-time work after graduation. So please lean in and enjoy this conversation with Anna, Rivah, and Diana.

Alexander Watson is an entrepreneur, adventurer, and lately, an author. With his wedded partner Dale Harris, Alexander rescued his family business, a furniture studio, built a portfolio of rental properties, and then sold it all to restore a vintage motor yacht and travel ‘The Rivah’. Watson’s book, River Queens – Saucy Boat, Stout Mates, Spotted Dog, America tells of their escape from the urban jungle and passage through the nation’s midsection. It is full of stories from the finding of the boat, to the characters they met along the way, to the challenges presented on the river. Their boat, Betty Jane, A forty-five-foot wooden motor yacht built in the height of the Korean War is hardly an extravagance; it is an obscenity. Promoted as part of Chris Craft’s "Freedom Fleet" for 1955, it had all the conveniences of a well-appointed home at twice the cost. She had fitted carpets, polished mahogany paneling, an en-suite for the owners, and quarters for the crew. The journey starts with an over-the-road transport from Lake Texoma, the impounded Red River on the Texas/Oklahoma border, to Applegate Cove Marina on the Arkansas River, one hundred miles south of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The journey ends at Cincinnati, Ohio on Labor Day Weekend 2009.  Alexander is primarily the deckhand. He is better able to shinny down docks and throw lines. He swabs the decks and shines the brass. He is also the painter, plumber, and carpenter. His upbringing in the world of fine furniture and interior design gives him intrinsic understanding of fine joinery and finishing. We discuss how Alexander got into boating, and specifically how he and Dale decided to take this journey. The book is full of colorful characters and vivid experiences from their time on the river and though you will get a sense of it from our conversation, we very specifically left a lot of the book in the book so that you can pick it up and give it a read. Enjoy!

RIVAH joins Luke and Susie in the studio to talk about Faith, Family, and surprisingly...Culture. God got ahold of RIVAH in some very powerful ways over the past few years to make her faith more and more front and centre of what she does. She explains what that looked like for her while also sharing about living with her sister whilst waiting on a Visa to get backto New York, and a regrettable thumbs up to Beyonce. Of course, with RIVAH in studio there is no way we let her go without singing for us and she is amazing. RIVAH’s distinct touch has seen her rise as a finalist in the 2019 Billy Thorpe Scholarship, 2018 Carol Lloyd Award, 2017 Grant McLennan Fellowship, the International Songwriting Competition, New York’s Independent Music Awards, Nashville’s Unsigned Only and the Queensland Music Awards. https://rivahmusic.com/ https://www.facebook.com/musicrivah/ https://www.instagram.com/rivahmusic/

Happy Fourth of July!  Here's hoping you already bought your fireworks, because this week we unwittingly shut down the best fireworks stand around.  That doesn't mean you can't travel a little further than usual to still find the good stuff, so grab your Miata or Pogo Stick (If they haven't banned scooters where you are take one of those) and head towards the Rivah because we hear there may still be some to the East.  We even travel to Chicago for this week's DELI, and come back with some Two Headed Boy #NeutralMilkHotel    

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In April 2019, Inertia Music signed Brisbane pop act Rivah, who has announced her debut self-titled EP. The announcement of the EP comes alongside the release of her new single and video for ‘Worry Bout It’. The EP saw her work with producers as Pip Norman (Jarryd James), Eric J (Chet Faker, Flume), JP Fung (Client Liaison) and Jesse Porches (SuperCruel). She has also been a finalist for the 2019 Billy Thorpe Scholarship, 2018 Carol Lloyd Award, 2017 Grant McLennan Fellowship, the International Songwriting Competition, New York’s Independent Music Awards, Nashville’s Unsigned Only and the Queensland Music Awards. Connect with RIVAH online: https://rivahmusic.com/ https://www.instagram.com/rivahmusic/ https://www.facebook.com/musicrivah/ https://twitter.com/rivahmusic Stream RIVAH’s music here: http://smarturl.it/RIVAH Download @hotndelicious Episode #21 Bec Laughton (indie social singer songwriter): https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/hot-delicious-rocks-the-planet/id923799010?i=1000341255825   Hit Hot & Delicious: Rocks The Planet up on social media here: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danwilkinson1/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hotndelicious/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/craftbeerlovin/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/hotndelicious Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HotnDelicious Hot & Delicious YouTube - Ballistyx Snowboard Show, interviews & more: https://www.youtube.com/user/HotnDeliciousRecords   'Hot & Delicious: Rocks The Planet’ entertainment, travel, photography & lifestyle blog: http://hotndelicious.com/   For social media strategy, content/photography & influencer business enquiries contact: info@hotndelicious.com

Podcast 79 this week is with the UK's mixed genre MC/Artist, Reggae influenced Rivah Jordan. I caught up with him a few weeks after his latest track Shoe Box dropped, where we were hot on the topic of personal and financial development; what they don't teach you at school and how at any age you can be a creator of your own destiny; saving money, taking responsibility, fighting for your creative space and how to build repetition of better habits. I had no idea how this episode was going to turn out, but Im super proud of it, and to the future me, and you (you, as in you guys;) - I strongly urge you check it out! Subscribe the Killa Kela Podcast @ iTunes: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/kill…la/id1348068059 Subscribe the Killa Kela Podcast @ Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/1OGLNJ6bVfW…CEQiafQIQ6SYtN_g Watch here; https://youtu.be/oy32jzcQEfY Support the Killa Kela Podcast by being a Podcast Patreon and receiving a mass of exclusives and bonus content www.patreon.com/killakelapodcast KILLA KELA Website: www.killakelaofficial.com Instagram: www.instagram.com/killakelaofficial/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/killakelaofficial Twitter: twitter.com/KillaKela RIVAH JORDAN Instagram: @Rivahjordan Twitter: @RivahJordan Facebook; Rivah Jordan

Is Lime Cordiale the new Ocean Alley? Plus, you'll meet an Australian post-punk band who have made a huge second impression.

Is Lime Cordiale the new Ocean Alley? Plus, you'll meet an Australian post-punk band who have made a huge second impression.

Bay Work. With Oysters. Welcome to my conversation with Travis Croxton of Rappahannock Oyster Company, who, along with brother Ryan, has helped bring the long and storied tradition of Virginia Chesapeake Bay oysters back into the spotlight. From one small grill at Merroir in Topping, Virginia these brothers have built a restaurant empire, one that's growing all the time. From RockSalt in Charlottesville to their newest addition Rapp Session in Richmond, Rappahannock Oyster now has eight restaurants, including one in Los Angeles that opens in November. World domination is officially underway. The Croxtons are 4th-generation oyster farmers, going back to the 1800's. The story of his family's agricultural origins was fascinating and made me grateful these two brothers are carrying on such an important legacy. Their logo was created using the signature of one of their ancestors and the paperwork for the land grant for the oyster farm hangs in one of their restaurants. A terrific idea, including story into your business. What advice does he have for new business owners? Listen to learn more! For decades the Virginia oyster was nothing but a myth. Overfishing and bad farming practices had driven them almost to extinction. In New York they are extinct. Those fancy New York Blue Points? They come from Virginia and have since the 1800's. Luckily, good farming practices have brought these beauties back and it's a good thing. Oysters are excellent filters. Farming them keeps sediment in place and creates a biodiverse ecosystem. They act as an environmental cornerstone much like coral reefs. When oysters were overfished the bay became incredibly polluted with dead zones where the sun couldn't penetrate which meant many fish died. Today, if you visit the Croxton's farm, the water is so clear you can see straight to the bottom. "I tell people, we have the cleanest waters in the country, especially the Rappahannock. There's no town, no city on it, it's all forested." A working oyster farm like Rappahannock includes long lines, lead lines, and underwater cages, each one holding about 2,000 adult oysters, which mature in about 18 months to two years. A tumbling process hardens the shell and makes the cup deeper for a meatier oyster. Once mature, oysters are brought in for husbandry, separation into size and class. Other farms use floating cages but the Croxtons are cognizant of homeowners who'd rather not have their bucolic view of "The Rivah" spoiled. This farm not only produces a delicious product but provides jobs to folks in an area that desperately needs them. On farming: "We're doing it in rural, economically challenged areas...just recently it dawned on us that we're actually creating a lot of jobs and good work tracks for people...if they show up on time for a year or so we put them on salary and give them benefits, and give them a career path. It's not just food benefits, and health benefits to the Chesapeake but the local economy...A lot of kids go to college and never come back...we're trying to reverse that trend." Oysters have their own Merrior and Rapphannock's are no exception. The minerality of river flows down from the Blue Ridge add taste, as does the salinity of the ocean. The type of algae they eat affects taste. All of this impacts flavor and the water conditions impact the hardness of the shell and the way it's shaped. Like wine, there isn't just one oyster variety. Chincoteague oysters are going to taste dramatically different from river oysters because of merroir. Dramatically different flavor profiles they can showcase to chefs interested in their product. On their beginnings, "We need to not only resurrect our Rappahannock farm, but we need to showcase a couple of other (oyster) locations and show the world that we are the Napa Valley of oysters." The story of how they got chefs interested is downright mythic. They looked up the best restaurant in New York according to Zagat, and arrived at Le Benardin with a cooler between them. Chef Eric Ripert became an instant fan and began serving Rappahannock oysters in his restaurant. "We had our first sales in the #1 restaurant in the country at the time. And we had no idea what we were doing...to this day chefs like Jen Carroll tell us, 'I remember when you guys walked into our kitchen. You guys were dumbasses!' We didn't even know how to shuck oysters back then." Chefs have been key to getting the word out. Each chef at every Rappahannock Oyster Company restaurant is so talented, many nationally renowned, and all of them put their own special twist on how they prepare these beauties. If you've had the Lambs and Clams at RockSalt or the Oyster Bourride at Rapphannock, you certainly know what I'm talking about. How can you shuck an oyster without cutting off a finger? What's the best way to store them? What is a spat?  How do oysters spawn? Has consumption changed over the centuries? Are oyster farms affected by weather? Hurricanes? What are the origins of their famous Lambs and Clams? Did you know each restaurant makes this dish but does it a little differently? All the more reason to visit every restaurant in the Croxton kingdom. The next time you travel down to "The Rivah" and take in its crystal clear beauty, thank an oyster. Then get yourself to one of the Croxton restaurants. You can enjoy oysters there and even pick some up to take home! They also sell them on their website. Whether they're raw, roasted, grilled, steamed, fried, or in a stew, it's good stuff. This episode made me SO hungry! Cheers! SHOW NOTES – Links to resources talked about during the podcast: Bashir Khelafa - The owner of Bashir's Taverna is in dire need. Please give early and often. Fire, Flour Fork - I will be moderating a panel on Women in Food at this event next week, hopefully interviewing Gabrielle Hamilton as well, fingers crossed. Get your tickets now! Caromont Farm Dinner - This event was stupendous. I will be airing a special episode profiling it Thanksgiving Day. How do you know it's Thanksgiving in Charlottesville? Record a voice memo with your name, where you're from, and why you know it's Thanksgiving. Mail it to me and you just might hear yourself on the podcast! Help Scotty Recover - My best friend has Stage 3B colon cancer. Bills are piling up. He can't work. Can you help? Share! Donate! No amount is too small. Thank you and BIG LOVE to everyone who donated and shared the Big Love Bake Sale and Big Love Birthday! Subscribe to This Podcast. Stay Edacious! - Come on, after this episode? You know you want to. Subscribers get new episodes instantly, while non-subscribers have to wait a few hours or days depending on the iTunes gods. Never miss a chance to be edacious! Subscribe to Edacious News - Never miss a food event in our area! Learn about regional and national food stories so you can stay edacious! Leave a review about Edacious! - Click the link, then "View in iTunes" then "Ratings and Reviews". Whether you think it's great, or not so great, I want to hear from you. I might just read your review on the air! Whoa! #famousforahotminute This episode is sponsored by Teej.fm and listeners like you who donated their support at Patreon, who wants every creator in the world to achieve a sustainable income. Thank you.

Rivah Winter is a marine biologist specializing in coral reef systems. As of 2017, she'll be at the Frost Museum of Science in Miami, Florida.

Dr. Bob Lee talks about what it means to follow Jesus.

Dr. Bob Lee takes a look at Matthew 3.

Dr. Bob Lee looks at the story of Moses

Dr. Bob Lee begins a series on different rivers in the Bible and what we can learn from the passages associated with them!