The Business: IndieGoGo Censors A Comic

IndieGoGo was never a true alternative to Kickstarter, in that it could be converged, and now we see proof.

"But we can make one that won't."

It will get shitcanned by Big Tech and Big Finance, or do you not remember the last time that happened? Without hosting, payment processing, and banking you don't have an online business. If any of those decide to deplatform you, you're done; it's why Gab's resilience is far more remarkable than people give them credit for, as they went from Typical Alt-Tech Flavor Of The Month to Burgeoning New Player purely due to its ability to withstand said pushes against it and respond by successfully building their own infrastructure- a fact thrown into the face of those that still seek to shut them down.

Yes, literally this: (Death Cultists) "Who owns Gab's servers? We can get to them." (Torba) "We own our own. Eat a dick."

As Jon says, this is not the first time IndieGoGo has done this sort of thing and it has the same vulnerability that Kickstarter, Patreon, Amazon, etc. do: SJWs on staff playing the role of Amenable Authority to external SJW pressure pushers doing Point & Shriek swarm attacks on their enemies. I expect that this sort of thing is going on. If it's not a one-two team playing Good Cop/Bad Cop, then it's a rogue employee trying to pick winners (his friends) and losers (his enemies).

This is why you have a backup means of backing, and that backup means is kept--as much as possible--on the down-low to circumvent problems like this.

Signal Boost: A.I. Wars, by Jon del Arroz

The leading Hispanic voice in Science Fiction, Jon del Arroz, is back with different take on the AI Rebellion and subsequent war with same. That book is A.I. Wars, and it merges together not only several disturbing trends into a timely tale about what could happen to our posterity, but also pays tribute to past masters who first warned of all of this via literature.

You'll see not only previous Robot War stories such as The Terminator and the Butlerian Jihad of Dune, but also the social dystopias of Brave New World, Soylent Green, Logan's Run, and 1984 as you read this first issue. Literary-savvy readers will not miss the references, but unlike so much of that literary misery porn and cinemantic cancer Jon's telling a hopeful tale.

Jon's got a proven track record of satisfying his readers, and this sizzle summary shows it.

A.I. Overlords enslave humanity...

...but a brave few fight for survival.

Tom Palmer never wanted to be a hero, he just wanted to take his happy medication like everyone else in the A.I.-controlled factory, but when an accident causes him to miss taking his injection, he gets pinned with a terrorist act caused by humanity's resistance.

On the run, Tom Palmer must join the revolutionaries for his own survival. The hopes of future generations of humanity rest on his shoulders!

Fans of Saga, The Fifth Element, and The Expanse will love AI Wars! Read the comic today!

And here's a review from the Wolfman At Large.

If you want a copy, click on the image above; it will go to the Amazon sales page.

Signal Boost: Light Unto Another World, by Yakov Merkin, at Kickstarter

The leading voice in Israeli science fiction, Yakov Merkin, is back with a brand new series: Light Unto Another World.

This is the man behind the Galaxy Ascendant series (available at Amazon), so he's got a proven record of delivering results. You can trust that he'll give the good stuff to his backers, so I recommend that you give this a good look and throw him some spare cash if you want original fiction that brings to mind the best that Japanese isekai can deliver (and that's a lot more than what's been out in the last few years).

Signal Boost: Pulp On Pulp, The Guide To Writing Pulp Fiction, At Amazon

Ben Cheah posted this at the PulpRev blog, but I'm reproducing it here to boost the signal.

Last year, Misha Burnett and I put together a call for submissions for an anthology of essays on pulp fiction. Titled Pulp on Pulp, it collects tips, tricks and advice on the art of writing pulp fiction from some of the up and coming names in the growing PulpRev movement.

Pulp on Pulp was meant to be a permafree book. However, Amazon won't let authors place a book on preorder for free. If you can wait for a few days, Pulp on Pulp will be free in the near future. But if you want it now, I'm pleased to announce that it is available for pre-order here!

Better yet, Pulp on Pulp is the #1 New Release in TWO categories: Authorship and Words and Language Reference!

Pulp on Pulp touches on a huge range of topics of interest to the pulp writer. These include the art of writing fight scenes, tricks for worldbuilding and plotting, how to write 5000 words a day, and more.

Contributors include JD Cowan, author of Pulp Mindset, Matthew P. Schmidt, author of the hit LitRPG breakout series The City and the Dungeon, and Morgon Newquist, Silver Empire editor and author of Heroes Fall.

For insight into the PulpRev aesthetic, advice on writing like a pulp master, and tips on adapting pulp-era techniques to modern-day markets, check out Pulp on Pulp on Amazon!

Click on the image below to hit up the Amazon sales page and get your copy.

Star Knight Update: New Vienna Pre-Production Update

I have received the three books I ordered to begin work on the New Vienna project. I've also taken the liberty of securing access to The Day of the Siege, to see a previous dramatization of events, so I have enough to get started. I will do this as a secondary concern while getting Books Two and Three out the door.

As for Book Two: I had two of my three post-hospitalization follow-ups this month, with a third coming on the 25th. So far, so good, and I expect I'll be clear of everything but this massive course of antibiotics by next month. No more messing about with outpatient treatment, home nurse visits, etc. that eat at my time and make scheduling same chaotic.

Signal Boost: Kamen America, Volume 3

Kamen America, a loving tribute to Japan's masked heroes mixed with the best of American superheroes, has had fantastic success in the indie comics world. Now back for a third go, a crowdfunding campaign is up at Kickstarter to make it happen. Get in on this; it's one of the best hero books around these days.

Signal Boost: Cirsova 5th Anniversary Issue

The fine folks behind Cirsova Magazine have a crowdfunding campaign up at Kickstarter for their 5th anniversary issue.

$5 gets you a digital copy, and $12 gets you a paperback with your choice of cover (see the Perks on the page), so this is a great deal.

If you like this, and you want to give them more money (and collect back issues), you can find them all as well as your purchasing options at Cirsova's site.

The Business: Amazon's Algorithm And How It Screws You

The leading Hispanic voice in Science Fiction, Jon del Arroz, cut a video about Amazon and how it's cooking things to favor Big Corporate vs. indies and legacy IPs.

The excuse is that favoring those Amazon (or its partner sellers) have in stock is more relevant than doing an honest search. The backup excuse is that Amazon tracks user searches, which is why a failed first search can turn around when you search again using the same terms later.

This matters because customers, being trained since childhood to favor convenience and ease of use over all else, are disinclined to put in effort to find what they want. Amazon exploits this learned laziness--yes, learned, just like "learned helplessness"--to shape, mould, and influence thought and culture in the population. This is one of the ways that Amazon picks winners and losers, exploiting its monopoly position for its benefit (and those of its allies).

That's without accounting for the recent deplatforming frenzy. That's just Amazon deciding to favor Big Corporate over indies to suppress competition. Yes, you should be making a plan to reduce your reliance on Amazon and setting up alternatives; yes this means ending any exclusivity agreements you may have with Amazon. In my case, I won't be able to fully extract myself for a while, and even then if you aren't are Amazon at all you're cutting your own throat.

In time, we will all have to go what Vox Day did and build our own platforms. Yes, this includes being anti-fragile with regard to payment processors and (for some of us) banking. Amazon presence must be maintained because that's where normies go, and normies don't work for their entertainment (so they won't go out of their way for anything; this is why getting yeeted from the Google/Apple app stores is a threat), but without having your own platform you will not be able to withstand pressure from Big Corporate (via Amazon) when things get hairy.

And yes, this definitely applies to me. It is what it is; no use crying about it. When the resources are there, I'll make the move too.

Signal Boost: Combat Frame XSeed: Illustrated Combat Frame Tech Guide

Now that there's four--soon to be five--Combat Frame XSeed novels out there, publishing a tie-in product for such a tech-heavy property becomes a viable project.

Dragon Award winner Brian Niemeier has done it, and to my knowledge he is the first independent author to do what otherwise is only done by Big Brand properties like Mouse Wars. This is the illustrated tech guide tie-in, and it will be a great addition to your bookshelf, especially when you go back to re-read the series.

I cannot overstate the importance of publishing this book. Independent science fiction authors are notorious for not fully exploiting the properties that they create, as they are often unaware of the full implications of the very technologies that make their writing careers possible as well as the spread of the core concept--Print On Demand--to things other than books, most relevant being merchandise.

Should you get a copy? Why not? All it does is add to your enjoyment of what you already enjoy. Don't balk at the price; look at the description. This is a coffee table book, 8.5" x 11" in size (i.e. a spiral-bound notebook), which is as good as Amazon's POD capacity allows, and not your standard 5" by 8" or 6" by 9" novel. If you've been looking to use a tabletop RPG or wargame ruleset to play XSeed scenarios then this book is your huckleberry, especially if your ruleset makes it easy to convert real-world measurements into game terms (as Mekton Zeta and Dream Pod 9's full build system for Jovian Chronicles does).

If you want a copy--only available in paperback--click on the image and it will take you to the Amazon store page.

The Business: Google Fixes Discovery Against Indie Creators

The leading Hispanic voice in Science Fiction, Jon del Arroz, cut a video about Google's latest shitbaggery.

Cernovich is right here. Just over 10 years ago, blogging was a very different scene. You were able to be discovered organically, so long as you could focus on a specific niche; the path to success was narrowly-focused topic-based blog publishing, taking the concepts a newsletter and a daily column and merging them together into a coherent online entity.

Amazon, Facebook, et. al. have done the same thing to their algorythms. All of them fixed their systems to become Pay To Win that favored big corporate interests that were willing and able to pay to win. This forces independents back to older forms of promotion and organizing, as Cole & Anspach did by putting up a dedicated Galaxy's Edge site with a storefront, and others do with resuming a dedicated newsletter list.

It works. Once your revenue permits such a thing, do it. Embed your blog there and link to it on the front (landing) page. Be your indie thing books, art, games, whatever you can no longer rely on Big Tech to permit organic discovery. You have to aggressively promote yourself, and that means learning the ways of marketing and sales.

Yeah, I don't like either. Has to be done. Embrace the suck.

Star Knight Update: Making New Vienna Happen

The big goal this year is to put out both "Hounds of Nimrod" and Book Three, currently titled "Siege of Second Salisbury". But there is more to come after that, and I've mentioned that a spin-off will be done. Today I took the first concrete step towards that objective, purchasing some research materials.

That spin-off is centered around New Vienna, and the story is based on the events of the 1683 Siege of Vienna that Sabaton returned to popular awareness with "Winged Hussars". Starting this weekend (according to Amazon), the first two books will arrive; these deal with that siege. A second book on the siege will take another week to arrive.

One of the books ordered is the Osprey book on the subject. Osprey is fantastic for getting started on a research project; in addition to being a good survey on the subject, the Bibliography is a gold-mine of options for following up specific threads. I expect that Amazon will have these in hardcover or paperback, and whatever they lack I can acquire via the county library or by using my Alumus privledges at my Alma Mater (which is tied into the national university system).

The Enemy At The Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe is one of the books that goes into depth on the events of Vienna. The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent is the other.

Between these two, and the aforementioned Osprey book, I should be able to map out the sequence of events as well as the players making the moves. The purpose of that task is to discern where the dramatic potential lies for my purposes, and from there come up with a draft plot outline.

Osprey's related books to the siege cover the men that fought it, but I haven't bought them yet because that's for when it becomes necessary to delve into those details. The Hussars get a few volumnes, the Janisarries get a book, and I may pick up one or all of them if I find it necessary.

There is one recent film that also depicts the events, The Day of the Siege, which some Sabaton fans use to make music videos for "Winged Hussars". Sabaton's song is on The Last Stand.

There's also plenty of other books on the 1683 siege and the war giving it context. If you'd like to help, gifting me anything I haven't purchased is welcome; I maintain a History Wish List on Amazon, so have at it.

At this point, I should remind you that I don't intend for this to be a straight Space Opera retelling of history. As is my usual habit, I will be blending other inspirations into this project; I'll address those in detail in later posts. Just remember that Star Knight is, at its core, a blend of Space Opera and Chivalric Romance with giant robots and laser swords.

But you can be damned sure that, once again, the Winged Hussars will save the day.