My home for my writing about speculative fiction, related commentaries, and the archive for the years of serial fiction written and published here first.
This move by one of the last great success stories of OldPub, who had recently left OldPub behind to go independent, is how those that do succeed make the most of their success: to help those coming up the ladder behind them. The Leading Hispanic Voice In Science Fiction, Jon del Arroz, explains.
This was not done automatically. He and his team manually inspected every such campaign on Kickstarter and deliberately chose which to assist in this manner. Given his general Good Guy Greg character, that assistance went rather far and wide indeed.
And yes, all of us benefit from his generosity. This is how leaders and winners ought to act. Class act there, Mr. Sanderson. Bravo.
Imperium Press is a new publisher focusing on returning the Western Classics and other great works memory-holed by the Death Cult back into your hands. Their newest offering The Ancient Family, explained below.
The deepest and oldest layer of European religion is almost unknown today, and yet it governs all subsequent history. This is the Indo-European hearth cult, the subject of The Ancient Family. In this book we get a picture of the most traditionalist, nationalist, patriarchal religion imaginable, of a people gathered around a sacred fire, worshipping its ancestors, jealous of its gods, and sufficient unto itself.
Taken from books I–II of Fustel’s momentous work The Ancient City, this volume can be read as a constitution of the primordial family structure, the father of all that came after it. The Studies in Reaction series collects works that challenge modernity, and this family structure is the perfect antithesis of, and remedy for, all that ails us today.
There is precious little information of useful substance on how pre-Christian religion actually worked, and here is Imperium Press putting some of what there is out there for you to easily acquire and master. You'd be a fool to pass up this opportunity to learn from this, and see how this ancient structure readily integrated with Christianity once introduced. This structure works, doesn't require expense and complex technologies to become or maintain effectivness, doens't require complex social instruments (such as media complexes, phramaseutical regimes, or academic institutions), and is wholly self-sufficient so autarky is facilitated by this structure and Globohomo deliberately attacked by it.
This came up in a recent interview, embedded below, and it's worth a listen in own right.
And talked about more here.
You'll find Imperium's store listing here, where it's available in paperback for now, but you can also find it at Amazon for pre-order.
The conventional wisdom on adverbs in writing is, bluntly put, wrong. David explains.
Words are your toolkit. You want to strive for accuracy and precision to achieve the intended effect upon the reader, and that means using the right word in the right way to make that happen. Adverbs are fine when this is the intent of their use.
David's got plenty of videos like this at his channel, and he streams regularly there on weekends--usually Saturdays--so keep him in your blog/vlogroll.
Brandon Sanderson is one of the remaining OldPub authors that (a) actually has a real audience and (b) mostly makes work meant to be read and enjoyed (when SJWs in the office don't fuck with him). This is how he dealt with Corona-chan's World Tour.
That's right, five full novels. (Also, kudos to his team for this slick video presentation.)
Which lead to his Kickstarter campaign. As of this post, he's already hit nearly $25 MILLION DOLLARS. I'll post the video below.
You'll find the campaign page here. He's got premium pricing in his Rewards to reflect his status in the business, but if you're already a fan then this is nothing you haven't already been paying; it's just Kickstart getting a cut instead of some zombie OldPub publisher that ought to be put down for everyone's good.
But that's not the whole story here. That comes from the reactions, and man are the loserOldPubauthorsmad. Like their counterparts at Marvel and D.C., the losers in OldPub are now seeing the writing on the wall--that the folks propping up OldPub like Atlas holding up the world are shrugging off that burden--and what that will mean for OldPub's collapse, and with it their sinecures- and yes, these losers like Cat Rambo and Jeffe Kennedy are just sinecure holders.
Now that Sanderson sees what he can do without editorial interference by fat blue-haired landwhale cat ladies in New York offices, without sensitity readers, without Globohomo faggotry constantly pushing him to bend the knee, it won't be long before his team runs the numbers and decides that it is better for business--nevermind any morality concerns--to cut OldPub out as soon as possible and just go direct to the audience from here on out.
In short, to turn his audience into his patrons and--as Brian Niemeier has predicted--embraces Neo-Patronage wholeheartedly. Sanderson isn't stupid; he already sees that he's got a winning move as the YouTube video shows and the campaign proved with brick-to-face certainty. I fully expect him, and others like him that--like him--are not with Baen Books, will abandon OldPub and join us here in the NewPub sphere.
And yes, I wholeheartedly welcome him into the NewPub world. He'll join others who moved into the "I have a team!" tier like Cole & Anspach, and thereby show we one-man bands how to successfully scale up so we can focus on writing the books while remaining wholly independent. This is the future, and it's a better one than what OldPub wants, and there is not a damned thing OldPub can do to stop it from coming now.
I note that Brian has a nice take on this at his blog, which you can find here. His opinion complements mine.
There is an epidemic in the modern age: a crisis of meaning. Why is it the world we were promised back in the 1980s and 1990s seems so far away now? Whatever happened to those hopeful kids from back then? Whatever happened to Generation Y?
From authors Brian Niemeier (Don't Give Money to People Who Hate You), David V Stewart (The Keys to Prolific Creativity), and JD Cowan (The Pulp Mindset), comes this collection of essays about a lost generation trapped in a modernity they were never prepared for.
Read on and discover how Madison Avenue shenanigans, social instability, mindless progress, and general ineptitude, led an entire generation of people through the cracks--and how we can find them again.
Click on the image to get to the download page, where there are also the files needed to print your own hardcopy if you like. Click here for JD's blogpost on the release.
