-Jack here. If you aren’t following Larry on X (@MonsterHunter45), you really should. He’s having a delightful time not being constantly censored. This is from one of his posts over there that we thought should be preserved.

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Yo @SteveDiamond80… I think we need to talk about this defeatist horseshit on the show (the WriterDojo). (many of the comments deserve The Voice) What a self-defeating and totally ass backwards take on the business of writing. Guys, I know writing is a challenging business, but the successful mega star of the day making a dollar is not stealing a dollar from you.

When I was starting out the author jealous petty people whined about was JK Rowling, because she was the one making piles of money. They acted like if only the absolute sales juggernaut of Harry Potter didn’t exist, then all those millions of Harry Potter fans would go to them instead. What utter fucking bullshit. If Harry Potter didn’t exist, then odds are they still wouldn’t buy your book, because why would they? They’d buy something else they’d actually heard of, or for many of them, they wouldn’t read anything at all. In reality, all those kids who bought Harry Potter and stayed reading, continued buying books from lots of different people for the next couple decades, expanding in taste and genre. I’ve sold tons of books that are nothing like HP to people who started out reading HP.

So now it is Brandon who is making theme park money. Good for him. Same principle applies. If he didn’t exist then odds are his fans still haven’t heard of you, and you’ve presented no reason for them to have heard of you, or care. His fans who are only into him wouldn’t be reading anyone else, and his fans who read other authors would read other authors they’d actually heard of or had some reason to give a shit about. But is so UNFAIR. Life is unfair. But other authors who you think are more talented aren’t appreciated! Yep. Welcome to the wonderful world of art and entertainment, where quality is only one small part of the overall equation. Brandon also has a work ethic that would kill most of you, and a mercenary business savvy that’s rather impressive. (though I have demonstrated I can defeat Brandon easily in an battle axe fight)

If you want to be successful, take that whole jealousy based concept of fairness and throw it in the trash, because it is defeatist garbage that will only weigh you down. Every single author in the world can name another author who they think is talentless garbage, but who makes far more money than we do. “Ugh. Why does it have to be that idiot and not me?” we whine, and nobody cares. That’s pretty normal for artists, regardless of art form. History is full of artists dunking on other artists they thought they were better than. So what? Get better. Work harder. Switch up your marketing. Figure out new ways to grow your fan base. Improve your craft. Get more product out there. Whining about some other creator because you think it’s unfair they won the lottery and you didn’t, don’t accomplish shit.

As the great scholar Sean Connery taught us in his last performance as James Bond, losers talk about doing their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen. (And yes, I know that’s from the Rock, but he is totally James Bond in it.) But anyways, so it is “disheartening” to see someone else be wildly successful? Then that’s on you. I think George Martin is a lazy dork. I think he’s a one trick pony (nihilistic shocking character death) who writes bloated meandering bullshit who wouldn’t recognize heroism if it bit him on the ass, and since he only works when he’s hungry, and HBO has made sure he’ll never be hungry again, he’s gonna squander his legacy and an opportunity that other writers would kill for. But am I “disheartened” that lazy George got HBO money and I haven’t? Fuck no. It makes me ask what can I do to position myself to get something like that! 😀

Meanwhile, Brandon, whether you’re into his stuff or not, works his ass off and does everything in his power to give his fans exactly what they want. And they reward him for this accordingly. When he was given a Winning The Lottery opportunity (finishing WoT) he seized that moment like a friggin’ Eminem song. Yes, “the money IS THERE” but you certainly aren’t entitled to any of it. Why should those people give you money for your stuff? That’s what you need to figure out.

Mountain of Fire came out this week. This was written by my friend and MH: Fever co-author Jason Cordova.

Mountain of Fire

This is set in John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising zombie apocalypse universe. Jason is an awesome writer who tells great stories, so check it out.

This new anthology of stories just came out from Raconteur Press, and it was edited by my talented daughter, Hinkley Correia. She’s gotten a lot of critical acclaim for her short fiction, and this is the first anthology where she was the editor.

the Super Generation

Check it out.

Another one that needed archiving here on the blog… -Jack

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(this was a response on the other social media page, to this viral thing where some Euro thinks Americans are crazy to think America is as diverse as different European countries)

The thing where Europeans don’t grasp how diverse America is makes me laugh.

But anyways I’ve been to England, France, Germany, Czechia, and Denmark. I’ve been to every US state except Hawaii, Alaska, Maine, and the Dakotas.

Other than speaking the same language (sorta) there is as much difference between San Francisco and Oklahoma City as there is between Prague and London. The difference between “the south” and everything else alone would blow your Euro mind. I say this with love as an adopted Alabaman.

Then even in that one region of America, the difference between the groups is a hoot. Cajun is in the south, but it is it’s own thing. That’s not even getting into the racial differences. Then you’ve got the rural vs. urban divide that exists everywhere. Tennessee is wildly different from Mississippi. Both of them look at Virginia like WTF, while most of Virginia points to the north and says don’t blame us. Then there’s Huntsville, where you can meet somebody who looks and sounds like a total redneck, but who does calculus in his head for fun.

America has got a couple hundred subcultures with deep philosophical divides between them, which follow geographical and historical lines a lot more than they follow state borders.

Then we’ve got the ethnic subcultures and their geographic enclaves in America. Something which we’ve had since the beginning which Europe is suddenly trying to deal with for the first time and not doing so hot. Hey, you smug Euro bastards who’ve been sneering at America’s crime rate from your–what up until recently have been–peaceful homogeneous oatmeal countries.

Anybody who thinks every part of America is the same, that tells me they haven’t gone very far off the freeway.

Big chunks of America are culturally Latin (and there’s big differences between being Mexican in Fresno and being Cuban in Miami), or culturally American black (and there’s big differences between ATL and LA) or culturally Scandinavian (and tell a Yooper that he’s the same as a Minneapolis liberal and you’re gonna get stabbed), or New Englanders (hell, within the Boston city limits there are more social divides than regular people can keep track of). Hell, I come from a place where you were either Portuguese, Mexican, or Okie. And the difference between those was the same as the difference between France and England, only in one valley.

Now I live in the Inner Mountain West, as in cowboy country (you know those lists of rodeo kids where the names are so cowboy they go viral? Those are literally my neighbors) which to me is normal, but to big chunks of America it is so different and alien that they think Yellowstone is realistic.

On that note, spare me the excuse about how us Americans all watch/listen/read the same entertainment, because A. only kinda. and B. you guys consume our entertainment products too. I got annoyed while I was in Europe trying to listen to European music in the rental car because most of your radio stations were playing boring American pop (which again, is subdivided by those geographic/cultural things I pointed out above, but is dominated by lame artificial LA crap mostly)

And we consume your entertainment products. That’s why I visited all those countries, to cater to the European subcultures who like my books. (don’t worry, most of the proper Europeans still hate my stuff!) 😀

But back to my current region, there are huge cultural differences between roughneck Wyoming and Mormon Utah. Same region. Hell, same town half the time, wildly different cultures. (and don’t get me started on the ProgMo liberal Mormons of the super urbanized Wasatch Front, because they’re all going to hell and the rest of us know it)

But, but, but you Americans all eat the same food! Yeah, the national chains. Which turns out, you guys have too. But again, get off the freeway a bit. Depending on the town you can get some really good Vietnamese/TexMex/Somali. Same way the good food in London is Thai or Indian, and the “traditional” British food I ate was a friggin’ war crime. Y’all need to treasure Gordon Ramsey for helping you fix your shit.

People say America is like 50 countries in a trench coat… eh… It is more like 200 countries bouncing on a trampoline. America is actually more like India with its clumped together mixture of hundreds of groups reclumped again under a few umbrellas. Some US states do have national pride/identities, but within those states there are subcultures who don’t, and others who are all in. (Texans and Floridians know exactly what I’m talking about).

Then one thing America and Europe have in common, all our sane normal people hate the big lefty cities which dominate us politically. So hundreds of subcultures, clumping under two distinct umbrellas. Us, and Those Meddlesome Fuckers. So culturally the people of rural Idaho have more in common with French farmers who are spraying cow shit on government offices than they do with the liberal Californians who now infest Boise.

That’s another cultural difference between America and Europe, we move around. A LOT. Europeans had centuries to clump into their chosen regions (or invade one, or get kicked out) so the like minded could be born and die in the same spot. Most of the American subcultures are like eh, fuck it, I’m gonna move a thousand miles to a very different place and work there instead. And we do that constantly, so the whole construct is always shifting.  

Then geographically, we win. Period. We’ve got a bunch  of stuff Europe doesn’t have, while having everything Europe has except for fjords maybe? I think. I’d have to check. Alaska might. Hell if I know.

Ultimately US states are crazy diverse, and the difference between states is nuts. The further you get away from the national chain shopping center right off the freeway off ramp, the more apparent this becomes. The homogeneous parts of America were the bits that we all agreed that we liked and adopted. Which ironically, I saw the exact same thing driving across Europe, as I bought Kinder Bueno in every single country. 😀

-Jack Wylder, here. Thought Larry’s comments on this needed to be preserved

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Every now and then I see some pedantic weasel get all snooty how listening to audiobooks doesn’t count as reading. I just saw some dork acting smug and superior because “Reading is active. Listening is passive.”

Lol no. 😀 That is not how this works AT ALL.

Here is a peak behind the curtain of how this actually works. I’m one of those authors who’s style translates extremely well into audio. I do really good there. In fact one time one of the main execs at Audible needed to do a presentation about writing for audio, so he asked me in particular to help him come up with a list of tips and tricks. (and we’ve done episodes of WriterDojo about what I told him). So I’ve given a whole lot of thought to this topic, and I’ve learned from a lot of very smart people.

Eyes, ears (or fingers if you read braille) those are just the input device to feed story into your brain. There are different tricks we authors can do to make the story more interesting for either. Once the story is in your brain, if the story is good enough the reader/listener is going to go into a certain flow state we like to call “immersion.”

The whole active/passive thing is ridiculous, because when you are actively immersed in the story whatever input device you’re using becomes irrelevant, and you go into autopilot, and either way your brain is busy digesting that story.

You can “actively” read, but if you’re immersed, it’s automatic. In fact, while your brain is reading this line, your subconscious is already skipped ahead one line and is processing it too, and your brain is still processing the line above. (this is why profanity is 3x more powerful in written form than audio, because of the difference in the nature of the input device). On the eyeball side we’ve got visual tricks. On the audio side there is the added benefit of a narrator who can add emotion and emphasis.

But if you hook electrodes to someone’s brain who is in that active flow state where they are immersed in the world, and their imagination is processing and they’re creating visuals and are emotionally engaged, same parts of the brain are lighting up. And this is when you get pissed off when the doorbell rings and reminds you that the real world still exists.

The difference between absorbing your story from books/audio and TV is that the visualization component is being done for you.

Anybody who thinks you can’t read a book “passively” has never meandered their way through a boring read, nor if they think audio isn’t “active” has never been sucked into a good audiobook.

Getting people into that immersive state is my job. The reason I’m good at both audiobooks and regular books is that I’m a story teller first, writer second. Writer is just my preferred delivery method, and if I’d been born a thousand years ago I would’ve been the dude telling stories around the campfire at night.