Since Larry’s currently in Vegas, allow me to share one of his recent entries from the Book of Faces- Jack

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Some reviews just baffle me. The ones where the reviewer thinks they are clever are the worst.

I just saw one that was complaining how Fever is different than the previous memoirs novels. Well no shit. It’s an entirely different narrator, set in a different time and place, with a different co-author. He knocked it for being more like a regular MHI novel and not the “slice of life” of the previous memoirs. Dude. It’s an entirely different book.

He knocked it for being short and made a snide comment about how my novels are getting shorter and that “must be the economy” like I’m greedy and ripping you guys off.

A. All the memoirs novels are the same size just over 100k. Fever is almost the exact same length as the previous 3.

B. The rest of my books tend to be very similar in length based on the series. MHI was the one anomaly because it was my first book and I didn’t know what I was doing. Most regular MHI novels are 120-140k.  All the Saga novels are around 140k. I’m actually remarkably consistent.

He said he didn’t like it because it was a “cliff hanger”. It is not a cliff hanger. The actual plot is resolved. The thing he’s bitching about is that there are allusions to further threats and adventures in the future. Which I leave in all my books, which ironically he praised about the series earlier in the same review. (roll eyes) This would be like bitching about a book about WW2 because it doesn’t tell you how it shakes out with the Soviet Union.

Then he repeatedly complains about how SLOW I AM. Because it is LIKE TWO WHOLE YEARS BETWEEN MHI NOVELS.  And then he dings Fever because he guesses the sequel won’t be out until 2026 or 2027…

A. how the fuck do you ding a product because you’re guessing when the next book will be out?

B. I write like five series simultaneously, and have averaged 2 books a year for 15 years, so get off my fucking back, man. 😀  

C. Over the last 15 years I’ve written 8 regular MHIs, 4 spin offs, and a collection of shorts. Holy fuck. In between that I wrote like 20 other books in my other worlds. What do you people want from me? I’m only human. 😀

D. If I did just want to be lazy and cash in, I would only write MHI novels nonstop, because those make the most money. Except I don’t because if I did that I’d get bored and the books would get stale. The reason they stay good is that I step back, do other things, and then come back fresh. That’s one reason why each book is different than the ones that came before, and THAT IS A GOOD THING. DUH.

“I’m not sure anyone was really longing for 1970’s LA monster hunting but I guess when you only get a book every 2 years you can’t be overly picky.”

If you want to feed prompts into an AI and have it barf out some soulless garbage that checks all the boxes you want, go do it. Ain’t nothing stopping you. Us human authors are gonna create what we feel like. You know, that whole “art” thing that makes it so the entertainment products you are consuming are actually something we’re enjoying making, so they stay good.

If I took this bullshit advice I’d be the same as the MCU churning out 4 mandatory Marvel movies of declining quality every year.

“Also how is there not a Hotel California monster or location in this book?”

What kinda nitpicky fucking bullshit is this? Why didn’t I have every reference to every single pop culture thing that happened that decade? This motherfucker doesn’t want an author. He needs ChatGPT. 😀  Plug that shit in and leave me be!  

He has a giant confusing paragraph talking about stuff I WROTE in the other MHI novels and how he liked that better (and some grammatically confusing stuff about Sluggy Freelance?) then whines “You never want to come across as “A better writer did something funny, I need to copy that.”… Dude… I WROTE ALL OF THOSE THINGS YOU ARE COMPARING IT TO.  😀

And it’s also extra fucking stupid as he’s citing that and I know exactly what I was shooting for in each of those scenes, and they’re all accomplishing wildly different goals… but I’ve got to get knocked because this dude doesn’t understand how storytelling works.

So basically, three stars for keeping my long running series fresh and interesting rather than formulaic and repetitive, while only having an work ethic better than like 99% of my career field. 😀

These fucking people, I swear.
I’m glad most of you aren’t like this. 😀

Most of you know Steve as my cohost from WriterDojo and coauthor on Servants of War. Residue was his first published novel that went through quite the saga with a bunch of different publishing houses. So now Steve’s got the rights back, is publishing it himself, and best of all has gone through and improved it to make the definitive author’s edition.

Plus the blurbs are me and Terry Brooks, so that’s pretty cool. 😀

Residue

This is a really cool read and I hope you guys check it out.

Larry posted this over on the Book of Faces and good golly they didn’t like it! They throttled it to the point that there were maybe 24 comments in over 2 hours. Even with their regular throttling of his account, he would normally have been yelled at by a few hundred people by that time, so it’s really telling. Know where they can’t throttle it? Right here on the Monster Hunter Nation site. Enjoy. -Jack

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I posted this on twitter earlier. Now I’m going to get yelled at by crazy people for the next few days.

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For all the people on social media crying about Israelis blowing up innocents this week, yep, that sucks, but why do terrorists hide behind civilians?

You.

That’s it.

You make it an effective tactic for them.

I see people saying that anything that harms innocents should be a war crime.
Congratulations.

You just ensured that’s the tactic every evil bastard out there will use from now on. Hiding under a church or school or hospital becomes a get out of jail free card.

Go do terrorist shit. Then hide behind your kids. Kids die. Wait for the world to freak out and pressure the people you murdered to give up and leave you alone. Do more terrorist shit to them again tomorrow.

Your naivete about the nature of evil ensures that hiding behind civilians is a winning tactic for them. You get sad for their human shields, governments cave, the evil doers get to live to rape and murder again tomorrow.

There is nothing nice or kind or merciful about war.

It’s miserable. Innocent people suffer and die. It’s total bullshit.

And it’s been part of human nature forever and will never ever stop, regardless of how hard you virtue signal your angst on Twitter.

Letting aggressor barbarians hit you but get away just ensures that they’ll do the same shit tomorrow. Every nation in history has understood this.

It isn’t about being mean. It is about being punitive.

There aren’t diplomatic solutions with barbarians who are willing to go house to house, raping people to death.   That ship has sailed.

The people who got hit are going to respond. We would. In fact, we did. Did we do it smartly? Nope. We did a lot of pointless shit for the next 20 years, but on 9-11 we didn’t give a shit what any other country had to say, and anybody who talked to us about “proportional response” got told to fuck off. This is the same thing, but approximately 30 times worse adjusted for relative population size.

So they’re going to do what they’re going to do, in the hope that they can stop it from happening again.

Will it work? Beats me. This shit’s complicated and anybody who pretends it isn’t is trying to sell you something.

But what I do know is that if you reward the enemy and give them what they want for hiding behind human shields, that just ensures they are going to do it more. Because when you’re evil, life is cheap, even your own kids, and everybody is expendable to get what you want.

So when Hamas hides under a school, they’re doing it for you.

More Larry Gold from the Book of Faces- Jack

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I saw this on twitter and automatically read it in my Bad Twitter Writing Advice Voice. But then I got to expounding on why this is such a bad idea.

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Writing Community

@writingoutlook Oct 11

The aim is not to make money, the aim is not to be a best-seller, the aim is to change people’s lives. What do you think?

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Nope.

You ain’t changing shit if nobody reads your stuff.

If people read your stuff you make money.

We are entertainers, not preachers. Get over yourself.

I’ve got an incredible fan base. They have helped each other a lot. Tons of positive change. We’ve paid for surgeries. We’ve done massive charity drives. My fans once raised twenty grand for one woman’s breast cancer surgery in an afternoon. My fans have come together and paid for spinal surgeries and kidney dialysis. I have people who met on my fan page and gotten married. There are kids named after my characters. I’ve got a couple hundred people with the logo or characters from my books tattooed on their bodies. I’ve heard from many people where my books helped keep them happy through tough miserable times. I was the bestselling author in Baghdad and Bagram and helped distract dudes with fun stories while they were in the suck. My fans have become friends and consoled and boosted each other through all sorts of terrible life events. They’ve helped the out of work ones find jobs. They dominate the charity auction at conventions. They’ve shared knowledge and art. They’ve boosted the careers of dozens of other authors I’ve exposed them to so the cycle can continue. The amount of cool shit they’ve accomplished is way disproportionate to their numbers.

Over the last 15 years I’ve seen some pretty damned amazing things from them. I’m not the best writer, but I’ve got the best fans. By far. Wouldn’t trade them for anyone else’s.

Yet none of that positive stuff would have happened if my goal was to “change peoples lives”. They came together organically because I entertained them and provided them a product that they shared an interest in.

You goal should be to write good books that people will like, and get paid. As a side benefit of that you might make the world a better place for somebody. If your goal is to change people, you’re probably gonna fail as a writer, be annoying in the process, and die poor.

We’ve got an incredible bunch of authors for this 3rd anthology of noir sci-fi and fantasy stories. It came out really good.

https://www.baen.com/down-these-mean-streets-earc.html

An eARC is the Electronic Advanced Reader Copy. These are the versions of books that get sent out to reviewers before the actual book comes out. Baen realizes that some of you don’t like to wait so they make these early versions available for sale. eARCs aren’t the final edited version, but we got these in so early they should be fairly close.