I wrote a novel - Q&A coming up

[JSchlansky]

The Q and A video is up now

https://youtu.be/BKHfp18sfeA

8 days until release

[JSchlansky]

The novel is out now!

Here's the ordering link:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084V2CKGQ

and to celebrate release day I narrated the prologue:
https://youtu.be/_Oi6ZCwZCfc

[iconogassed]

Curious about the marketing strategy of refusing to engage with even the non-smartass posts in this thread in order to continue to use it as a promotional dumping ground

[JSchlansky]

I engage with people on the forums all the time. If you're talking about not responding to the questions, that's because I answer them in the Q&A video.

[iconogassed]

The operative words: "in this thread"

But okay, the video...

"My two biggest influences are S. Craig Zahler and Margaret Atwood" is better than anything Gregg Turkington has or will ever write

How can you expect to be taken seriously as a writer when you see nothing questionable in openly admitting that you took all the money you could have used to hire an editor for your work and instead put it toward advertising?

[ShogunRua]

That's how brickwall uses this entire forum. As a link dump. Promotion for his low-effort, low-quality videos, promotion for his lousy book, etc.

I could write about the serious problems with this "novel" based on the premise and blurb alone, but why bother? brickwall won't read it, and additionally, no one will read his book.

[iconogassed]

In his defence (?) the notion of a self-published author hosting a Q&A about their debut post-apocalyptic novel that they themselves describe as "prophetic" is indeed absurd and horrible but also about par for the course today.

It should (?) also be said that his account of having waffled for months with many "pro and con lists" between self- and traditional publishing as if it were an actual choice, and there were any chance of the latter happening outside of a vanity press or the literary equivalent of those slimy film festivals that sell awards and "official selections" to him for viral marketing purposes, is arrogant in the extreme. Trying to be kind there. If I sound like a prick, well, this degree mill crap is the pits and anyone who knowingly patronizes them is equally culpable

[ShogunRua]

Very well-stated, iconogassed. There is no chance of this book being anything other than a dumpster fire.

But again, brickwall has made it clear long ago that he is beyond any form of advice or criticism from anyone. He considers himself a genius, both with his Youtube channel that has failed to attract any audience in the 5+ years (more? less?) he has continually been putting out content, and this sad attempt at a novel. He will honor us peons by using the Criticker forums as his own personal link-dump, but nothing more.

Let me simply note as someone has worked as an editor on several professionally published books that releasing a book as a 22/23 year-old first-time writer with no editor is comically insane, and that pricing it as $16 for paperbook and $9 on Kindle is even worse.

There are best-selling authors with large followings and dozens of successful books who don't charge close to that amount.

[iconogassed]

This is getting a little sadistic so I'll just say that while there's no way I'm reading that book brickwall has made me laugh on purpose and I think he does have some talent and I wasn't being a jerk when I said he'd make a cool voice on an adult swim show or something. But this is what happens when a culture prioritizes effortless mass-exploitation of talent over the pained and careful development of it.

I just remembered Flannery O'Connor wrote Wise Blood before she was 25 and now I want to go lick a grocery store cash register

[ShogunRua]

There's no "mass-exploitation of talent" since there is no talent to begin with.

No, this is what happens when a culture tells everyone they're special and amazing from the earliest possible age, and never dares inform them that they suck and have to work very long and hard not to suck.

Flannery O'Connor is okay, but if we're going for Southern writers who wrote excellent work at a young age, John Kennedy Toole completing "A Confederacy of Dunces" when he was 26 is the first book that comes to mind.