Newsletter: Announcement and Preview (Patreon)

Now that Solomon's Crucible is on Amazon, I'm doing my best to do a professional job as a self-published author. As part of that effort, I now have a web site and will be doing a newsletter. 

The purpose of the newsletter is to give people a way to stay in touch with me and hear about what I've been doing in between Amazon publications. Mostly it'll be talking about things that I've read and enjoyed. You guys already have access to the more immediate version of this in the discord server, but I thought some of you might like a more long form version as well.

People who sign up for the newsletter will get access to one advance chapter of Solomon's Crucible. Unfortunately, I can't combine that with patreon, so there aren't any freebies for you. The only reason to sign up is if you like the newsletter itself.

To give you a feel for what I'm talking about, I'm including below the newsletter that will go out at the end of July. If you like it, great! Head on over to the web site and sign up. If you don't like it, that's fine too! This is the only post I'll make on the topic here on patreon.

The newsletter's content is as follows:

Hi!

Thank you for signing up for my inaugural newsletter. This has been quite a month. With Solomon's Crucible going up on Amazon, I've gotten started on the road to mastering (journeyman-ing?) the Amazon promotional system. I've also finally gotten my own website rolling. I'm excited about everything going on, even if it has been a lot to do. Fortunately, I've still been able to squeeze in a decent amount of reading time as I procrastinate on my writing.

Jake's Virtual Bookshelf

Every time I write to you I'll try and pick out a few books that I've been reading that I can at least conditionally recommend. I basically write the kind of stories that I like to read, so you can expect a pretty steady diet of fantasy adventure stories to show up here. This time, it's three entries from Royal Road.

Vaudevillain 

Dylan is your average nerd. He works downtown for an architecture firm during the day and enjoys all manner of games and media in his spare time. When an indie company releases a virtual reality MMO where players choose to play as heroes or villains, Dylan immediately buys into it. He has a specific type of character he really enjoys watching, something that always makes his inner child laugh in delight. The Saturday morning cartoon villain. But to grab a playerbase, the company has announced a promotion that players with a high enough reputation can get contacted to become permanent raid bosses in the game. Those chosen will be paid as if employees of the company.

I loved everything about this story. I had thought that I was done with the VRMMORPG flavor of litRPG, but the author's decision to have the main character treat the game as a game is an amazing breath of fresh air.

Reading Vaudevillain is a very relaxed experience. The protagonist is always having fun with his crazy ideas. The other players around him either get drawn into grudging admiration of his ability to carry off his schtick or get incredibly salty when his ridiculous plans work out. Either way, it's fun. Highly recommend.

Blessed Time 

On Karell, you are either blessed by the gods, granted a unique power and the ability to gain experience and levels, or you are forgotten.  Micah Silver was a boy picked for greatness.  Unfortunately his primary blessing only allows him to travel into the past by sacrificing his class, wealth, and levels.  Even if Micah's unwilling, fate has a way of forcing you to take up your destiny, possibly at the cost of everything.  Over and over again.

I, personally, do not like time loop stories. Despite that, I found this one fairly enjoyable. The main character starts off in a position that is bad enough that his time looping abilities don't let him effortlessly style all over everybody. So there's at least some meat to the action.

My problem with this one is that the author sort of tries to have his cake and eat it to. The protagonist can jump five years into the past every subjective five years. This means that unlike the typical time loop, he does have real vulnerabilities. If he dies, he just dies. And for five years after he hits the reset button, he can't even loop back out of danger. So far, so good.

However, the protagonist doesn't really act like he's aware of this situation. He has an enormously powerful ability. His #1 priority after every loop should be surviving into the next loop. As long as he gets to loop again, he can keep learning things and getting better. Especially since "losing his levels" loses its bite when we discover he can immediately recover spell levels by repeating things he learned during a loop. Despite this, he takes on quite a bit of risk while the timer is still running.

I get that a hyper-rational protagonist is boring, but I find it a little jarring that a protagonist with such a ludicrously powerful ability doesn't milk it for all it's worth. If you can look past my gripes, I think you'll like the story.

Ben's Damn Adventure: The Prince Has No Pants 

All life on Earth has been stolen away by The System, transported to another world at the behest of a distant galactic empire, who lived in terror of humanity's potential.

Ben was a normal, slightly above average man, and had been about to go on the first real vacation of his adult life. Now he must contend with danger and mystery in a world of monsters, magic and treasure, armed with nothing but his wits, and the special item given to him by The System.

This story is very heavy on HFY. For the uninitiated, this stands for Humanity, Fuck Yeah! and usually indicates that you are in for a sort of species-level Mary Sue. It turns out that we live in a universe where humans are the most crazy awesome species around and every other species in the universe kind of sucks.

The weird thing in this one is that it attributes things to humanity that, as far as I know, are not true. We're told in all seriousness that humans will re-evolve from "a fragment of a psychic imprint" if we are physically wiped out. Also, we're the only species in the universe with an immune system. Apparently, a human fart will result in the complete destruction of any alien ecosystem unfortunate enough to suffer such a disaster (the mind boggles of what would happen if some aliens let my dog visit).

Generally speaking, I don't like HFY. But I did like this story. Why? Because the HFY stuff is all set dressing. It happens in the background. Most of the narrative focus is on Ben, who is basically good guy Greg, trying to navigate his way through a death world. Also, there's a talking shark. 

If you like HFY, I think you'll really like this one. If you don't, I think it's still worth giving it a shot.

Dog check-in

Status: conserving energy.

Jake's Virtual Book Club

The other thing I'd like to do for each newsletter is to take a story that I really admire and look it over in depth to see what's so good about it. Please let me know if you think of a book that you think is worth a close look.

For this entry, we're looking at Shadows in the Moonlight, by Robert E. Howard. This is a 12,000 word Conan story that is in the public domain. You can read it at project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42188/42188-h/42188-h.htm 

If you're looking to fill in a Conan-sized hole in your bookshelf, Shadows in the Moonlight also appears in the excellent anthology The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, a collection of Conan stories by Robert E. Howard arranged in order of publication. A lot of Conan stories are hard to find in their original form, and pretty much everything in the book is excellent.

I think a lot of people get the wrong impression of Conan. If your exposure is to derivative works or stuff like the Marvel comics, you are often reading a caricature of a caricature and being told it's the real thing. In my opinion, getting back to Howard's work really drives home why Conan became such an icon.

The primary point of view for Shadows in the Moonlight is a young woman. She was a princess of a small country who refused an arranged marriage and was sold off by her parents, eventually being gifted to the cruel ruler of a large country as a concubine. She has slipped away from her captivity and fled a long way away, but her captor has chased her down. He intends to drag her back and treat her horribly, but suddenly a wild Conan appears.

He released her with a startled oath and sprang back, his saber flashing out, as a terrible apparition burst from the reedy jungle sounding an inarticulate cry of hate.

Olivia, staring up from the ground, saw what she took to be either a savage or a madman advancing on Shah Amurath in an attitude of deadly menace. He was powerfully built, naked but for a girdled loincloth, which was stained with blood and crusted with dried mire. His black mane was matted with mud and clotted blood; there were streaks of dried blood on his chest and limbs, dried blood on the long straight sword he gripped in his right hand. From under the tangle of his locks, bloodshot eyes glared like coals of blue fire.

What an entrance! Howard was writing this before Conan was Conan, so he knew he was introducing the character to many readers for the first time. It's a well-worn piece of writing advice to make a character stick in the reader's mind by introducing them carrying out some characteristic action, but passages like this show why it's such common advice. Nobody's forgetting about Conan after reading this.

Here's the entire ensuing fight scene:

In spite of the terror of his wild appearance, Olivia looked to see him fall at the first crossing of the blades. Madman or savage, what could he do, naked, against the mailed chief of Akif?

There was an instant when the blades flamed and licked, seeming barely to touch each other and leap apart; then the broadsword flashed past the saber and descended terrifically on Shah Amurath's shoulder. Olivia cried out at the fury of that stroke. Above the crunch of the rending mail, she distinctly heard the snap of the shoulder-bone. The Hyrkanian reeled back, suddenly ashen, blood spurting over the links of his hauberk; his saber slipped from his nerveless fingers.

I tend to write my fight scenes with a bit of a puzzle solving element. I like to have the reader follow along as the protagonist tries to figure out how he's going to win. I do think it's a good way to do a fight scene, but here we see Howard use a fight scene for a different purpose entirely: to set the mood. 

He's not looking to have you ride shotgun in Conan's brain during a sword fight. He wants you to be very aware that a crazed, half-naked man just appeared out of nowhere and savagely killed somebody.

We find out the details over the next little while: Conan was part of a mercenary army that had turned to banditry. The evil leader guy he just killed had gone out with his army and slaughtered most of the bandits. Conan fled to the marsh. It was during the ensuing celebrations that Olivia escaped.

One thing about Conan is that he is special in that he is strong and fast and dangerous. He's not special in terms of getting tremendous respect and acclaim from people. He also spends a lot of his time in relatively low-status jobs, scratching out a living on the strength of his sword arm. This is probably one of the reasons I like Conan stories so much: I like this non-idolized model of hero.

Olivia now begs to come along in Conan's escape. Conan is reluctant but relents. His plan is to take a rowboat that he stole from somebody and row his way to safety. It's a long trip ahead. They're escaping on a sea that is largely controlled by the country whose leader he just killed.

We get this passage describing the journey:

The sun sank like a dull-glowing copper ball into a lake of fire. The blue of the sea merged with the blue of the sky, and both turned to soft dark velvet, clustered with stars and the mirrors of stars. Olivia reclined in the bows of the gently rocking boat, in a state dreamy and unreal. She experienced an illusion that she was floating in midair, stars beneath her as well as above. Her silent companion was etched vaguely against the softer darkness. There was no break or falter in the rhythm of his oars; he might have been a fantasmal oarsman, rowing her across the dark lake of Death. But the edge of her fear was dulled, and, lulled by the monotony of motion, she passed into a quiet slumber.

Howard is very good at painting a vivid picture without resorting to purple prose. All I can do here is applaud his skill. I'd also note that his economy with words gives his writing a modern feel. Other than the spelling of phantasmal, this wouldn't feel at all old-fashioned if it showed up in a present day publication.

Our escaping duo ends up putting in on a deserted island for provisions. The island has two distinct forms of terrain: a lowland jungle and a grassy plateau. It has two distinct horrors, as well. Lurking in the jungle is a man-eating ape, which is eventually described to be essentially a gorilla with fangs. The horror on the plateau is more exotic: twenty extremely realistic looking and extremely well preserved iron statues.

Both Conan and Olivia are as creeped out by the statues as you would expect. They can't leave the island, though, as a galley is approaching from the direction they have to go. Thus, they have to spend the night. The only decent shelter is in the building with the statues. Conan puts together a bed for her, and we reach the end of part one:

Whatever her forebodings, Conan did not share them. The Cimmerian sat down near her, his back against a pillar, his sword across his knees. His eyes gleamed like a panther's in the dusk.

'Sleep, girl,' said he. 'My slumber is light as a wolf's. Nothing can enter this hall without awaking me.'

Olivia did not reply. From her bed of leaves she watched the immobile figure, indistinct in the soft darkness. How strange, to move in fellowship with a barbarian, to be cared for and protected by one of a race, tales of which had frightened her as a child! He came of a people bloody, grim and ferocious. His kinship to the wild was apparent in his every action; it burned in his smoldering eyes. Yet he had not harmed her, and her worst oppressor had been a man the world called civilized.

You'll notice this is where we get the first strong indication that there's a romance arc going on here. I'll get into it more in the later parts, but I think one of the biggest differences between the modern knockoff Conans and Howard's original shows up in his treatment of women. 

If you crack open a random issue of Marvel Conan there's a pretty good chance he'll refer to a woman at some point as a "wench" and he'll be portrayed as at best handsy and at worst outright thuggish, only attractive to women in the thews department.  

By contrast, the romance arc in Shadows in the Moonlight honestly tracks pretty closely with modern romance novels. Change the set dressing a little and Conan could easily be the lead in any of those Chinese or Korean web novels featuring a woman seduced by a domineering CEO (of which I've read more than I'd care to admit; xianxia is a gateway to many genres some would consider unnatural).

For the next virtual book club I'll knock out the rest of Shadows in the Moonlight (part one is nearly half of the word count). After that I'm leaning towards more Conan, but I could be talked out of it. What's your favorite fantasy adventure? For that matter, did I miss anything awesome in Shadows in the Moonlight? Let me know!

If you'd like to get this kind of thing delivered to your inbox once or twice a month, go ahead and sign up for the newsletter on my web site.