Your Friendly Neighborhood Therapist

“Go to therapy.”

I’ve heard it a lot, and at times I’ve considered it, but there is one thing about the whole situation that bothers me. That is the fact that there used to be someone you could talk to about your problems, tell your secrets to, and trust to have your back. That person was called a friend.

Now we live in a society where telling your friends about your problems is “trauma dumping”. No one wants to hear about your boyfriend breaking up with you, or that you’re lonely, or heaven forbid you lost your job and you just need someone to commiserate over a cup of coffee with you.

This has lead to, in my opinion, incredibly shallow friendships. I don’t know what’s bothering my friends because they don’t talk to me about their troubles. They don’t know about mine because I don’t want them to stop talking to me because I’m “trauma dumping.” Instead I end up just…staying to myself most of the time. Not because I’m depressed, in fact I’m happier than I’ve been in an incredibly long time. I just know that I don’t particularly care to invest in a “friendship” that is as shallow as a summer pond evaporating in the sunlight. As soon as something comes along to really shine a light on that “friendship”… it’s going to be gone.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think therapy is useful to a lot of people with real problems. OCD, phobias, PTSD induced by something horrible happening in the past. All of them and more could be helped with some good old fashioned cognitive-behavior therapy. It’s been shown to work, and lesson symptoms if not completely cure it. But the majority of people who go to therapy aren’t going for major issues… they are going because they just need a real friend.

Instead of friends we pay someone to listen to us talk about what’s bothering us. Instead of reaching out to others around us we are scared, lonely, and maybe even a little self obsorbed.

Honestly… I found the easiest way to cure my loneliness wasn’t to pay someone so I could talk to them about it, rather it was to reach out to others and talk to them about their life, and hope they would want to talk about mine. Because that’s the other thing missing from a lot of relationships these days… the basic give and take of a true friendship. The mutual interest in each other.

Once, a long time ago, someone sent me the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. They said it would help me with my goal of getting more friends. I didn’t find it helpful at all because it advocated for you to just let others talk about themselves, always, and never really share a part of you. People like to talk about themselves, it said, and the book is absolutely right about that. But this leaves you with a one sided relationship as you learn everything about those you want to influence and they learn nothing about you.

It’s a marketing tactic, one that clearly works very well. But it doesn’t create the long lasting and deep relationships that I wanted. It doesn’t foster understanding between two people, or let you know that if something bad happens that person has your back.

Instead we are left with that cheerful fellow that always asked me questions, and was a good listener…but I didn’t really know much about him, and I probably wouldn’t invite him for more than an afternoon cup of tea. And if my car broke down I wouldn’t call him for a ride.

Some people are absolutely fine with these shallow, superficial relationships. They might have a few closer friends and enjoy the casual passage of time with others. But I suspect there are a great many people out there like me who want something more fulfilling. Someone who actually cares, and knows more about you than the average person out there. I suspect a great many people pay a therapist to listen to them because they feel that missing relationship of a friend who has their back.

And sure, a significant other absolutely fills that space, but it isn’t very healthy to have only one outlet for interpersonal communication. Sometimes you need that friend to go have coffee and chit chat with. Sometimes you want to go play pool with the boys. It’s actually better for a relationship if you do spend time with other people sometimes.

Regardless, I feel like this over reliance on therapy, and lack of deep friendships, is just another sign of a low trust society. We aren’t able to really let others in because we don’t trust them. They might use what we say against us, they might get us canceled, they might turn us into some authority, or get us fired. And for a lot of us if we get burned too many times it’s hard to kindle that fire again.

I don’t know what the answer is. I just know that I still try to reach out to others, to listen to their stories, and share mine with them. To be just a little vulnerable, and hope they reciprocate. In the end…that’s all we can do. Put ourselves out there and try again.

Clearing the Kindle 6: – What did I just read? (Feels like AI?)

Book read: Zombie 69 by Kitty Glitter
Pages: 20

Sometimes you read a book and you wonder… What did I just read?

That is how I felt after just a few pages of Zombie 69. This short twenty page book contains two short stories, the first about zombies and the second about a cat and dog that live with some humans. Neither story makes any sort of sense. They both feel meandering, and broken, almost as if it was written by a primitive AI generator, not a person.

I don’t remember the zombie story very well. It had to do with zombies going to high school (why?) and doing ordinary teen things, they are just zombies that have to pop their eye back into socket now and then.

The second story was…weird. The cat and dog can talk to each other, and they swear a lot. Some random person breaks into their house and kidnaps their child, then the dog goes a little savage and blames the cat. The cat, for it’s part, starts talking about time shifts, and the girl being pushed out of time. Then it just ends. The girl is still gone, there is no explanation of time shifts, there is no explanation of why the cat is able to drive an RC car, or who that guy that kidnapped the girl was. It just ends.

This clipped, piecemeal story telling gave both stories a generated feel. It felt almost like it was using some sort of madlib format. (I am not saying it is, of course, I can’t know that. But the feeling is there.)

This chaotic structure is often how people recognize AI generated art. The AI can combine aspects of different pictures, and even blend them together, but it often gets anatomy or structures wrong. It adds extra fingers, or one eye is much bigger than the other. It becomes incredibly obvious that whatever created the artwork, be it human or program, it has an uncanny valley feel. It seems like it should be art, or human, but it just feels… wrong. And sometimes we aren’t even able to tell what is wrong about it, just that there is something that doesn’t work.

In written work it’s much the same. Algorithms are pulling from sources all over the internet and smashing them together, but it’s a predictive text structure. Just like the predictive text on your phone doesn’t always suggest the right word for that sentence you’re writing, ChatGPT sometimes adds whole paragraphs that just restate what it already said, or breaks structure, or leaves out key details. When dealing with factual information it may even just be flat wrong as it pulls from the wrong information online. Remember, a predictive text formula is only as good as the information being fed into it, and a LOT of the information on-line is just wrong. How could a language model be expected to be right all of the time?

I don’t know if this particular story was written by an algorithm, or just some random stories built from the authors wildest dreams, but the feeling is the same. It doesn’t feel…cohesive, or right. And it makes zero sense.

How would you fix the very structure of your story telling? My suggestion is to have beta readers, or a writers workshop. Being part of a writers workshop and having honest feedback about my writing helped me get the words right faster than just spitting words into a void and hoping they made sense. And with the age of the internet with facebook, forums, meet-ups and more, finding a group of people dedicated to helping each other get better at writing is easier than ever. It can be on-line so that you don’t have to put faces to the criticism, or you can opt for in person where you can get better at people skills, too. Either way, having good feedback about your work is crucial to not just finding your voice, but refining it.

As for AI…There are arguments for and against AI generation. I tend to be of the opinion that it’s a tool just like any other random plot generator and that if you, as the writer, don’t take that generated idea and actually write it yourself than it will never be a great story. AI just simply rewrites what has already been written. Good for ideas, for plot summaries, or settings, but not good for a finished product. Not yet, at least. (That’s a little spooky to think about, really.)

There’s a lot more to go into about AI generated art as a whole, including copyright, stolen assets and more, but that’s a much bigger topic than I may cover in a blog post. So for now we’re just going to take from this short story that if you don’t have a cohesive story that makes sense people might think you’re a computer. And if you want to get better at writing you might try a writers workshop.

Next story: Immortals by Eva Fairwald.

Clearing the Kindle 5: – Confused? Me too!

Book read: Breath for Me by Edward Robertson.
Pages: 17

When I downloaded “Breath for Me” onto my kindle I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. I didn’t remember picking up the book, and the cover just had some palm trees and simple text across the front. (Though it does say “fantasy story” in very small cursive letters that I didn’t notice until writing this.)

What could a photo of palm trees in green and red tones be? I thought a literary fiction work, or just a fiction story set in a tropical location. Either way I wasn’t expecting a group of slaves building an aqueduct in the middle of a jungle. And I certainly wasn’t expecting the main character to have the ability to make illusions with his magic breath.

Setting the cover aside, I was interested in the setting. I haven’t read many books from a similar time period, so I continued on with the read.

The plot is simple. A man is working to build an aqueduct as a slave (perhaps an indentured servant as it is only for a specific amount of time). He starts sharing stories at night using his illusions to create plays for the other slaves. The overseer, wanting to wave around his authority because he hates his job, tells the main character to stop. MC warns him that a riot will break out, but complies. A riot breaks out and several people die. Then…everything gets confusing.

Before I continue I am going to admit that I am in the minority, it appears. Reading this work, I was incredibly confused at several points in the story. I re-read the ending three times and I still don’t know what exactly happened. The reviews seem to be more favorable. Some of this is clearly because the readers are familiar with Mr. Robertson’s work as they make reference to his other stories. But there are others who found it confusing, as I did.

I, as a new reader, do not have any idea how the magic in this world works. He breaths, and through his breath he can make illusions appear. I don’t know the limits, but the other slaves seem to imply the magic user should be able to build the aqueduct with a wave of his hand. Only the MC insists he isn’t a good magic user and the illusions are the best he can do.

So when mountain sized men in chains start across the sky…I was confused. I think the MC is showing everyone what happened, and how one of the slaves was killed, so that the other slaves would rally together and fight back against those in charge. But everything happens incredibly fast, with broken thoughts strung together, so it’s hard to follow. That, coupled with the fact that I’m unfamiliar with this writer, or his worlds, made the experience a confusing one.

So what did I learn from this short story? First, know your audience. Not only the audience you already have, but are you trying to reach new people with this story as well? Will someone who has never read your work understand what’s going on?

Second, less is not always more. This story was only 17 pages long but I think if the last two pages had been given a few more pages to grow it might have been less confusing. It would also have separated the epilogue from the main story a bit so that it felt like a distinct part instead of just a run on from the previous paragraph. In writing you have nothing to show the passage of time but your words, so use them.

And lastly…not everyone is going to like your work. There are plenty of people who like this story and give it five stars on amazon and goodreads. I won’t be one of them. I think I’d give it a three. That doesn’t mean the story isn’t good, it just means that it isn’t for me. This is important to keep in mind as a writer. You can not please everyone, no matter how hard you try. But also keep in mind if everyone is complaining about the same thing then you probably do need to reevaluate what you’re writing.

And sometimes the stories we like the least are the ones we can learn the most from.

Next story: Zombie 69 by Kitty Glitter (um… this should be interesting…)

Clearing the Kindle 4: – A name by any other name….

Book read: Shadows Over Innocence by Lindsay Buroker
Pages: 17

This weeks story is a short, but sweet, tale of an assassin watching over a the young heir to a kingdom. There is no softness, no joy in this assassin. All emotion has been beat out of him by the emperor that rules with an iron fist. But still…there’s something about the innocence of this young buy that gives the hardened assassin pause.

Overall the story was an enjoyable peak into this world that the author created. It’s hard, and viscous. It is a land where might makes right. But even in this world of hardness and pain there is one small point of light flickering in the darkness.

But even in a lovely tale like this we, as writers, can learn something.

For this story it was the naming convention. Lindsay Buroker went with names that were unusual, each with three to four syllables, and each unique enough that they might give some readers pause. Still, in fantasy worlds that isn’t unusual.

However, the main character and the heir have names that are very similar to each other. Sicarius and Sespian. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, of course, but one naming convention for story telling is to give characters distinct names so that they don’t get confused, and specifically starting with a different first letter.

While reading this particular story you are first introduced to Sespian, the assassin. He happens across Sicarius within few paragraphs. It is clear they are two separate people, of course, but in my head I kept getting the names mixed up as I was reading it. I had to take a minute to actively separate the two so that I could tell which was which. On the other hand the other named characters, Hallowcrest and Raumesys, had distinct names that were easy to keep straight.

While reading many of us do not take in the words syllable by syllable. We take them in as a whole. Maybe you have seen this puzzle floating about the internet:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Most fluent English readers can decipher this fairly quickly. That is because we take in the words as a whole unit and our mind automatically translates it into the proper spelling. There is a little more to it, you can read more about that here, but in general if the first and last letters are correct than it is easy enough to get the gist of what is said.

Which brings us back to the two names with the same first letter. If you are taking in the name as a whole, not as individual syllables, it is easier to get them mixed up. Separating them with different beginning letters, especially when they appear quite close to each other in the text, helps to separate out the characters.

Such a simple thing, and yet it makes a big difference in writing.

Next up: Breath for Me by Edward Robertson.

Clearing the Kindle: 3 – Tell Me a Story

Book read: Avengers: Heroes Welcome
Author: Brian Michael Bendis
Pages: 14

What is one of the first things they taught you in English class? Or one of the lessons that stuck with you? For me it was always, ALWAYS, “Show! Don’t tell.” It was drilled into my young mind from the moment I could hold a pen. Show the story, show the characters, and the interactions, don’t just tell it to me.

Picture this: A dark trail, branches reaching high above, their naked fingers scratching at the velvet black sky. A lone figure stumbles down the path clutching at his leg, hot blood seeping from a wound. With heaving breaths, he sends quick glances back over his shoulder, but there’s nothing there.

Can you picture that? Can you feel his heart thumping, the fear in him as he tries to staunch the wound, the desperation as he searches the darkness?

Or I could say “A dude walks down a dark path with someone chasing behind him. He has a wound on his leg that’s bleeding.”

Which would you prefer to read? Which would keep you entertained?

The idea of “show don’t tell” is a hard lesson to learn, and I think one many writers never learn. I believe this even more after reading this weeks short story, or rather a comic. Avengers, Heroes Welcome, does so much telling, and zero showing. So much that it felt more like a sermon than a story.

First I will say… I really do love comic books. I’ve been reading and collecting them for decades now. My favorite has to be Escape from Wonderland, with Fable as a close second. But I also had quite a few Avenger, Thor, and Spiderman back in the day. So I’m not unfamiliar with how comics use panels, and short page counts, to get a story across.

A comic is an illustrated short story. It uses art, as well as dialog and limited narration, to show the action. Most comics (back in the day) had high action content. Catch the bad guy, or escape the serial killer, that sort of thing. But a good comic could get the story across between the pictures and dialog, with very little narration.

“Heroes Welcome,” on the other hand, has no action. No real story, just a bunch of people sitting around discussing what makes a hero.

This feels like the author wanted to tell people what they thought a hero was, and instead of writing a story to show a heroes actions they had Nova (a young hero I’ve honestly never heard of) barge into the Avengers headquarters, and start asking philosophical questions about what makes a hero.

Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t the first time a super hero had a case of consciousness and needed to figure out if they were doing the right thing. Spiderman goes through this frequently since his actions often cause the bad thing to happen, and his story revolves around taking responsibility for your abilities. But his questioning always happens while in the mist of action, and his actions or successes lead him to his answers.

Instead “Heroes Welcome” is literally just a bunch of people sitting around a room talking.

I was disappointed. The plight of the hero, and what is a hero, is the very substance of a super hero story. And yet they stripped away all vestiges of that to make it a boring classroom lecture.

And sadly they had the perfect opportunity to show exactly what a hero is. A rescue from a fire, and a heart touched. A single life saved, going on to be changed from then on.

This is something firefighters and police officers do daily. They could have used that example to show heroism, even in the face of a person who has no powers.

Instead we got a lecture.

Show. Don’t tell.

Next weeks book will be “Shadows over Innocence” by Lindsay Buroker.

Two free short stories.

I know I just wrote a post about giving away free books, and now I’m doing it. Well… I’m giving away two. I hope you take a moment to give them a look. Happy reading.

Stars End a SF anothology.
The Ring an intro to the Illicit Gains world.

Clearing the Kindle: 2 – Short Stories as Intros

Book read: Halcyon Days by J.A. Cipriano
Pages: 14

Back when I started collecting kindle books I gathered a number from newer authors who I hadn’t heard of. I would hear about them from a daily deal, or a friend on Goodreads, and add them to my collection. Often because they were short reads that had been marked free to encourage you to get the second in the series.

Halcyon Days seems to be a free give away to introduce others to a series. I say seems to be because it is no longer available on Amazon. However, Mr Cipriano has a large list of books to his name since then, but this appears to be an abandoned series.

Considering many people think prologues are a forgotten relique, the idea of a short story prequel to a series has appeal. It could introduce people to the world, allow others to find the series, or give those who want more information about the world something more to sink their teeth into. Having it set up for 99 cents with the occasional free give away also gives readers a chance to try your writing.

Free books don’t have the same punch that they used to. Amazon changed a lot of algorithms, as did every other book sight, which changed how writers engaged with readers. That doesn’t mean the free give away is completely useless, just that it isn’t lightning in a bottle like it used to be.

One big problem with free giveaways happens to be the reader like me, the one that collects a bunch of new stories and doesn’t read them nearly as fast as they collect them. Still, with the hope that some of those who pick up the free copy will actually read it, enjoy it, and come back for more…we authors give away a lot of copies. It’s like sending a message in a bottle out to sea. So many of them get sent out, but only a few ever find another soul to connect with. But that small glimmer of hope, that dream, it’s the reason why so many bottles get sent out there with notes to begin with.

As for Halcyon Days, it was a solid contender to make someone interested in a series. A boy is rescued from the monster under his bed and taken to a world of magic. He is then introduced to a magical society that hunts the evils that go bump in the night, like vampires, hopping from one world to another in order to do so.

The idea left a lot of room for growth. Do you follow the lone earthling? Pick one of the alien hunters? Do you take the earthling to a new world? Such an open ended story could give a writer issues unless they had a specific destination in mind. That could be why this was abandoned, or it could be as simple as another series taking off and wanting to limit which series he put his efforts into.

We shall never know what became of Halcyon Days, but I might pick up his book “Alone in the Dark” just because it seems…interesting.

Clearing the Kindle: 1 – What About Episodes?

Book read: The Miscellaneous Adventures of Princess Leona by V.C. Coll.
Pages: 13

This short story has been on my kindle for over five years now. I picked it up when it first came out because I had been on a podcast with Miss Coll, and I wanted to support her work. I never got around to reading it, and I’m not sure why. I don’t really have an excuse, it’s only 13 pages, and took me less than thirty minutes to read.

The Miscellaneous Adventures of Princess Leona is a Grimms style fairy tale about a princess of extraordinarily ordinary origins trying to become a witches apprentice. It has a lot of forth wall breaking by the author, and a narrative style that I found charming.

This was written back in 2013 during a time when “episodic” story telling was all the rage. Miss Coll, along with myself, followed the Self Publishing Podcast which was a group of three guys that talked a lot about the episodic story telling model, so it isn’t unusual that many of us tried this tactic.

An episodic tale is one in which there are multiple shorter stories that are published separately, and together they create and entire season for that world. The SPP guys were influenced by film. Think Breaking Bad, Star Trek, or Friends. Each individual episode had a complete story involved, but they all progressed character development, and the over arching plot of the main series.

Many novel series does the same thing. Xanth, DragonLance, Vampire Diaries, Jack Reacher, etc. Each book in the series has a distinct story of its own, but it contributes to the overall progression of the series as well.

The main difference between a traditional book, and the episodic tellings of the SPP theory, is that the stories were shorter. A traditional book was about four times longer than the SPP episodes. They also sold them for $2.99, then bundled the full season for $5.99 when they completed the season.

For them, and many others, it worked. But there was one flaw that happened with many stories. That is the sudden cliffhanger, or the incomplete story.

Princess Leona’s story falls into this latter category. While charming, I did not feel like it had a satisfying ending. There was some progress toward the end goal, but the narrator kept insisting the end did not exist, there was no edge of the forest. And while there were a couple of encounters with dubious fellows, it felt more like building a team than overcoming an obstacle.

This is the trouble of episodic storytelling. You can, and probably should, have a cliffhanger ending, but you need to have a satisfying ending as well. When completing a book something should have been accomplished, even if it isn’t the final ending. Without that satisfaction of a job well done…well I feel like I’ve just wasted my time.

The other tangle in this weave is that there are only two stories out by Miss Coll, and because the second is just as short as the first I don’t feel an inclination to buy and read the second one. After all this time I doubt she will add a third, and I do not know if the second story will have a satisfactory ending to it. If it were to be another cliffhanger with no further reading then it would be even more disheartening.

In conclusion…Episodic storytelling may not be as fashionable as it once was, but it is still a viable story telling device. However, each story in the series needs to feel like a complete tale that is worth the readers time in reading, with just enough of a hint of the next book to keep them going forward. Otherwise you risk alienating your reader.

And that is what I’ve learned from the first book. Stay tuned for the next: Halcyon Days by J.A. Cipriano.

Clearing the Kindle : Intro

I, like most kindle owners, have accumulated a vast collection of ebooks. Most of which I’ve never read. They are books ranging in those I picked up because they were free, because the cover looked interesting, or even because I just wanted to support an author I found interesting on a podcast or youtube channel.

This massive collection of ebooks needs to be paired down. I thought I’d start with the shortest books, and move forward.

Now, I couldn’t just read books and take nothing from it. Goodreads gives a little insight into my reading habits, sharing most of my audio book and reading history. But I’m not only reading for fun (sure, most of it is for fun, but not ALL of it). I also like learning from my book choices because I am a writer as well. The best way to improve writing is to read books, and actively see what works, and what didn’t work for you. So I’m going to start with the shortest book in my kindle TBR, and move my way up. And along the way I’m going to share what I’ve learned from it.

A couple of things to note about kindle readers in general. I have a Paperwhite and a Fire. I prefer the Paperwhite to read, the e-ink is easy on the eyes, and good even in a dark room. The Fire is just too bright for me, and needs to be charged a lot more. It also has a lot of distractions since it is a tablet, even if it is a slower model.

I also have a kindle app on my phone which I often use when I am out of the house. Still, it’s a small screen, and also bright like the Fire, and it has the distractions of games and technology as well.

All kindles allow you to collect your books into collections so that you can easily find specific categories. They also allow you to sort by read, not-read, and downloaded. What it does not allow is the sharing of collections between devices, which I just found out today after putting a large part of my books into collections via the online website. That means you have to go through the process of adding books to a collection directly on the Paperwhite, and then again for the Fire, and again for the phone. When you are doing this as you add books that isn’t as bad, but when you have a huge collection and you just want to sort books…well…tough luck, I guess.

Also the kindle doesn’t allow you to sort by page count. This is partly because page counts on kindle aren’t always accurate, but I suspect they do not want to encourage you to read by page count, or deem it as unnecessary. There is a reason a lot of readers prefer to sort their books on Calibre. The features of the kindle haven’t changed in quite some time, and it shows.

In order to get book lengths I used Goodreads. Goodreads allows you to add your books directly from your amazon purchases. Then you can add them to a to-read list and sort them by length. I found that of the 900 books on my to-read list only a dozen of them didn’t have page lengths. The rest were comparable to the amazon page length count.

Goodreads did not import all of my books, and I know I’ve added random books from series I liked that I do not own, so this isn’t a perfect match, but it is helpful. Once I had this list I was able to go into my kindle and download the specific books that I was looking for.

Beyond the lack of collections across platforms, and sorting by length, the kindle is a useful tool. Having my books available on the go, on my phone, and on most devices, is incredibly useful. And using Goodreads, or Calibre, to augment the kindle helps to sort and find exactly what you’re looking for. So… on with the reading!

First up: The Miscellaneous Adventures of Princess Leona by V.C. Coll.

Looking for a new read?

Three of my books are currently free. All first in series so you can see if you like the series before going on to the next book.

Two high fantasy, and one litRPG series.

Pick them up now so you can try them out.