OOC -- help?

[sythyry]

Various people have been after me to publish various bits of fiction. I'm thinking about it, without making any decisions yet, and I've got a couple questions.

Please answer these if you read Sythyry, even if the answers are negative. [Poll #349513]

Also, do you have any other advice?

Comments

[rowyn]

furry gaming-based stuff will never sell, period.

Do not sell your work as "gaming-based stuff". Not only does that sell you short by lumping your works in with a lot of unsatisfying work-for-hire material, but it's not even accurate. Your market is not the DragonLance market. People see "gaming fiction" and at best you're going to get a mental comparison with Conan the Barbarian. It's not even that such things are necessarily bad -- it's that they're not you. Yes, technically, WorldTree is an RPG setting and Sythyry and your other novels are placed in it. But Sythyry isn't anything like a typical campaign, and I suspect that your other novels aren't, either.

Descriptions in Sythyry are weak. I suspect they're weak in your novels, as well. The Prime species in WorldTree are sufficiently eccentric that I think this acts as a barrier to new readers. I suggest that, rather than trying to improve your descriptions (an iffy prospect in any case, since written descriptions tend to be dull even when written by the best), that a handful of illustrations of the major characters in whatever work you're doing would be most helpful. This is especially true for Sythyry, since the best ways of describing the people (Orren = otter, Rath'ani = raccoon, etc.) would not be natural for the narrator and are artificial when supplied by the "editor".


But I sincerely hope that you find the time and energy to pursue publishing. You have a gift for writing about anything, and your creations with WorldTree are vivid and genuine. I think of Sythyry as a person, and a person distinct from Bard Bloom. Zie just happens to be a person who doesn't live on Earth and who thinks I'm a monster. Well, hey, everyone's got their differences. :)

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: You are very very very good and you deserve a wider audience than you currently have.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

furry gaming-based stuff will never sell, period.

Rowyn said: Do not sell your work as "gaming-based
stuff". ot only does that sell you short by lumping your works in with a lot of unsatisfying work-for-hire material, but it's not even accurate. Your market is not the DragonLance market. People see "gaming fiction" and at best you're going to get a mental comparison with Conan the Barbarian. It's not even that such things are necessarily bad -- it's that they're not you. Yes, technically, WorldTree is an RPG setting and Sythyry and your other novels are placed in it. But Sythyry isn't anything like a typical campaign, and I suspect that your other novels aren't, either.

Well, you're entirely right and entirely wrong. My fiction
is written as fiction -- the novels are constructed as
novels, and Sythyry is constructed as ... um ... well
... there might be a formal term for a slice-of-life fiction
presented as a journal, in the way that "epistolary novel"
is a novel written as a sequence of letters. It's not
transcribed gaming: I don't think any of the stories would
make good games.

But the connection to the RPG is quite solid. I don't know
that I could hide it at this point, even if I wanted to. To
an editor's casual eye, looking for some reason to reject it
quickly, the gaming connection -- or the furry connection --
could be sufficient reason and then some. That's what I'm
more worried about.

Descriptions in Sythyry are weak. I suspect they're weak in your novels, as well. The Prime species in WorldTree are sufficiently eccentric that I think this acts as a barrier to new readers. I suggest that, rather than trying to improve your descriptions (an iffy prospect in any case, since written descriptions tend to be dull even when written by the best), that a handful of illustrations of the major characters in whatever work you're doing would be most helpful. This is especially true for Sythyry, since the best ways of describing the people (Orren = otter, Rath'ani = raccoon, etc.) would not be natural for the narrator and are artificial when supplied by the "editor".

Well, description isn't my strong point. I do try to
describe people and places better in fiction -- it flows
more naturally in third-persion fiction for me in any case.
Illustration would be good if I could manage it.

But I sincerely hope that you find the time and energy to
pursue publishing. You have a gift for writing about
anything, and your creations with WorldTree are vivid and
genuine. I think of Sythyry as a person, and a person
distinct from Bard Bloom. Zie just happens to be a person
who doesn't live on Earth and who thinks I'm a
monster. Well, hey, everyone's got their differences. :)
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: You are very very very
good and you deserve a wider audience than you currently
have.

I hope you know Sythyry isn't me! But I'm glad you think of
zir as a person. Zie does return the favor, in that zie
doesn't think you and Esory are at all the same person.

And thanks very much for the vote of confidence. Let's see
if the editors think the same of it.

[rowyn]

But the connection to the RPG is quite solid. I don't know
that I could hide it at this point, even if I wanted to. To
an editor's casual eye, looking for some reason to reject it
quickly, the gaming connection -- or the furry connection --
could be sufficient reason and then some

I am not well-versed in the business, but I suspect the gaming connection would not be obvious to an editor unless you chose to mention it. An example:

Several years ago, a new TV series came out -- "Vampires 90210" or something like that. It was a big Aaron Spelling drama production about vampires, wiht lots of politics, romance, and bloodsucking in it. It was a lot like "Melrose Place" with slightly nicer and more likeable characters.

Anyway, it wasn't just about generic "vampires". It was about White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade vampires. It was OBVIOUSlY about these vampires. No effort was made to hide the connection: they came in clans, with Gangrel that lived out in the woods and turned into wolves, and violent street-ganger Brujah and power-brokering Ventrue, and they used all the names and terminology that White Wolf coined.

The one thing the series did not do, however, was mention White Wolf. Or the game. Anywhere. Not in a tie-in, not in a footnote in the credits, not in the magazine promos. As far as I know, there wa no official acknowledgement of the connection whatsoever. For all I know, the show didn't even get White Wolf's approval and the reason it folded was lawsuits rather than bad ratings.

But regardless of the reason, my point is that this was a big-ticket production with lots of people involved and nation-wide network TV audience waiting for it, based on one of the most successful RPGs out there. And they didn't see fit to acknowledge a connection between the two.

If you submit a WorldTree manuscript to a publisher without a cover letter stating "Based on the WorldTree RPG setting", then I will lay odds that the editor will not look at it thinking "gaming fiction".

Even if you mention it in the cover letter, but carefully -- say, for example: "My writing credits include WorldTree, a work I co-authored with my wife and published by PadWolf Press. This novel is based in the same setting" -- then, again, I doubt the editor is going to assume "gaming fiction". OK, maybe he'll Google "WorldTree". But I'd expect him to read the first page or two of the manuscript and decide whether or not he likes it based on that, before bothering to do any research on you.

And whether or not it can slide under the radar of an editor as "not gaming fiction", it can certainly go into bookstores without being marketed as a gaming tie-in. The question is "Do you want it to be tied to the RPG sourcebook?"