Some might wonder what took me so long to get “The Sniper” onto the Based Book Sale roster. Well, as with every deficiency in my biography it comes down to laziness and poor planning. But at long last the stars have aligned and it’s full speed ahead.
The Based Book Sale starts Wednesday, September 9, 2026, 12:00 AM PDT and runs through Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 12:00 AM PDT. “The Sniper” will be a linked free promotion on Amazon from September 9th to September 13th. Afterwards it will be available as a $0.99 e-book purchase there until the end of the Based Book Sale. After that it will revert to the $4.99 e-book price. The paperback will maintain its current $9.99 price throughout.
Even for folks who already have “The Sniper” there will be lots of other quality non-woke stories to get free or at a really good price.
I watched a YouTube video about fiction writing. The premise of the video was that trying to learn how to write by the commonly accepted method of just writing a bunch of stuff and seeing if it’s any good is a hopeless effort. He distinguishes two versions of learning; the “kind environment” and the “wicked environment.” The kind environment is what we would call normal learning. So, if you wanted to learn carpentry or to play the guitar, you would study objective instructions on learning progressively more and more difficult skills in the field while receiving continuous feedback on your mistakes through a teacher or some objective test of your results.
He compares this to learning to write which he says is one of the worst cases of a wicked environment. Basically, you bang out a book on your own without knowing anything about the objective rules of what is good and bad and so your work has a thousand defects that you can’t even recognize. The only feedback happens after you work on a book for months and years. And trying to find objective criticism is extremely difficult. So it’s very difficult to improve.
As an example of the advice given by writers, he mentions Stephen King’s advice that writers should write a thousand words a day. But King also states explicitly that writing is a talent that cannot be learned but is inherent in an individual. You either have it or you don’t.
Now the video maker is someone who sells a program on how to become a writer. So, his point is that what new authors need is to have constant feedback from an objective judge on whether what they are producing is good or bad. He states that before you write a novel you have to first learn how to write a sentence, then a paragraph, then a scene and then a chapter. I guess that does sort of make sense. But I wonder how much it costs to become an author in his school? Well, I see his point about learning to write. It does seem that most of us haven’t gotten an objective teacher to tell us what’s good and not so good in our writing. Oh well.
But this guy has lots of other information on his YouTube channel and actually I found some things that are helpful. He is a big believer in free book promotions as a way to expand audience and advertise its presence to the larger reading audience. So, there are two promo strategies I’m lining up. The Based Book Sale is having a sci-fi sale in September that I hope to participate in and I also plan to set up a promotion on a site called Freebooksy that has hundreds of thousands of readers looking for a free read. Between these two efforts I hope to be able to distribute around a thousand copies of the book and that should be a large enough sample size to figure out whether the book is popular.
Well currently my book has sold a little more than four hundred copies. I guess that’s not so bad but I do hope to see an increase in sales month over month so I want to give it a boost this fall. Now as far as Stephen King’s statement that writing literature is an innate talent that can’t be learned, I guess I’m of two minds. I’m sure there are people who don’t have an inner ear for good writing and probably won’t ever write anything very entertaining. But I also think that training yourself to put together a good scene or an interesting plot line will greatly improve the quality of your books.
(Editor’s note: The Fat Man has an interest in foreign literature (classical and modern) and asked that I put up this link to a translation site that also provides interlinear translations for those studying languages.
What is the perfect length for a story? Well, I’m sure there is no agreement in the world on that. And I must confess I have enjoyed books that go over a thousand pages (counting the “Lord of the Rings” as one story) and short stories that barely cover a handful of pages.
But I have an opinion and since I get to throw it out onto the internet for as long as I can pay for my hosting costs, I feel I should elaborate. After all, I have to write my five hundred words tonight. Although that length is hardly a perfect length for a work.
I believe that between 10,000 and 35,000 words is the sweet spot for telling a story. I think that’s somewhere between a long short-story and a good-sized novella. So, I’ve rejected the majority of modern novels and definitely all of the thousand-page potboilers that have been in fashion for the last few decades. And look, that rejects the “Lord of the Rings!” Well, hear me out.
I think long books are by nature composite creations. They consist of a bunch of chapters strung together to get our hero from Point A to Point B. And in my opinion each chapter (or at most a few chapters together) is a separate story. This is like a play or a movie having multiple acts or scenes. You string those together and you tell a larger story. But usually in a movie or a play there is a climactic scene when all of the emotional power of the story is unleashed. If the writer is exceptionally skilled, he can drag out the emotional interest from the beginning of the story until this climax. But no matter how well-written the longer story is it doesn’t have the same impact as a shorter work that can be digested in one sitting. Even a long movie has the danger that it can overtax the watcher’s attention and patience.
I think that if I kept my work within that 10,000-35,000-word range I could make the maximum impact on the reader. Of course, 10,000 is really close to the minimum that can result in a rich word-picture. But I think if an author works carefully to paint a vivid sketch of a scene even the 10,000 should yield a memorable story.
Of course, I am painfully aware that the commercial market for shorter fiction is essentially nil. I was reading recently that science fiction short story magazines and collections don’t sell at all. So that guarantees that authors will continue to pump out door-stops. And honestly, the longer episodic genre books are perfectly enjoyable just as they are. But in my opinion the true masterpieces of writing are a shorter type of story that weaves a tapestry in front of the reader’s mind in a unified effect that goes from beginning to end in a single story arc that satisfies the reader’s interest in the subject and provides a legitimate conclusion to the story.
I was just reading about the second serious scandal concerning AI generated fiction being published by experts in the world of publishing. In the last scandal Hatchette bought a self-published book because the author managed to attract a very large number of readers on her own. After they republished the book, it was discovered that there was a lot of very obvious AI generated content in it.
In the present scandal a prestigious contest that accepts fiction from amateurs living in the countries of the British Commonwealth had three of the five winners flagged by readers as being AI generated by a capable software used for this function.
Here’s a sample of the text:
“Wilfred’s rum-shop leaned into the road like a rotten tooth. Inside, boards blackened by smoke and sweat, the air sweet with cane and forgetting. Coins meant for rice or kerosene slid across the counter and came back white rum hot as apology. One drink opened the chest, two turned fear into courage’s cheap cousin, three steadied the hand enough to write the future in invisible ink.”
Okay, what the hell does “white rum hot as apology” mean? It doesn’t mean anything. It’s AI slop that it thinks sounds “poetic.”
Now five “Experts” picked this gibberish and declared it worthy of a prestigious award. Why? Well, the only thing I notice that both scandals include are woke publishing “experts” selecting the work of minority writers without bothering to see if it’s any good or even written by human beings.
The most hilarious aspect of the latest scandal is that the contest judges refuse to admit that they’ve been made to look like fools and the stories are still up on their site as the winners.
I watched a YouTube video by a young woman who considers herself a seasoned editor and although she agrees that the text is extremely unlikely not to be AI slop she does add the obligatory warning that we should remember that minority writers must not be singled out as more highly suspect just because they always seem to be the ones whose work slips through the editors who are afraid of being called racists if they look too closely at their work and find it’s not very good.
I guess it’s not enough that the publishing world gives precedence to any writer who isn’t a straight white man. Now they add robots as long as they’re not straight white male robots or at least not working under one of their names. Well, be that as it may, today I officially began work on the sequel to my book. I began the outline by writing out a bunch of plot lines to choose between.
Plot Threads
Update on Bogey and his life
Update on Grace and her boys
President Chastain’s crises
Constitutional Convention
Seceding States
Potential Military Insurrection
Personal Problems (health)
Relations with Connors’ Group
Connors’ crises
Disaffected Groups with His Organization
Relations with federal and state officials
Connors’ indecision and doubts
Disagreements with Cutter and others
Personal Problems (Grace, Bogey)
America’s Crisis of Instability
World’s Crisis of Instability
Technical Instability
So that’s a lot of stuff. I’m not sure all of these will be included but it’s always best to start with the kitchen sink and pare it back. Well, take that Chat GPT.
So, I wrote that review last night about “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.” And afterwards, I was surprised at just how negative my review was. I went to great lengths to stress that I thought it was a well written story. But I couldn’t disguise how little I liked the reading experience. I characterized the problem as being a matter of story type. It was an extreme example of dystopia where all the characters reflected a dismal outlook and nothing happy or positive intruded on the gloom.
And that got me thinking. Maybe my dislike of this genre was short-sighted. Possibly I was shutting myself off from treasures that lurked around every corner. And in agreement with that idea, I remembered how I had never been able to get myself to finish 1984. I skimmed through it several times but always got bogged down by just how depressing and irritating I found all the characters and plot.
So apparently, I am a literary lightweight. My guess is that I read fiction for enjoyment. And apparently, I don’t enjoy being depressed. That must explain why I gravitate toward action/adventure and scientific razzmatazz. I like reading stories where things happen and even if the bad guys are winning the good guys don’t roll over and play dead. Even better, I like it when the good guys are also the smart guys and win in the end. But either way I want there to be someone I can empathize with. And no one can empathize with someone whose highest aspiration is to own a sheep (living or mechanical) and have it live on the roof of his apartment building. PKD’s world is made up of mental cases of one type or another and while you may pity some crazy people, they’re really no fun to read about. Unless they’re somehow funny. And these people weren’t.
Maybe that makes me shallow but that’s where I stand. If I was writing 1984, I’d have an underground that did more than just exist as a shadow. I’d have them organize and expand and then one day rampage through the politburo and have Big Brother’s head nailed to the highest flag pole in the capitol. Or even if they fail, I’d have them go down fighting, not meekly cower under their beds waiting for the thought police to drag them off to the dungeon.
But I do wonder whether that puts me in the majority or the minority. Possibly I’m in the majority among my age group but in the minority among the current cohort of readers. So, I’m very interested in how the rest of you out there come down on this question. Are dystopias fun or not? And I’m talking about the real dreary, hopeless worlds. No shreds of joy or hope. Just misery and dysfunction as far as the eye can see. Tell me what you think and list a few examples of the various levels of joyless horror and how you would characterize the experience.
So, I had so much fun comparing the book and movie for “The Thin Man” that I to read Chandler’s “The Big Sleep” so that I could compare it to its movie too. And once again I’m reading it from the Library of America edition that I already have. The book came out in 1939 and the movie in 1946. The pre-war and post war difference probably is significant. But we’ll just leave that alone.
And let me state for the record that this review is full of spoilers.
First off, I’ll state for the record that although I’ve always enjoyed the movie immensely, I found the book much more interesting and satisfying as a story. The biggest difference between the book and movie is the characterization of the Sternwood daughters Vivian and Carmen. In the movie the role of Vivian is a mostly sympathetic character who becomes the love interest for the Marlowe character. But in the book, she is almost as reckless as her unbalanced sister Carmen. And whereas in the movie Carmen is an exhibitionistic spoiled woman-child in the book she is truly psychotic.
And allowing the Sternwood daughters to be pathological individuals they are, simplifies the details of the story that in the movie have to be sanitized in order to fit the Hays Code. So, we can be told that Geiger’s “book store” lent out pornography to its customers and Carmen was being photographed naked by Geiger at the time when the Sternwood chauffer came in and killed Geiger and stole the exposed film of Carmen. And so on with other parts of the story that don’t make sense in the movie because the seediness of the plot elements prevented their being openly stated instead of subtly implied. So, we don’t have an explicit statement that Eddie Mars is not only aware of Geiger’s racket but also uses it to blackmail customers.
But the biggest difference between the two versions of the story is the disappearance of Rusty Regan (called Sean Regan in the film). At the end of the movie Eddie Mars claims he saw Carmen kill Regan. But because Mars didn’t even know what Carmen looked like Marlowe seems to reject this version of the facts. This leads the audience to believe that Mars had Regan killed by Canino out of jealousy over Mars’ wife’s relationship with Regan. But in the movie Marlowe suspects Carmen of the murder and he tests the theory. After he had rejected Carmen’s sexual advances one night, the next day he tests her sanity. He returns her pistol and tells her it’s loaded and she asks for him to teach her how to shoot. After leading Marlowe to a secluded location, she uses the opportunity and angrily fires all six shots at him. Of course, he had the gun loaded with blanks and after disarming her she goes into an epileptic fit. And after bringing Carmen back to the house to receive medical attention Marlowe tells Vivian that he knows that Carmen must have murdered her husband after a similar refusal by Regan to sleep with her. And Vivian admits to the truth of the killing.
I find this a much more satisfactory ending. We’ve been shown the Sternwoods as a very sinister and dysfunctional clan and the idea that Vivian is somehow a sympathetic or admirable individual despite all the evidence to the contrary just rings false. Chandler’s story is a grim tale that lacks the happy ending of the Hollywood movie that pairs Bogart and Bacall as a romantic couple. But it’s a better ending and in my opinion much more satisfying.
So today I reached the two hundred book milestone. One hundred fifty-three e-books and forty-seven paperback copies. Camera Girl and I celebrated with a bowl of ice cream each. And today I also got my first one-star review. The reader was upset because he didn’t know it was a science fiction story. And I can understand his anger. When I selected the categories for the book the first one, I listed was science fiction. But Amazon rejected this as a false description and deleted this category for the book. And so, Amazon is responsible for the single one-star review I’ve received so far. Well, the world is a complicated place and I guess nothing human is ever free from unexpected consequences.
But, all in all, it’s been an interesting experience. It seems Amazon has created an opportunity for anyone to create a book and it even makes it possible to try and find an audience for that book in the enormous marketplace they have created on their platform. And to the extent that I’ve found some readers I can appreciate how this is an improvement over what there was before. And in my particular case it changes the situation from an impossibility to a difficult one. And by that, I mean I could never have found a publisher (other than a vanity press) that would accept my story because of the right-leaning slant of my story. After all I pretty clearly demonize Antifa in this story and that would never get past the editors and sensitivity readers employed by the “Big Five” publishing houses (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan). So, I think the present set-up is an improvement for someone like me. But that doesn’t mean finding an audience is easy. It’s not. It’s tricky and slow and expensive and the skill-set has absolutely nothing to do with being a writer.
The next big milestone will be when I put it on Kindle Unlimited. But since this requires the story to be on Amazon exclusively for three months I’m waiting until I finish putting the story up on Royal Road. I’ve been uploading it in sections (mostly a chapter a day) and I’ve got six more chapters to go, so I want to finish that first. I want to see what feedback I get once I’ve allowed the readers there to finish the story and evaluate it. After that I’ll take the story down from BookFunnel and Royal Road and see what happens with Kindle Unlimited. KU lowers the cost to start the book to essentially zero and I’m hoping that will allow a larger cross-section of the general reading population to give the book a try.
And I believe this population of readers will be significantly younger than the one I’ve been reaching up till now. Now maybe this isn’t my target audience but I think it’s important to test that hypothesis. If Kindle Unlimited doesn’t move the needle, then I know what I’ve seen so far is a good indication of what I should expect. So, let’s see what happens.
Lately there has been an enormous storm of controversy about AI being used in fiction writing. Recently it came out that a self-published story that became quite popular was subsequently picked up by a major publishing house and re-issued with the full weight and authority of this powerhouse including professional editing and a new cover. But then someone looked closely at the self-published edition and saw that not only was it significantly different from the professionally published edition but that the original was obviously a product of AI. Now, that caused a firestorm and the publisher withdrew the book permanently.
But a cloud of questions swirl around the affair. Surely the editors who revised the self-published edition must have recognized that they were dealing with a product of AI writing. Why would they have purchased this title. It’s assumed the reason was because the book had already found a ready audience and so the motive was monetary. But there are other factors. The authoress Mia Ballard is African American and Native American. In other words, in the world of intersectional identity bingo she was a three-fer! And so, she was exactly the kind of person that Hachette wanted for their imprint. But there still remained the fact that she got a bot to write her story. And that someone blew the whistle on her. Of course, she claimed that it was an editor who added the AI sections and what she had written was her own. Oh boy, that’s gonna be a bunch of lawsuits (or it’s just talk that won’t go anywhere).
Of course, the editors are defending themselves by saying that AI detection programs are far from infallible and so they aren’t to blame. But supposedly the content was pretty obviously terribly written. Of course, that really makes it interesting that the self-published book was such a hit on Goodreads with over four thousand reviews. And that would once again jibe with the idea that the “bio” of the writer was one of the big reasons the book was so popular.
The whole scandal seems to show just what a mess the publishing industry has gotten itself into with identity politics becoming the most important factor by which authors and storylines are selected by big publishing houses for their imprimatur. I guess the same problem is playing out with books that Hollywood is suffering from with their heavy-handed woke propaganda pictures. People are staying away in droves and the monetary losses have finally gotten so severe that they’ve been forced to drop most of the woke plot elements just to lure paying customers back to the theaters.
Well, now that I’ve had a taste of what it’s like to self-publish a book I can say that a large part of the satisfaction in writing a book has to be because the author enjoys his creation. Other than the one in a million phenom that finds the sweet spot in the self-publishing universe everyone else is talking to a small audience and in my opinion the only real failure is if you know that your book isn’t good enough for you yourself to read it for pleasure.
But how soon before AI slop is better than Shakespeare? Ay, there’s the rub.
So, I put a chapter of “The Sniper” up on Royal Road about a week ago. And shortly afterward I received a rejection from them because the story was also on Amazon and this website (OCF) and I had to prove to them that both those copies belonged to me. They wanted me to add in my Amazon Jake Barter author page that I was putting the story up on Royal Road. So, I had to figure out how to do that and whether this would cause a bad reaction by Amazon. After all, Amazon sells my book for money and Royal Road lets people read it for free. Well, the day before yesterday I tried putting up the statement about Royal Road but the author page rejected the edit. It turns out that I couldn’t use Royal Road’s actual internet address on Amazon but I could just use the name of the site. And then I had to prove that OCF was my website by a similar message and then, voila! They put the first chapter of my book up on their site and so far, nine people have read it. Well, that not much. But I figure it’ll be fun to see if I can get much interest on that site.
Apparently, Gen Z frequents the site to read fan fic called “Lit RPG.” Now, my book is neither fan fic nor Lit RPG. So, it’s not certain that I will find an audience there. But I’m interested in testing the waters. I also put it up at BookFunnel and the good folks over at Whatfinger were kind enough to put up a link to that site and I got 14 e-mail addresses of people who downloaded the book there. So, a little at a time I’m getting more visibility for the book. I’m at 187 sales on Amazon and I’ve accumulated 34 ratings and 29 reviews with a cumulative rating of 4.7 and some very nice reviews that were definitely encouraging.
Once the experiments on Royal Road and BookFunnel have run their course I intend to put the book on KDP Select which requires the book to be exclusively on Amazon for at least 90 days. Supposedly the low-cost barrier to reading on this program will attract the maximum number of “eyeballs” to the story and I’m very curious to see how that effects sales. And I’m not particularly hoping to make a lot more money that way but rather I’m hoping for much more exposure.
So, the great book publishing experiment grinds on. My hopes for international fortune and fame have been dashed on the sharp rocks of harsh reality. My dream of movie studio executives battling each other in front of the Compound to see whose blockbuster offer would land the movie rights to this timeless masterpiece has gone up in smoke. At this point I’m negotiating with the Dunwich Middle School to have the sixth grade put on a one act play version of Chapter 1. Is this how Heinlein got started? How, the mighty hath fallen.
