The original version of Phantoms was written in 1983. I’ve read plenty of Koontz’ books, but the real fan when I was growing up was my sister, who read a ton of them. I’ve been challenged to write horror elements into a book and I’ve been doing research, including reading horror-esque books, in preparation.
Lots of people say Phantoms is the scariest book that Koontz ever wrote. He says he writes suspense, not horror, but this came highly recommended.
Sorry, I didn’t really like it. Here’s why.
I haven’t done this a lot, not sure how much I will in the future, but recently, I decided to get through the huge backlog of books that I’ve had sitting around. Mostly, that’s been done by cutting the majority of social media out of my life because it’s just crap, so I went back to reading for a couple of hours a day instead of staring at a screen. Best decision I’ve made recently. So I’ve made it through a bunch of books in the last couple of weeks, but this time, I wanted to talk about Starter Villain, a 2023 novel by John Scalzi. Was it any good? Let’s find out.
Over the past couple of days, I’ve watched a bunch of writing videos on YouTube and I’ve started to realize something. It’s probably nothing new and I should have recognized it before, but the people who put out the most videos on writing are also the people who, in general, have written the fewest books.
Seriously, why bother?
I just caught a video from Film Threat on AI and the death of Hollywood and while I usually like what Chris Gore has to say, this time I disagree. Granted, he depends on the survival of Hollywood for his livelihood and he doesn’t want things to change, but I’m not at all like that.
Let Hollywood die!
See you below the fold.
I just got done with a long discussion with a young person on Facebook in a writing group. They were claiming that writing is automatically against any young writer. Why? Because they weren’t instantly successful with their very first book with absolutely no effort on their part. Therefore, it’s all a conspiracy!
It’s really sad that I have to explain this stuff, but I do.
I was at Orcoexpo yesterday and beyond having a lot of fun and spending way too much money, I got to talk to some of my dealer friends that I haven’t seen for a while. As I was poking through their boxes, there was a guy sitting next to me who said he only collects used stamps and saw that I was only pulling mint.
So we talked about it.
This tends to confuse a lot of people, especially beginners so let me give you a couple of pointers on producing a book that will possibly sell, since there are no guarantees. None of these steps are easy or quick. Prepare yourself for that. If you actually want to sell a book, instead of just stroking your own ego, strap in for the long haul because that’s what it’s going to take.
I know I’ve said it before, but then, you watch a video and it becomes obvious once again. I happened to catch a video on YouTube today. It was a nice video about going to a woodworking show, so I figured, why not?
Then, I figured out why not. See you below the line.
This showed up on my Facebook feed today, some idiot whining that editors were contacting her, but she was poor and she didn’t want to be bothered and people need to respect her financial situation because she can’t afford to do anything!
Yes, nobody should contact you out of the blue without your consent, I agree there. Those tend to be scams. However, the idea that you shouldn’t actually have to do anything because you’re “poor” is stupid. So let’s talk about it a bit.
I’m coming to the conclusion that stamp collecting will never appeal to most young people. I keep running into this time and time again. They can’t imagine doing anything that isn’t all about money.
That’s not philately. Never has been and never will be. That’s why the young are largely not going to be interested because collecting isn’t about money, it’s about enjoyment.
