Category: Reader Group Archive

A Season of Intentionality

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Happy New Year!

As has been my pattern for the past few years, I like to share a yearly theme that doesn’t have a fail state like a New Year’s Resolution.  So no specific “do X by Y date” type of stuff.  It’s more mindset and behavior based.  And even the timeline is not annual, it can be a season that’s shorter or longer than 365 days.

This season, I’m going with intentionality.  Personally, that means specifically making time for friends and family.  With my writing pursuits, that means to keep outputting words on the page.  And also getting new stuff released into the world.

To be intentional about sharing the epic Players of the Game saga with all of you. 

I’ll talk more about that in the works in progress section.
Players of the Game Works in Progress
As part of the intentionality theme for this year, I have both the Breakers and the Repenter Collection in the hopper.

The Repenter Collection is an e-book bargain boxed set that collects Book 1: Repenter, Book 1.5: The Hidden Chapters, Book 2: The Brigands, and Book 2.5: The Favor.  My graphic designer just gave me the cover components, and I’m hoping to get it released in the first half of 2025.

The Breakers will come out after that in both e-book and print.

With the Secret Fronts work in progress, I’m up to page 211 with 59,600 words.  Which makes it 23 pages and 6900 words since the last newsletter from a few weeks back.

It’s a shorter time frame on this round, but I’ll still aim to up the productivity for the next month.

The key is to keep moving.  So I shall.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Goodspeed:  “I’m in. But my reason for agreeing to this is not high minded. I don’t actually want to win so much as I want my grandfather to lose. The Game. And everything else. That’s what I want more than victory. More than a lot of things.”
Recommendation Corner
Mercy of Gods: Captives War, Book 1 by James S.A. Corey

The pair of Expanse authors have released a new sci-fi series under their Corey pen name. 

This time, it’s about a humanity that’s on an alien planet with a separate set of biological natives, but they’ve been there for thousands of years and they don’t know how they got there.

That ends up being more of a longer term mystery, because they are soon ruthlessly conquered by an empire led by giant sort of crab, sort of centipede aliens.  And in a pithy comment by one of the POV characters: “They are all assholes.”

Dafyd Alkhor is the main character of the ensemble that gets shanghaied to the alien homeworld, and he spends much of the book trying to figure out how their new alien overlords think.

The authors make a smart move with bridge sections that talk about how the aliens are ultimately brought low.  I generally don’t like “we’re stuck in prison” plot lines, so that explicit foreshadowing helped keep me engaged with the rest of the compelling story.

But humans are nowhere near that victorious outcome just yet. 

Humanity is thoroughly humbled throughout the book.  Dafyd and his brilliant scientist colleagues are tasked with figuring out how to make food edible from one alien flora to another alien fauna.  All while other competitor captive species try to sabotage them.  And the opposing side of the aliens’ war reveals itself in an invasive parasitic form.

Jefferson Mays does another fantastic job of performing the characters and narrating the story.

Good stuff.

Nosferatu (2024)

Robert Eggers’s take on the century-old, Weimar Republic-era silent film is incredibly well shot.

The movie riffs on the Dracula story with a lot of differences with Count Orlok played by with unearthly menace by Bill Skarsgard.  Including his epic mustache, that is a visual but cool departure from the completely hairless original version.

The movie’s use of shadows is really striking.  And all of the actors do a great job.  I’ll call out the doctor character played with understated grim pragmatism by Ralph Ineson.  Anyone who’s played Diablo 4 will also recognize him as the voice of Lorath.  Which was a cool bonus.

This movie really makes the vampire seem more like an animated corpse than an urbane killer.  And his influence on the town upon his arrival is depicted as a plague smashing through town.

The sound of him gulping down blood is just unsettling.

The climax also makes a cool twist to the typical “exploit a vampire’s weakness” solution. I’m not the biggest horror fan, but this was absolutely worth seeing.  Especially if you like creepy cinema.
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

Click here to view the original format.

James McGowan Reader Group- Unexpected Upgrades

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Hey hey!

This has been a month-and-a-half of some technological and project pivoting on my part.

I upgraded my laptop.  I really like the feel of the new keyboard.  My prior computer actually had a pretty decent one, but this new machine is an upgrade I didn’t know I needed.  It’s a Sager in case you’re wondering.

I’m a person who customizes all kinds of stuff on new devices.  Very few out-of-the-box defaults for me.  Adjusting everything to my preferred specifications took a few days.

Plus I just discovered Libre Writer.  It’s an open source word processing program that can save .docx files.  It’s totally up my alley.  Fantastic for writing first drafts before they get moved into Scrivener, ProWritingAid, and Atticus for the next drafts.  But Libre Office too required a goodly number of configuring steps on my part.

Then I encountered a sudden need to type up a wiki document for the Players of the Game series for an editor who will be working with me on the Game War.  I churned out 73 pages or 23,500 words in a marathon session of about a week and a half, ran it through PWA, and sent it on its merry way.
 
I’ll be making some updates to the wiki and sharing a good deal of that content on my website and possibly Wikipedia down the road.

All good changes.  But they do result in pushing other projects later than expected. 

Such as monthly blog entries.
Players of the Game Works in Progress
Wuf.  I mentioned above that other projects got pushed aside with my new writing gear adjustments and the sudden wiki project.

That definitely hit Secret Fronts’ productivity.  I’m at 188 pages with 52,700 words.  Which makes it 33 pages and 9200 words for the month.

BUT.  I also wrote 73 pages with 23,500 words in that Wiki.  So I was not slouching with the writing.

I’m guessing this coming month will also be lower with Secret Fronts’ word count, as I plan to have the next newsletter out shortly after New Year’s Day, so that’s fewer days between this one and that one.

I’m definitely not worried.  I’m writing.  Just not all with the latest POTG work in progress.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Nadia: “I swear I’m going to slap you if you keep invoking luck, Inventor.”
Recommendation Corner
Conclave

I think this smaller run movie is out of theaters, but I saw it last month, and I highly recommend it.

It surrounds the election of a new pope with a whole lot of infighting and political maneuvering.

Ralph Fiennes’s cardinal character is really compelling as a man who doesn’t aspire to the papacy and just wants the conclave to make the right choice.

His speech about the dangers of certainty really felt prescient to me.

This movie might rankle some folks with some of its plot twists, but I’m a Catholic, and I took no offense to it.

Either way, give it a watch on a streamer whenever it shows up if you’re in the mood for a tense drama for grownups.

Eversion by Alistair Reynolds

This was an interesting sci-fi novel that initially pretends to be a historical exploration adventure.

Dr. Silas Coade is on an 18th century ship exploring a remote icy passage once trod by another ship.  Writing novels in his spare time and dealing with opiate addictions.
 
Or is it on a steamship a century later?  Or aboard a dirigible journeying into a hollow earth?

Events seem to be looping.  Something to do with eversion, the geometric term for turning a sphere inside out.  And the doctor knows something is off.  But he’s not the only one.

The narrator on the audio book, Harry Myers, does a fantastic job as well.

Give it a try if you’re looking for something a bit mind bendy.
Promo Corner
Smashwords is running another sale.  And the Players of the Game series is part of it. 

My books are between 75% to 100% off and are available as part of a promotion on Smashwords through January 1 as part of their 2024 End of Year Sale.

This is a chance to get my books, along with books from many other great authors.

You will find the promo here and on the image above:
https://www.smashwords.com/she…

Feel free to share this promo with friends and family.

Happy reading!
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

Click here to view the original format.

James McGowan Reader Group- Need an Escape?

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Hey, hey!

Stressed about various world and/or national events over which you have little control?

Me too.

But I have a mental oasis that helps me.  Creating and expanding the Players of the Game series.

And I have a few cool items to perhaps help you as well.

First up, take a look above on the an epic rendering of Ashe Stelfire facing off against Svithe.
And Check Out the The Brigands to Witness the Ashe and Svithe’s Battle
Get The Brigands
Players of the Game Works in Progress
I was talking to some friends the other day, and I mentioned the latest stats of my work-in-progress bonus novella.  They kindly observed that this has crossed the threshold into bonus novel territory.

I can’t deny it.  I’m currently on page 155 with 43,500 words with Secret Fronts.  That’s around 43 pages and 11,900 words for this month.

Yes, this is definitely a bonus novel.  I’m maybe 45%-55% finished with it too.  The first parts deal with some disturbing hidden history in hidden worlds.  And the later parts will deal with the fallout from the events of The Game War.

Onward!
Recommendation Corner
Bicentennial Summer by Chris Poore.

Full disclosure: Chris is an indie writer friend of mine, so I fully admit that I’m biased.  I also don’t generally read in the nostalgia teenage drama genre.  I’m much more of a sci-fi, fantasy, or thriller reader.

But I liked his debut novel, Bicentennial Summer.  It features the main character, Cole, navigating through a tough couple of weeks leading up to 4th of July 1976.

Helping his friend deal with the death of his father, friction with a new kid in town who engages in a love triangle with Cole’s childhood friend, and dealing with the shady behavior of several adults in his small Nebraska town.

It made me immensely glad I left that stuff behind in my teenage years.  But either way, the story is a compelling yarn. 

Give it a read.

Babs by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows

I recently read through the first three issues of this series from Ahoy Comics.

It hooked me with a cursed ghost knight accidentally creeping on Babs while she was taking a bath in a pond.  And the ghost knight’s ghost girlfriend/co-worker mercilessly teases him for it.  All while they ask Babs for directions to the kingdom they’re supposed to haunt.

It’s a fun parody of a Conan Hyperborean world with a Red Sonja analogue main character who’s adept at killing and raiding.  But crap at everything else.

Some of the satire is a bit on the nose with a literal troll character who acts like an incel internet troll.  But it’s still enjoyable.

Her talking sword that bickers with her, and whines in pain when she uses it, is another stand out funny bit.

Give it a look.
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

Click here to view the original format.

Faux Praise from Faux Hosts of a Faux Podcast

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Hey there!

AI news and new services are inescapable these days. 

Scary stuff like deep fakes attempting to sow disinformation.  Anxiety with the implications of fast generated art and writing.  And uncanny interesting things.

I’ll be talking about the last one.

Google recently launched a new service called Notebook LM.  Authors or other users can upload stuff from Google docs or PDFs into a local/private instance.  You can do it with anything like emails or even bank statements.  I, of course, loaded up the PDFs of my three novels and three bonus content novellas.

You can then ask it questions about the aggregated content.  And it will come back with something that’s kinda right some of the time. 

It’s experimental and it shows.  Here’s an excerpt example when I asked it to give me a list of named characters from the series:

“Svithe: A mysterious peddler who deals in rare and valuable items. He is shrouded in secrecy, his true face concealed by bandages. He possesses extensive knowledge of Trojis’s history and political landscape, and often uses his knowledge to manipulate events to his advantage. As revealed in our conversation, Svithe is a guise of Corsis, a powerful, god-like being who orchestrates events for his own amusement.”

Not bad.  It doesn’t mention Sufrinzon.  But it’s decent.

“Avril: A skilled warrior and the daughter of Iuar and Zirva. She is introduced alongside Svithe at the docks. She is fiercely independent and possesses a strong moral compass.”

Misspellings abound, and Avril is introduced well before she meets Svithe.

“Gnorok: A red-skinned Merfenar (a race in Trojis) who is initially partnered with Rasphir and Runanker. He is interested in acquiring the “Ruul Kand,” a powerful artifact hidden by Uraulings.”

The misspellings completely screw this one up along with confabulations like Merfenar instead of Murdrake.

Yes, definitely not ready for prime time.  Very fascinating, even at this nascent stage.  However, there’s something that’s even more interesting.

A podcast summary hosted by two incredibly realistic-sounding AI hosts. If you want to give it a listen, the link is below.  It lasts about 10 minutes.  PLEASE NOTE: You’ll need to log into a Google account to listen to it.  Also, I might be having it try another iteration by October 18, 2024, so the link might be broken if you listen after that.
Check Out the AI Podcast if you have a Google account
I have a fact check commentary in the post below. But here are my big picture thoughts. 

You know that scene in Billy Madison where he completely BS’s his way through an oral test asking about the Industrial Revolution?

“The industry, my friends.  That was the revolution.”

And the moderator’s response: “I award you no points.  And may God have mercy on your soul.”

I kinda feel like that.  It deemed the heroes of the second book as the villains.  Epic fail.  And much of the praise was generic “what does it mean to be human” stuff that you could say about just about any story.

But I can’t award it no points.  The quality of the back-and-forth with the hosts, and some of the stuff it got right like the kliosts.

This is something that might be able to help out a lot of people writing large projects.  Not yet.  But it might.  I’ll be most interested to see where it is in a year or two.
Players of the Game Works in Progress
I’ve got a good flow going with Secret Fronts.  I’m up to page 112 with 31,600 words.  So that’s 41 pages with 12,000 words this month. 

I had a few off weeks this past month, but I’m still happy with the progress of the first draft.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

“I should have listened to him.” The Master of the Game slapped his hand on his chair’s leather arm. “I’ll rectify that mistake. And a few others while I’m at it.”
Recommendation Corner
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2

This is the softest of recommendations.

Yes, this show is overblown.  Some of the plot lines are borderline or beyond borderline pointless.  I’m still not sure I’m sold on feisty warrior Galadriel.

But by golly.  This show did something I didn’t think was possible.  (Minor spoiler ahead.)

It got me to enjoy a story line with Tom Bombadil.  His interaction with the Stranger was cool.  As was the test that ultimately yielded him the name I wanted him to say.  And the song they sang on the season finale.  I just liked it.

I thought Sauron’s manipulation of the elf blacksmith and later coercion in crafting the dwarf and human rings was decent, but a little plodding.

But dang, that Battle of Eregion was pretty cool.  I took a look at the LOTR Appendices, and I’ll be most interested to see how they finish out the Numenor plot line and the founding of Gondor beyond it.

This show is aggressively mediocre.  But I’ll watch the next season.

Unicorn Overlord

Oh, my.  I love this game.

An anime-style Ogre Battle homage.  Shut up and take my money.

It has squad based real-time movements with battles that occur based on the squad formation.  Promoting units.  Expanding the squads.  Liberating a continent town-by-town.  It is sublime.

It’s not completely perfect.  The writing is a little generic and the lack of an unhinged howl for the werewolf characters is a gargantuan missed opportunity.  But these are minor quibbles.

This is one of my favorite games of the 21st century.  It’s right up there with Symphony of War from a few years ago.

So fun!
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

Click here to view the original format.

An AI Podcast of the POTG Series with My Commentary

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Hi, all.

This is a rare website-only post on October 6, 2024. I’m mentioning the date, because there’s a decent chance the link below will be broken after a few weeks. I’ll likely update the podcast again sometime later this month, and I doubt the link will work following that. Or it might be talking about different things if the link keeps working as I iterate the podcast. Either way, it might be nothing or it might differ from my commentary.

In this brief window, I’m sharing an AI podcast from Goggle’s Notebook LM that talks about parts of my six books (three main, three bonus content) that are publicly available, which you can see on the sidebar. A bunch of fact checks on the confabulations of the two synthetic hosts does not make for compelling reading on a newsletter, and perhaps not in a straight blog post. But this experimental AI service is incredibly interesting to me. And I’m betting others may find it interesting too.

PLEASE NOTE: You must login to a Google account to listen to this recording.

Click or tap here to listen to the AI podcast.

And here’s my commentary on the artificial discussion. I’ll also have another newsletter entry above where I discuss it further in a day or two, which will summarize my thoughts and the general uncanny vibe, even if the link no longer works if you’re looking at this later in the future.

Minute 0:

False: The POTG series has no prophecies.

False: No summoning the dead with pyromancy. That’s necromancy with Durduun’s cultists and the struggle to possess the Mosul Flute, not Ashe.

Minute1:

False: Ashe doesn’t bend time. Tempes does that.

SO FALSE: The Brigands are not villains. They’re initially distrustful of each other, but they are Ashe’s allies.

Interesting: The AI hosts will insert laughter and insert verbal ticks. It’s very realistic.

Minute 2:

False: Nirva and Svithe are not part of the Brigands.

True- ish: Frulgrath is the only antagonist who was a former member of the Brigands. He’s not really a force of nature. More like a poisonous weed that keeps popping back again and again.

False: Ashe doesn’t serve Corsis

False: “No one knows all the rules.” There are multiple conversations in all three books about the Game’s rules.

Minute 3:

True ish: The kliosts emerge as a big threat in Book 2.5. Ashe and the other Brigands don’t deal much with the kliosts, though ViRauni does. This podcast version doesn’t talk at all about Ed, Harry, and the other Book 3 characters, though previous iterations of the podcast did.

Interesting: The female AI’s mumbled “exactly”. Again, that is very realistic.

True ish: Unseen force of kliosts. Sort of. It’s either airborne or imbibed. Their effects aren’t exactly visible, but they aren’t unknowable.

Interesting: Million dollar question. People do speak in cliched sayings like that.

False: The question of who’s wielding this thing in reference to the kliosts. It’s plainly Hekati, as shown extensively in Book 3.

Minute 4:

False ish: The specifics of the Game are mysterious. It’s not immediately apparent why Corsis is playing the Game. But it’s no mystery that he’s the one in control and the Rules are told in each of the main three books.

False: Another mention of Ashe using time bending. That’s Tempes.

Minute 5:

False: There are ZERO mentions of destiny in my novels. I hate that “chosen one” stuff. My characters earn their greatness.

True: I like their discussion of the Battle of the Two Cities, though they keep it vague to defending a city.

Minute 6:

True: Talk of mancy’s versatility is accurate.

False: Ashe never looks into the future. He cannot see future possibilities. Avril looks at the past and jumps through the time hole. Nirva looks in her painting to see possible futures, which might be the source of the confabulation.

False ish: Nirva is utterly lost by her obsession with her painting, which makes Avril sad. But Nirva is consumed with bringing Avril to heal. Her love for her daughter, if it exists, is utterly twisted by madness, fear, and hate.

Minute 7:

Interesting: The AI hosts mention layers. I really doubt they actually detect narrative nuances. I think that’s just verbal slop they put together through ingesting thousands of hours of people doing reviews.

Minute 8:

Interesting: The mention of “It’s still our choices that matter.” Very generic. You could literally say that about any story.

Minute 9:

Interesting: “Oh, man. That’s tough.” Again, very realistic dialogue.

Interesting: “In a world where the lines between wonder and horror are blurred… what does it even mean to be human?” Again, a generic statement you could say about any sci-fi or fantasy novel where the characters have powers.

I’ll have more thoughts above, but all-in-all, while Notebook LM clearly has some miles to go, I’ll be interested to see where those miles tread.

James McGowan Reader Group- Periodical Lament

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Hey, hey!

While I very much enjoy ebooks, video games, streaming shows, and all things electronic.  I have a soft spot for media composed of actual molecules, Blu-ray disks, actual books, and of note for this topic, magazines.

I think magazines are among the top ways to consume news on broad or niche topics.  And one of my all-time favorites suddenly ceased publication last month.

Game Informer.

I loved their in-depth articles and previews.  GI reminded me of Electronic Gaming Monthly in its early-mid 90s heydays.  Reviewers that called out good and bad games.  Long form interviews and feature articles.  The writing was also topnotch.  Accurate and articulate.

My wife, who’s not really a gamer, really loved reading Game Informer too.  It was that good.

But the writing, good though it made have been, was also on the wall. 

GameStop published GI.  And the company has been circling the drain for a decade with the ongoing transition from physical media.  The meme stock craze from a few years ago has since lost its shine on GME (their stock ticker symbol) and moved on to stupider investment opportunities.

GamesRadar makes an expensive magazine called Edge that I might try out.  But I’m still on the fence with it.  $10 an issue is a bit steep.  If anyone knows of any good video gaming newsletters or other media, please let me know.

In the meantime, let us raise a glass, or a lighter, or a phone screen in a dark room to Game Informer. 

The world may move on.  But I shall remember their excellence in niche journalism.
Players of the Game Works in Progress
I’m still working on setting up a marketing campaign and getting the cover design for The Breakers.  I’m hoping to release it before the end of the year, but the odds are probably about 50-50.

But it’ll be released soon.  Just a little less soon.

And I’m plugging away at the Hidden Fronts bonus novel.  I’ve reached page 71 with about 19,600 words.  So that’s 37 pages with around 10,650 words for this month.

Not too bad for a month ish of output.  We’ll see if I can dial it up as the months go on.

The tappity tap of words on the page/screen shall continue.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Valanis then cracked a smile that brought out a glimmer of the wry woman he knew. “Gath, dear gods. Trim that beard.”
Recommendation Corner
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

This video game is about 10 years old, but I’d never encountered it until my recent visit to my cousin. (Hey, Nick!)  He found it on a list of especially good couch co-op games.

And, oh my, is this little indie game a metric ton of fun.

You’re part of the League Of Very Empathetic Rescue Spacenauts (LOVERS).  The galactic civilization is powered by love.  But something goes awry.

The forces of Anti-Love tore through the love reactor and scattered its pieces through the cosmos.  And it’s up to the LOVERS to recover the components in their Gumball spaceship and save their imprisoned bunny, frog, kitty, and bird fellow citizens along the way.

The Gumball has a bunch of gun, shield, piloting, navigation, and super weapon stations, and your skeleton crew has to displace and operate whatever has the most pressing need.

Communication, job specializing, and improvisation are key to success.  It is a fantastic game where you and your friends fight all manner of goofy baddies while you save cute animals.

We had a blast.

Hundreds of Beavers

This slapstick black-and-white movie from 2022 is both epic and hilarious.

It’s mostly silent with grunts and hums and 1920s-style still frame dialogue boxes.

Following a rip-roaring opening drinking song with cartoon patrons, a 19th century applejack seller sees his livelihood destroyed when beavers wreck his two big vats of applejack hard cider.  He must survive in the cold and fight his way through the treacherous winter wasteland.

This sounds serious until you realize the world is basically a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon where all the rabbits, raccoons, dogs, wolves, and beavers are all guys in mascot costumes.

The quest to rebuild the main character’s life is full of goofy and over-the-top humor, but you really get a sense of progression as he claws his way back from starvation and shivering.

His interactions with a hard-nosed trader and his mischievous and amorous daughter are especially funny.

This is one of my favorite comedies of the 21st century.  It’s available on Amazon Prime for pretty cheap to rent.

Highest possible recommendation.
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

Click here to view the original format.

James McGowan Reader Group- We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Newsletter…

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Howdy!

So. I’ve had an interesting week.

My area in the middle of the US got hit by what I’ve been calling a 30-minute land hurricane. It shredded through a bunch of mature trees in my city, many of which broke a lot of power grid infrastructure. And it resulted in a whole lot of houses being without power for days. Mine included. In 90 and 100 degree F heat. With stagnant, nigh-windless air, which made opening the windows an empty gesture.

I do not subscribe.

Thankfully, while widespread, the storm didn’t knock out the majority of the city’s power. So we’ve both helped other family members and leveraged help from others. We have a pretty friendly community and neighborhood, so we’ve not had to worry about jerky behavior.

This is sadly not my first rodeo with a lengthy power outage, though the last time was 16 years earlier. My wife and I slogged through a few days reading analogue media using daylight and then nice flashlights. But we tapped out yesterday. I’m currently writing this in a hotel room, leveraging my new Nord VPN service.

I’m counting my blessings on this. It’s miles better than it could have been. We suffered no property damage. It’s not winter, where we’d have to worry about snow, freezing pipes, hypothermia, and more. And we are hopefully closer to the ending than the beginning based on the last robo call I received from the public power company, which has been most impressive in their transparency and competent management of the crisis.

It knocked out my writing productivity for several days, but I’m back at it.

And immensely grateful that I can do so in a place where disasters are met head on by many helpers.
Players of the Game Works in Progress
Despite the lack of electricity curveball from the past week, I’ve made lots of headway.

I finished the fourth draft of The Game War and sent it off to beta readers. It’s easily the most epic thing I’ve ever written with multiple POVs and some big status quo changes. It clocked in at 1102 pages with 295,240 words. Not as big as some of the Sanderson, Martin, or Jordan yarns, but definitely not a breezy read either. As I said earlier. It is epic.

I then finished outlining Secret Fronts in Scrivener and made use of Scapple to map out some longer term plot points with some of the later books.

PLUS! I’ve started the first draft of Secret Fronts in trusty plain-old Word with its infinite page-after-page of text. It remains the best way to get maximum words on the screen for me. I’m up to page 34 with 8942 words. It’s fun to get back into the saddle of first-draft creativity. It’s equal parts planning and improv.

I love it.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Gath toasted his shot glass to Nadia. “Wait till you get to the aftertaste.”
Recommendation Corner
Chosen of Chaos by Benjamin Medrano

This one is a softer recommendation, but I enjoyed it enough to call it out.

Evelyn Tarth is an ultra powerful elf warrior mage in a sci-fi fantasy setting where the characters use magic along with tech in space-faring adventures.

It kind of feels like she’s a new game + character who’s hanging around in the beginning stages of a video game. Nothing in the story challenges her. Nothing. She and her Irish-accented djinn friend swat down any who attempt to harm her.

Strangely, I didn’t get bored by it because of a few important things. Evelyn is kind when people aren’t trying to kill her. She frees a bunch of enslaved women and offers them help to get back on their feet. Some of them end up joining her crew. And there’s a lot of witty, lighthearted banter throughout that’s well-performed by the narrator, Abby Craden.

It’s breezy with low-stakes, but give it a try if you want a fun sci-fi fantasy romp.

The Ultimates by Deniz Camp and Juan Frigeri

I’m really digging this latest round of the Ultimate Universe that Jonathan Hickman set up with the Maker, a younger evil Reed Richards, who altered another reality of the Marvel universe. Preventing heroes from achieving their destinies.

The Ultimates focuses on the Avengers characters put together by that universe’s good Reed Richards, who wears the Doctor Doom mask and just goes by Doom. And a teenage Tony Stark who goes by Iron Lad.

The second issue’s focus on Captain America was poignant, especially with his learning that the US was dismantled in the 1960s by the Maker. As was a kid’s reaction. “Mom, what does that letter on his head stand for?”

Heart wrenching and compelling stuff.

The art is well done and I look forward to seeing how this alternate-reality Avengers team succeeds or fails during this run.
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

Click here to view the original format.

James McGowan Reader Group- Curses!

  By
Howdy, folks!

All of us have encountered situations where something you really didn’t want to happen comes to pass, either in the slow-motion disaster way or the out-of-nowhere way.

Stubbed toes being a prime example of the latter.
 
And there are a few ways to approach voicing your frustration with such events.  Suck it in.  Voice an edited exclamatory phrase like “darn it!”

Or you let loose with something worse involving f bombs, s bombs, other fill-in-the-blank bombs, taking names in vain, or combinations thereof.

Speaking for myself alone.  My philosophy is it’s sometimes best to not let the curse words fly if you’re at work, in a public space around strangers, or around kids.

Other times.

Other times, rightly or wrongly, I will indeed vent the curses with abandon.  It’s how I talk.  And it’s how most adults talk. 

And in fantasy and sci-fi worlds, authors will often take two different approaches.  The made up curse word route with “frak” being a notable example from the newer version of Battlestar Galactica.  “By the abyss” also being a go-to for D&D novels.

Or authors just use the actual curse words.  Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series is a good example of that.

I fall into the camp of actually using the curse words.  Even if that loses me readers who don’t like it.  It just feels more authentic to me.

More visceral.

I always drop an F bomb in the first 5-10 pages of any of my POTG novels.  I want the reader to know early on that these words exist in my series, and if that isn’t a reader’s bag, then they can pull the eject lever early on without investing too much time.

And for readers who don’t mind language amid the violence of my stories.

I’m deeply thankful that you strapped in and took the Players of the Game ride!
Players of the Game Works in Progress
Woof… 

The Windows Magnifier’s read aloud function is incredibly helpful at finding typos, grammar mistakes, and awkward sentences.  But my goodness do I wish Microsoft would use the more natural sounding voices from Outlook and Word 365 with this function. 

I will be most happy to be done with its flat monotone and mispronunciations.  ViRauni is my new favorite one.  It pronounces is as “Six-Rauni”, reading the “Vi” as a Roman numeral six. The robits are ridiculous at times.

I am nearly done with The Game War’s fourth draft ultra grammar run-through with the triple check of ProWritingAid, Google Docs, and the Magnifier Reader.  I just finished Chapter 95.  I’m hoping to finish up in a week or so with Chapters 96-109.

Then on to a spell check and sending off the draft to beta readers and the editor.

I’ll need to switch mental gears after that and start outlining Book 4.5 and possibly use Scapple to do more macro plotting with the back half of the POTG saga.

I’m looking forward to putting the pieces together.  I’d quote Schism by Tool, but I don’t plan on watching them fall away.
 
Great song, though.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

“I was planning on sending up a giant flare to signal them,” Ashe said.

Celsis scoffed out a laugh. “Along with everything else on the field of battle. My way was smarter.”

Ashe sighed. He really wanted to do that for purely childish reasons. “I guess you’re right.”
Recommendation Corner
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

It is a tragedy that this movie didn’t do better.  But they can’t unmake it.

So, HAH!   I still got to see it.

No, it wasn’t as good as Mad Max: Fury Road, but that earlier movie is a modern masterpiece.  This prequel is still a 9 or 8 out of 10 in my book.

I love the chapter format and the far more expansive timeline.  The young girl Furiosa gets far more screen time as she is unlucky enough to cross paths with Chris Hemsworth’s very un-Thor-like portrayal of Dementus.

Dementus’s motorcycle chariots, verbose monologues, and fake-it-till-you-make-it incompetence are well done.

When Anya Taylor-Joy finally shows up as the young adult Furiosa, she does a fantastic job of conveying the stoic intensity of the character.  She ably mimics Charlize Theron’s voice.  I’d put it up there with Ewan McGregor’s imitation of Alec Guinness.

Tom Holkenborg’s (aka Junkie XL’s) score music is more of the same frantic and slow burn of deep chords with fast tempos.  It totally fits the flick’s post-apocalyptic vibe.

It’d be nice if this movie finds more popularity on streaming, but if it doesn’t, c’est la vie.

I’ll still be getting the Blu-ray.

Othercide

I got this game on Steam after looking at a Reddit thread for games that are like XCOM2.

I’ll admit that it took me a little to get into after a few months’ worth of false starts.

It centers on a neo-goth steampunky world where weird monsters hunt the city streets.  And the Red Mother dispatches her many white-haired, grey-skinned clone daughters to combat them.

All of them with posh hairstyles and leather armor.

There’s lots of turn-based tactics I like.  And it has the Darkest Dungeon mechanic of perma death.  So it’s more about filling in gaps in your A and B teams with class types rather than specific characters.  But you can resurrect the daughters if you spend the resources to do so.  And you can also have the daughters absorb/consume one another to power them up. 

Not at all disturbing.

I’m having fun with the game and really dig its black, white, grey, and red color palette.
Promo Corner
Smash Words is running a month-long promo.  And all the Players of the Game books are part of it.

They’re all free for the month of July.

Tap on the image or the button below starting on July 1, or you can save the link: https://www.smashwords.com/she…

Please share this promo with friends and family. You can even forward this email to the avid readers in your life.

Check ’em out if you’re a Smashwords reader, or even if you aren’t.
Happy reading!
Smashwords July Promo
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

Click here to view the original format.

James McGowan Reader Group- Jimifying

  By
Hey hey!

I’m reasonably sure every novelist out there at least partially writes their books because they haven’t read a yarn that has the specific ingredients they crave.  A particular character, or strange place, or weird power, or whatever else, a storyteller yearns to craft something unlike the stories that have come before.

I am no different.  

I’ve always wanted to read an epic story that’s equal parts comic book visuals, high fantasy politics, space opera interpersonal relationships, and video game kinetic action.  I’ve not yet come across a story with such a combination in the wilds of Audible and various bookstores.

So I write those stories.

It’s like the ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure story, where the options are limitless.  Though it does take a considerably longer time to craft it than it does to consume it.

And to the surprise of no one, I exercise such customization in all aspects of my life.  My wife and others call it Jimifying.

Is there a chicken casserole recipe online that calls for a set group of ingredients?  Then I’ll definitely be swapping French onion soup and adding broccoli.

Is my ISP offloading my old email address to some other subpar outfit?  Well then I’m not just going to take their shoehorned solution.  I’ll make my own domain and set up my own email.  I used Hover, in case you’re wondering.  No complaints so far.

And if my 25-year old key chain finally gives out?  I used that opportunity to get a new customized black leather key chain with a Grellish Claw on it.

Along with a Boulevard bottle cap opener that’s still going strong.
Whether I intend it or not, I often end up Jimifying most things in my life.

Including artwork I commission of my story’s characters. 

As is the case with Thebes above.
Players of the Game Works in Progress
Well, The Game War’s third draft ended up being more of a full-on read through to make sure the plot is coherent throughout and adding in a lot of the chronology time stamps I put at the beginning of each chapter.  I had to include time zones this time, because the action is spread out across Jeea with events occurring simultaneously.

And the fourth draft is combines both typo hunting and making sure plot holes and character interactions are patched up.

It’s a three step process of using ProWriting Aid in a chapter on Scrivener, then pasting it into a Google doc and seeing if it can find additional grammar problems, then using the Windows + button combo to bring up the magnifier which reads the text in a stiff robot voice.

That last part is a little rough with its mispronunciation of Crystala as CRY-STALA and Celsis Kri as CHEL-SIS KREE, among many other proper nouns.  But it totally catches a lot of contextual typos that both PWA and Google Docs miss.

I’m up to Chapter 35.

Of 109.

I hadn’t been numbering the chapters in the earlier drafts because I knew that I’d need to jumble them around.  It’s epic.  But nothing worse than other similar fare in the epic sci-fi fantasy genre.

So I’m about 1/3 of the way there with the fourth draft.  I’ll export it to a Word doc following that and do a quick spell check.

Then it’s off to the editor and beta readers.

And I’ll start plotting book 4.5 after that.  Hooray!

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Ed blurred to Candice and held out a metal-clad arm. “I can’t tell. Is this cool enough to touch?”

She held a hand over it, feeling warmth, but nothing scalding. She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her head against his shoulder. “It’s divine.”
Recommendation Corner
Fallout on Amazon Prime

I’ve not actually played any of the Fallout games. They’re on my list. Just haven’t gotten to them yet.

You don’t need to have played them to enjoy the show. The retro-future 1950s backstory. The vaults. Ghouls. Knights. Pip-Boys. All of them are well explained in the show’s narrative.

Lucy, Maximus, and The Ghoul/Cooper are all well fleshed out.  Walton Goggins in particular does a fantastic job both with nose and sans nose.

And for a show about the apocalypse, it does have a lot of humor.  Especially with the characters played by Chris Parnell and Fred Armisen.

I look forward to seeing where the story goes in season 2.

Ultimate Spider-Man Volume 3 by Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto

The quick backstory: An evil version of Reed Richards called the Maker went back in time and created an alternate reality where he prevented the Marvel heroes from gaining their powers or otherwise diverting them from their heroic destinies.

Peter Parker was among those who were denied.  He grew into adulthood, married Mary Jane, and had two kids.  He’s happy, but he feels like something’s missing in his life.

Then an a younger version of Tony Stark shows up.  And gives him a vial with the altered spider that should have bitten him in it.  And he must decide whether to take the plunge.

This is one of the more interesting takes on Peter Parker I’ve seen in years.  A guy who’s going through an early-mid-life crisis.  One who has zero experience with powers, but much more experience being an adult.

I look forward to seeing where this goes.
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

James McGowan Reader Group- Just. Weird.

  By
Hey, friendly folks.

Players of the Game Book 4: The Breakers will be coming soon.  Still working on a few behind-the-scenes items with formatting and cover stuff.

But I got the back cover blurb description done.  And it was a voyage in the weird future of using AI tools.

I tried out ChatGPT with writing the back cover blurb.  It was a… process.

First, I typed up a summary of the book’s plot, which comprised a page and half of madly typed text on my part.  Then gave it parameters of how to sound: an excited marketing professional speaking to an audience of sci-fi fantasy fans.

It spit out something that I’ll describe as “neh”.

Then I gave it a prompt of pretending to be a prompt engineer and give me 10 suggestions of what else I could ask it to keep working with the information I provided it.  It gave me ten questions.

And I typed up another two pages of context, plot, and character info.  And it spat out something less “neh”, but a little better.

I tried having it try doing it like a movie trailer.  It, of course, gave me something starting with “In a world…”  Sigh.

But it did have some nuggets that I used to write something on my own.  I put it in and asked for 5 ways to improve it.  It gave me a few more concise sentences than what I typed.

Finally, I wanted to make this opening line shorter: “Hope got the tattooed goddess imprisoned in an unbreakable ice dungeon. It just might also get her out.”

It refined it to this: “Hope once imprisoned the tattooed goddess, but now it may set her free.”  I like it!

So, here is the version I’m currently planning on using, mostly from me, with a little AI feedback:

“Hope imprisoned the tattooed goddess for 1600 years, but now it may set her free.

Amid a world war spanning across a supercontinent, Ashe Stelfire and his allies embark on a quest to liberate her. But first they must battle the dark empire pounding on the door of a beleaguered frontier city with an arsenal of dark magic and bleeding-edge technology.

From the old soldier god’s forgotten lair, to the toxic red haze of a forest of madness, to the forgotten subterranean sea, to the icy depths of an extra-dimensional fortress, their journey treads on the precipice of disaster.

Knowing that their struggle is all part of Corsis’s Game, their only hope is to break its rules.

And to break out the tattooed goddess from her dungeon of unbreakable ice.

Prepare for an epic saga of redemption and courage. Join the fight against tyranny and dare to hope for better tomorrows in The Breakers.

Get it now.”

So I typed pages upon pages to boil it down to 157 words.  Writing is indeed rewriting.  And AI tools are going to make that…

Just.  Weird.

And also, far more important. I would rather write tens of thousands of words in a novel, than 200 words of marketing copy.

Neh.
Players of the Game Works in Progress
Due to other goings on in my life, this Reader Group email is a bit later this month.

And my last batch of second draft chapters is also bigger as a result with the added week or so.  I finished The Game War’s second draft with last remaining 22 chapters.  That’s better than the 13 chapters from last month.

I’m expecting the third draft to go faster with a bunch of chronology checking and last coats of paint for the story.  We’ll see how much I get in between now and my next update.

Scrivener did indeed make it much easier to split, move, and add scenes.  I expect to keep using it as a tool for editing and outlining.  I’m still leaning toward Word for first drafts. 

But we’ll see how I feel when I have an actual first draft blinking its cursor at me.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Hekati: “They’re all calling it the Game War now.”

Corsis let out a silent chuckle. “It does have a ring to it.”

“Hush.” She flicked a finger against his knuckle in reprisal.
Recommendation Corner
System Collapse by Martha Wells

Murderbot is back for more introverted awkward adventures.  It’s still dealing with the fallout from its encounter with alien invasive organisms from the last novel.  Including a panic attack induced by its organic parts, which it redacts from its retelling of the first half of the novel.

It and its humans from a research and education enclave must engage in a PR struggle with a devious corporation as both try to win over an isolated community of colonists at the contested planet’s pole.

And Murderbot’s love of all things entertainment media will come into play.

As will copious amounts of violence.

It wouldn’t be an installment of the Murderbot Diaries without it.

The Fall Guy

I dimly remember watching the old Lee Majors show as a kid with the “stunt man fighting crime” premise.  And of course the theme song.

This new movie with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt basically just takes the name Colt Sievers and makes a whole different character and story out of it.  But they keep the stunt man investigating and fighting crime aspect of it.

And it’s pretty fun.

The stunts were great of course.  And the humor was really well done.  Especially a bit where Blunt and Gosling discuss their estrangement over megaphones in front of the whole crew subbing in the movie-in-movie characters for themselves.

It celebrates stunt people and all they do.

And its a fantastic date movie with both action and a compelling love plot between the two main characters.

Give it a watch.
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

Click here to view the original format.