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Board James A Fanfiction by Aaron Dennis

board james

Board James, the character and web series, is owned by James Rolfe and Cinemassacre Productions, but I’m writing this story anyway, because I think James will like it.

Board James by Aaron Dennis is a work of fanfiction, and it was not created for profit. It is illegal to sell Board James by Aaron Dennis for profit as it is illegal for anyone apart from the owners of the rights to Board James and his likeness to earn a profit.

Do not sell this work of fanfiction for monetary gain of any kind.

Please visit Cinemassacre.com and watch the Board James web series. If you believe this story will make a great movie, let James know by reviewing this after you finish reading.

Allen and Sharon buy a new house. It turns out to be the former home of Board James. Strange occurrences frighten the newly weds. When Allen wakes up, he finds himself sitting before James, Mike, and Bootsy. They must play James’s newest, made-up game, Board James, to completion, lest they be forever trapped within the living game.
Board James is fanfiction based upon the Board James web series owned by James Rolfe and Cinemassacre Productions.

Read on or download free via Smashwords

Chapter One

“Okay,” James started. “Here we are again; it’s the night before Halloween, and time to review a classic board game. What do we have? One Night, Ultimate Werewolf…okay.” Indifferently, he tossed the box aside to reach for another one. “Level Seven, Escape.” He turned the box over a few times, shook his head while wincing, and tossed it aside as well. “What’s this?”

Amidst other, colorful boxes was a small, square box. A picture of a goofy ghost was on the front.

“Ghost Blitz, and look, there’s a green bottle on the ground next to him. Is that beer? Is he drunk? Is that why it’s Ghost Blitz? ‘Cause he’s blitzed? He sure as fuck looks tweaked.” James started to crack open the box, but paused. “Major fun award? What the Hell is that? Well, whatever. Let’s get started.”

After dropping the top, James pulled out a deck of cards and a baggy with game pieces. “Let’s see; we got cards with pictures of the ghost. This one has a chair. This one a mouse, and what’re these? Oh, this is the chair, but it’s red. Why’s the chair on the card blue? And what’s this piece? A butt plug? Oh, that’s the ghost.”

Once he finished rifling through the game pieces, he scratched his head in confusion, picked up the tiny manual, and read through it. “A reaction game as fast as lightning for two to eight bright minds. Yeah, no dumbasses allowed. Story and object of the game– Object? Do they mean objective? Anyway….

“Balduin, the house ghost,” he stopped speaking to laugh. “House ghost? Is that like house…? Never mind, we won’t go there. So, Balduin found an old camera in the castle cellar. I like where this is goin’; a ghost director. Kind of reminds me of something, but I can’t put my finger on it….” Trailing off, the reviewer readjusted his ball cap then returned his gaze to the manual. “Immediately, he photographed everything that he loves to make disappear. So, it’s like a camera for pictures not filming; too bad. I wonder if he takes a picture of his ghost shit, ‘cause ghost dookie vanishes, get it?” James smiled.

There wasn’t anyone else there besides James. To whom he was speaking was as much a mystery as to where his friends had gone. Word was, Board James was a serial killer, a madman cutting the balls off his mates whenever they got tired of his shitty games.

“Unfortunately, the enchanted camera takes many photos in the wrong color. What? Sometimes, the green bottle is white; other times, it’s blue. Looking at the photos, Balduin doesn’t really remember what he wanted to make disappear next. Yeah, and I don’t remember the last time I took a shit or what color it was. Guess I should’ve taken a picture…now that’s a shitty picture.”

Frowning so hard his lips curled down, James’s eyes went wide as he nodded. “Can you help him with his haunting and quickly name the right piece, or even make it disappear by yourself?” He threw the red, chair, game piece into the corner. “It’s gone, vanished, banished to the black hole of Uranus,” he asserted.

The game reviewer shook his head in consternation. Then, cracking the manual open, he perused the actual game rules.

Beyond the End of the World

Lokians Book One By Aaron Dennis

Intelligent races travel through wormholes to explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Thewls inform Humans of a looming threat. Lokians are a ravenous race of space bugs. They harvest technology from advanced civilizations and integrate with it to mass produce living ships, dangerous vanguards, and formidable legions.
Captain O’Hara of Phoenix Crew travels with Thewls to retrieve an ancient vessel from a mysterious race simply known as travelers. Can a single craft be the key to saving the galaxy? Why do Thewls believe the travelers once visited Earth? Does O’Hara and Phoenix Crew have what it takes to obliterate the space bugs?

Read on or download free from Smashwords

Prologue

Man yearns to explore, learn, perceive, and break beyond the bonds of limitation. Great, philosophic minds pondered such implications, giving rise to questions with no answer. Who are we? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Are we alone in the universe? Can we reach for the stars?

A decade into the Twenty First Century, a space exploration program known as NASA retired their shuttle, stating their space station, the ISS, was sufficient to advance man’s knowledge of space; no more flights to the moon were needed, probes were built to reach other planets, yet a question arose; was NASA truly marooning their scientists in Earth’s orbit? Was there, really, no shuttle in reserve for emergency protocol?

What no one knew was that a new vessel had already been designed and produced. A drone shuttle carried equipment to the ISS, building materials, and there, the engineers constructed new probes. Launching them from beyond Earth’s gravitational pull allowed the tiny machines to explore without immense fuel requirements. New studies had commenced.

Survey satellites were then built and released to specified coordinates. Their role was to relay any information gathered by probes back to Earth. It took little time to obtain great findings. Less than a year into the program, the probes detected abundant deposits of precious minerals in asteroids both inside and outside the solar system. The next step required mining probes to retrieve the deposits. A new age began when humans no longer needlessly harvested their own planet’s resources.

A few decades down the road, survey probes revealed more than just resources; asteroids, moons, and planets were deemed acceptable for colonization with little cost or effort, however, there was always the obstacle of time. A journey from Earth to the closest sites meant decades of travel. Great minds set their combined efforts on the task, and a solution was proposed; send colonies to midway stations on small asteroids.

It was no surprise to NASA that very few volunteered. Many citizens of Earth were comfortable and happy in their lives. A move to a colonial life in space was practically permanent, and traveling for years only to live in the desolation of space was frightening. Then, the military stepped in, looking to soldiers for support. Project Safe Haven was announced.

In the year 2111, almost fifty years after the first successful colony, Admiral John Lay, the overseer of Safe Haven, commissioned Captain Riley O’Hara to lead a team of scientists and engineers aboard the Phoenix, a vessel orbiting a planet called Eon. The new ship and the new crew were set to break new ground; The Horizon Project was employed to begin colonization of the first planet outside the Sol system. O’Hara was beyond psyched.

Chapter One

O’Hara sat in crew quarters, little more than rows of beds, tables, chairs, and lockers utilized by eighteen military occupants, which included O’Hara. There were also ten scientists aboard the Phoenix—a mixture of geologists, engineers, climatologists, and biologists—and additional ship hands contracted by the Navy. Of the soldiers, O’Hara found the ship’s pilot, Sara Day, the more pleasant for conversation.

“Excited? This is our big break, Captain,” Day said, beaming.

She was short and fair. Her light skin blended perfectly with her flowing, blonde hair, and glimmering, green eyes. O’Hara smiled back, looking her over; she was a young, pretty Lieutenant at twenty one years of age.

“Bursting at the seams, Day. I still find it hard to believe Admiral Lay put me in charge instead of Rear Admiral Shaw,” the captain replied as he furrowed his brow.

He was rather tall, and of a darker complexion, older, twenty four, and though he lacked real world experience, his intelligence and determination shone through almond colored eyes.

“I heard he’s assisting Lay with the next step,” she remarked.

“Colonizing a planet…we’re really doing something here.”

“Yeah, I can’t believe they think we’re ready to do this,” Day sighed.

“First thing’s first, we need to determine the cause of those magnetic disturbances.”

“Swain’s working on it?”

“Yeah. Logically, it’s some sort of magnetized metal deposit, but there’s always the risk of radiation. There’s just as much we don’t know about Eon as we do know….”

A voice came over the Phoenix’s intercom. The Automated Monitoring System, or AMS as it was commonly known, stated in a robotic voice that entry into Eon’s atmosphere was taking place in two hours.

“Better hit the chair, Miss Day,” O’Hara smiled.

They stood. She saluted, he returned it then she ran to the bridge. It was not uncommon for a ship to have such a young pilot. All colonial children were enrolled in military schools, receiving the best of education. Once they excelled in a certain area, they were trained specifically for that field. Day was no exception. She also had the added comfort of the AMS assisting with small calibrations. At the bridge, she sat in the helmsman’s chair.

The Phoenix’s bridge was a cold, steel structure. The only decoration in the room was the burgundy carpeted floor. From the suede chair, Day checked the screens mounted in the console before her. She looked at the large monitor displaying their surroundings.

A tri-sectional screen calibrated to three cameras revealed a 180 degree perspective of the ship’s environment. A fourth camera revealed the vessel’s six, but the bridge officers marveled at the beauty of the purple and green sphere on display. Day smiled to herself before brushing a few strands of blonde hair from her face as she double checked the landing coordinates. Everything was in order, so she took manual control.

Maneuvering the Phoenix under atmospheric pressure was simple, especially since a location had already been programmed into the AMS. It was set to land about three miles away from a dig site. Any closer and the ship ran the risk of damage by magnetic interference, the same interference Swain was studying. While the Phoenix had its own anti-magnetic field generator, O’Hara preferred playing it safe, ordering a three mile trip from the site. He was anxious to set foot on the surface and lead the scientists to the dig.

The Dragon of Time

Book One

Gods and Dragons

By Aaron Dennis

Gods, Dragons, a mercenary with a blade and no memory of his past…. The world of Tiamhaal is alight in war. Men ruled by kings slay their opposition in the name of their God, but there are others who claim the Gods are little more than scorned Dragons of ages past. Scar has come to find the truth, but is the truth an absolute certainty, or is it just the skewed memory of a forgotten kingdom?

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Read on or purchase at a discount! Get the audiobook!

Gods, Dragons, a mercenary with a blade and no memory of his past…. The world of Tiamhaal is alight in war. Men ruled by kings slay their opposition in the name of their God, but there are others who claim the Gods are little more than scorned Dragons of ages past. Scar has come to find the truth, but is the truth an absolute certainty, or is it just the skewed memory of a forgotten kingdom?

Prologue-

Most people worship the Gods, if haphazardly, but there are some who claim that the Gods are liars, that they are not Gods at all. It is strange to conceive of an ephemeral voice, which grants magical powers, as anything but a God, and there is no proof otherwise. A great many men have gone to war over such a premise, yet the worst of war combines the arrogance of kings with the ignorance of pawns.

The nonbelievers are easily cast aside by dutiful worshipers of their respective deity, but all too often a man who worships Gyo, God of the Sun, finds himself staring down the blade of a woman who worships Drac, God of Fire. These contests have flared into a war that engulfs the entire world of Tiamhaal. There are many who wish for peace, yet there are many more who desire only destruction. Zoltek, Negus of Usaj, a country on the southern edge of Tiamhaal under the worship of Zmaj, the All God, threatens all those around him with his magic, his men, and his cunning.

Most recently, Zoltek has hired a pale mercenary to assist in waging war against King Gilgamesh of Satrone, a worshiper of Kulshedra, God of Truth. This mercenary calling himself Scar has no memory of his origins and seeks only to understand the world around him. In exchange for his unique talents with a sword and his sharp mind, Zoltek has promised Scar he will discern the truth from behind that hazy memory. Zoltek claims to speak to Zmaj on behalf of Scar, but only if the country of Satrone is felled in a bath of blood.

Chapter One-

Zoltek, tribal leader of the worshipers of Zmaj, the All God, ordered a small portion of his army to amass on the outskirts of the Kulshedran territory called Satrone. Small trees grew sparsely around a clearing. A tributary from the river Inliil sloshed over small stones. Urdu, son of Zoltek, stood before the tributary. The setting sun cast shadows over his form.

As with all the tribesmen in the worship of Zmaj, his was a swirling skin. The dark brown hue was enveloped in patterns of purple and blue melting into one another over his body. With his helmet off, the skin of his head and face held eloquent patterns, too, like colored water pouring over his visage. Urdu’s widely spaced eyes were fierce.

“I should lead this charge,” he grumbled.

Warriors clad in black leather, and gripping their menacing, steel weapons, chatted among themselves. One older Zmajan acknowledged the brash, young man’s words.

“Don’t be foolish, Urdu. Your father put Scar at the forefront of the vanguard for a reason,” the older man said in a raspy tone.

Portions of his color adorned skin showed over the unarmored areas of his body. His helmet, also black leather and with rams’ horns mounted on the sides, hid the patterns on his aged face. Urdu stormed over to the man with a scowl.

“You dare talk down to me?” he howled.

“Show the general some respect,” another man chastised.

Urdu glared at his fellow tribesmen then returned his attention to General Dumar.

“I’m the better fighter, not Scar.” Urdu judged the strange man sitting cross-legged on the ground.

The massive one called Scar did not so much as stir. Eyes turned to the only light-skinned man there; he was pale as a ghost. Sunlight glinted off Scar’s muscle creased stature. A great many healed over wounds were his namesake.

“This one does not even know who he is,” Urdu yelled to his kinsmen. “Look at him. What tribe is he? No hair on his body whatsoever. No marks. Those gray, lifeless eyes give nothing.” Turning to the scarred warrior, he barked. “Who are you?”

The hairless man still did not stir. He wore little armor; brown, leather leggings adorned his thighs. Worn boots covered his feet, and a chunk of steel protected his left shoulder across to his sternum. He was a frightening sight to behold. An odd blade stood—tip buried in the soil—before him.

“Answer me!” Urdu was practically frothing at the mouth.

“Hey, stop it,” Dumar growled. “The sun will set soon, and we march against the tribe of Kulshedra. There is no time for squabbling.”

“Not to mention your outburst will give our position away,” another tribesman advised. “If we want to break their perimeter, we require stealth.”

“I care not about such trivialities. We are strong, and we are many. We will wet our blades with Kulshedran blood. Zmaj has blessed us,” Urdu argued. Then, he approached Scar. “Tell me, mercenary, you don’t really believe you’re fit to lead this charge; a timid, Godless ghost.”

Tall Tale TV Celebrates 300 Episodes

Hey! Spring is right around the corner…even though we’ve already sprung ahead, but whatever…am I right?

What’s great about Spring? Spring break? Spring cleaning? How about the simple idea that the weather is starting to get nice?

Whatever your reason for celebrating Spring, I’m celebrating the 300th episode of Tall Tale TV! My friend, Chris, has officially uploaded his 300th episode on his YouTube channel.

If you’re still defrosting from Winter, you might not have heard about Tall Tale TV. It’s a great channel, though. Chris, a talented voice actor, who performs readings of innumerable tall tales, has been growing his list of writers and fans for three years.

Tall Tale TV is a wonderful channel that not only showcases wonderful talent, but it also promotes up and coming writers, and it brings to fans across all genres little glimpses of novels, and sometimes, full short stories!

If you’re a writer, Tall Tale TV is the perfect place to find new fans. If you’re a reader, or you have a penchant for audiobooks, you’ll get to hear a piece of literature you may have never before heard.

Tall Tale TV has featured many of my excerpts, and many more of my excerpts will soon be promoted, so keep an ear out for those. Just make sure to give every episode a listen; you might find the next hidden gem!

You might also want to hire Chris to voice your next audiobook! I know I’ll be employing his services for Otherside. He’s already performed an excerpt of my novella, but I love the guy so much, I’ll be hiring him for the full audiobook version.

You can listen to his performance of Otherside here.

You can listen to his performance of Noodlin‘ here.

You can also to his performance of Necessary not Casual here.

Whatever genre you enjoy reading, or hearing, Tall Tale TV has something for you. Be sure to like and subscribe. I mean, c’mon, it’s free, and you can listen to 300 excerpts and some full short stories.

Support your fellow artists. Support your fellow Americans. Support anyone who spends their own time and effort helping other artists.

Gaming past, present, and future

A Nintendo Entertainment System

A Nintendo Entertainment System

Hi, everyone. I’ve brought you many game reviews such as; The Legend of Zelda, The Wind Waker, Chaos World, and Actraiser. I usually bitch about gaming in my reviews, so this time, I’m just going to bitch about gaming—satirically of course—no review.

 

This all began when I first learned about Steam. Reading through what Steam is, and how the platform works, I couldn’t help but feel out of touch. I mean, it’s awesome for game developers, indie or otherwise, who want to release games and get traction, but I don’t get why gamers would buy games through Steam and then play them on Steam, but then I had to consider just what gaming is, or rather, what it is to me.

 

Like most dudes in their 30s, I began my gaming sojourn with an Atari. I think it was the 2600, but it might have been anything. From the Atari, I was upgraded to the NES. My first game was the Mario and Duckhunt twofer. They were games. I played them. They were okay. Then, I got Simon’s Quest, and you can read my Castlevania reviews here.

Castlevania II Simon's Quest

Castlevania II Simon’s Quest

Simon’s Quest blew my shit. The music, the story, the monsters, the magic, the mayhem! Oh my God, that was some serious shit to me, and I was like 6 years old then. Games went from incomprehensible lines and pixels, to plumbers jumping on mushrooms, to bad ass vampire slayers destroying evil curses, and then I got Life Force. Holy freaking cow, games then turned into a space adventure, fighting mind-boggling aliens through unimaginable alien worlds!

Life Force NES

Life Force NES

Holy fracking shit, I then got Megaman 2! Robots running and gunning, blowing other robots to shit, and stealing their weapons only to fight more, bigger, badder robots?!?! WHOAA!!!

Megaman 2

Megaman 2

Of course, I calmed down a little after that. R-Type wasn’t a novelty. Final Fantasy wasn’t a magical journey. I liked those games, but the feelings evoked were never the same. It’s like the first time you get laid; you, like, can’t believe it’s happening, and then it’s over. Sure, you do it again, and you get better, and sometimes things are different, but it’s never the same as your first time no matter how bad your first time was.

So, to me, gaming is like sex? Wait, where was I going with this? Oh, right, Steam, and all that.

Yeah, so gaming, for me, was a way to immerse myself in a foreign world where there were new rules and new adventures, and then there were multiplayer games. This is back when multiplayer games were played by people in the same room, on the same console, looking at the same T.V. screen. Yeah, it was a great way to get socially awkward kids, who were bad at sports, together and do something they liked, socially, together, physically, in the same room.

Now, most multiplayer games are played alone, which is weird to me. It’s cool that people from different countries and cultures can do something together, but no one is hanging out in the same basement, playing games together as a social gathering. I mean, these are games. They just happen to be video games. Would you want to play Monopoly with three other people in three other countries? Games are supposed to being people together, but I digress.

The real question is: Why do we like videogames? Why do we play them? The sights, the sounds, the stimulus? Sure, but they also evoke emotions, memories, and we often enjoy something that someone else imagined; something we could never imagine ourselves.

Now, the same thing can be said for books, T.V., and movies, and maybe this is why some people like watching other people play videogames, but that’s another concept that blows my shit to dust. People watch other people play videogames.

I like books. I read about things I could never do, like, say, fall in love with a vampire. Can’t happen IRL. I like movies because I get to see things I can’t really see, like a dragon setting a village on fire. I like T.V. because I get to see people do things that people don’t really do, and the consequences are often humorous; I like comedy shows like Seinfeld; yeah, those guys would’ve been dead or jailed long before season 9, but, here’s the kicker, with a videogame, I can interact with all those qualities.

I can’t play a movie, book, or T.V. show, but I can play, interact with, a videogame, and suffer consequences like a game over. I can share those interactions with other people in the same room as me when playing multiplayer games. I have no desire to watch someone play Wind Waker unless that someone is in the same room with me, and I can fuck with them. Then, they hand me the controller, and we take turns, but the idea is that it’s a social gathering with gaming as the activity. Otherwise, I’m just gonna’ pop in The Edge of Tomorrow!

This makes me wonder why gaming companies even release games anymore. Why don’t they just make FMV shows? If people wanna’ watch a game, watch an FMV show. I loved Reboot. I love watching MLP and Overwatch, too, but that shit’s on special sites. You know what I mean!!!

On the other hand, I can’t judge or condemn people for what they like. I also support E-sports. I mean, gaming contests have existed since gaming was a thing, and if someone who plays basketball for a living can earn a living, why not someone who plays NBA Live? A game is a game, right? And if we watch people play real games, why not watch them play virtual games or video games?

I could play basketball, but I’d rather watch it on T.V., so who can say what’s what?

I guess, in the end, I just feel out of touch. There are so many games out there, good and bad, that I will never play them all. I’m not going to download every single NES rom from emuparadise. I’m not going to get to play every game on the SNES. Hell, I just learned about Neopets at the beginning of 2019. It took me 14 years to learn that the game existed, so I have so many games to discover and play, for better or worse, that I’m just not willing to exert the effort required to stay on top of the contemporary gaming trends.

I think the newest game I played was Ark, and that shit fell flat on its face after like 6 months.

Fortunately, indie game developers are making more and games for dudes like me. Unfortunately, I don’t know where those games are released or how I can play them. I guess I could sign up for a Steam account and even buy Steam hardware, but then I’d be saving my games and game files to the Steam cloud sever, and if people stop playing on Steam then all that shit vanishes, but my NES still works, and even if it didn’t, I could buy one of those mini-NES’s with the built in games.

For me, the whole point of gaming is to bring people together, but it seems like technology is pushing people apart, and we’re trying to make games like real life, but if real life was so great, we wouldn’t be escaping it to play games, get me?

I mean, consider that before movies, we had books. Now, we have movies…but we still have books! To me, the NES is like a book, and no matter how great it is to own every copy of Harry Potter on your e-reader, it’s so much cooler to own the whole print series, and you read it over and over again, right? You don’t read it once, and then trade it in for A Song of Ice and Fire, right?

I don’t know. Maybe, I’m just getting too old for this shit. Oh, yeah, Harry Potter and A Song of Ice Fire all suck, so eat that!

Anyway, you can find and read all of my game reviews here! Thanks for reading this post about my issues with aging and gaming. Make sure to fuck around this website and check out my original stories.

A Moment with Scott Kinkade

God School by Scott Kinkade

God School by Scott Kinkade

Scott and I connected on LinkedIn after a discussion about the professed death of LinkedIn groups. To that effect, I made an offer to anyone who would like to guest post on my blog, and Scott was the first to take me up on that offer. Since I told him to post about anything, he decided to let everyone know that God School will be free on Amazon for a limited time.

18-year-old Ev Bannen was just hoping to get admitted to college. He never expected to be recruited to a school for gods, where he’ll be spending his days building up his strength, learning to answer prayers and getting an education in religion alongside aspiring god of money Jaysin Marx, the lovely but troubled Maya Brünhart and anger-prone ginger Daryn Anders. But the organization of evil gods, Zero Grade, has plans to unleash hell on earth, and Ev and his friends soon become targets. What’s more, someone close to Ev is not who they claim to be, and their betrayal may doom mankind forever. Ev steps up to save the day, but does he even stand a chance in hell of defeating a legendary deity?

Second edition published June 2018. It fixes the errors in the original.

Download God School from Amazon

You may have noticed the snippet at the end of the blurb about fixing errors….

The truth is that every writer’s every project is prone to innumerable errors, and as I have written copiously myself about this very subject, I’m happy to reiterate; your spelling and grammar software can not replace a human editor. Here’s what Scott has to say on that same topic.

Imagine going to the Amazon page for your books and seeing reviews about how your work needs to be edited before release. How would it make you feel? Would it make you question your writing skills? Well, it certainly didn’t make me feel so good. But it did kick my butt into gear and set me on the path to being a great proofreader.

But let’s rewind a bit. More specifically, let’s go back to 2010 when I self-published my first novel, Mirai: A Promise to Tomorrow. I was so proud of that book. And you know what? It sucked. Nobody liked it. I don’t even like it.

However, it was a necessary learning experience. It taught me valuable lessons I would need for my next novel, The Game Called Revolution. That one ended up being much better received. I would go on to publish seven more novels… and on none of them would I use SpellCheck. I was so confident of my proofreading ability, I thought I didn’t need them. Well, you saw the above reviews. Obviously, my skill wasn’t up to snuff.

Then, last year, I left a stable job and couldn’t find a new one. I was burning through my savings at an alarming rate, and something needed to be done. It was around May 2018 that I found Caitlin Pyle’s online “Proofread Anywhere” course, and I realized I could become a proofreader and live the self-employed dream.

Caitlin’s course taught me the in’s and out’s of proofreading, and it came with numerous exercises to hone my skills with. Now I have real confidence in my abilities and am ready to put them to work for clients. I founded Proofread Excelsior LLC last year, primed to tackle the challenge of growing my own company.

But you may be asking yourself, “Why do I need a proofreader? I’ll just use SpellCheck.” Take a look at the following picture of my current WIP.

 

proof

I proofread that after I ran multiple spelling and grammar programs. It’s proof positive that you can’t rely on them. You need a trained human eye on your work.

Now, I’ve seen people make the argument that “I’m an indie author and so my work doesn’t need to be held to the same standard as mainstream books. That’s not what it’s about.” Let’s say your book is poorly edited but you publish it anyway. You’ll surely get fans that don’t care about the shoddy work. But your book won’t go on to become a classic. It won’t achieve the success it could have had. It will die in obscurity.

It’s all about respect. You need your writing to be as polished as possible so people take it seriously. And, really, you’ve got to be able to take pride in what you do.

I agree with Scott on the fact that all work needs to be properly polished before release, but I have also found that many people who call themselves “editors” can’t read or write their way out of a paper bag, so for all of you out there who want to know how to find a good editor, I have one piece of advice: Go through my editing and free resources tab.

I also want to stress that proofreading and editing are two different animals. Proofreading is the means by which another reader finds technical errors in a written work. Editing is the artful ability to transform a sequential account of events into a story worth reading.

Nevertheless, proofreading is paramount because your mind will see what it expects to see, and your software just won’t do the job right, so be sure to drop by proofreadexcelsior.com

Thanks, everyone for reading this guest post by Scott Kinkade. Don’t forget to check out his books on Amazon!

 

 

How to Become a Successful Writer by Aaron Dennis

How to Become a Successful Writer Secrets the Mainstream Publishers Don't Want You to Know by Aaron Dennis

How to Become a Successful Writer Secrets the Mainstream Publishers Don’t Want You to Know by Aaron Dennis

Do you read much?

What kind of career have you considered?

Do you enjoy writing? Have you even thought about writing a book? Or writing poetry? Or maybe just writing some short stories?

Do you know anything about editing or publishing manuscripts?

Maybe, you do read, and you do write, but you don’t really know what it means to clean up your writing for an audience, and you don’t really know how to publish your work. That’s okay.

Maybe, you’ve tried to write, but you can’t come up with an idea. Maybe, you think your idea is just a rip-off of an existing idea. That’s okay, too.

Maybe, you’ve been writing for a few years, and you even published some books, but literary agents won’t take you seriously, your writing groups aren’t helping you sell, and you just can’t seem to attract that target audience. It happens.

Regardless of where you are in your life, in your writing career, if you’re so much as considering putting thoughts into words, you need to check out How to Become a Successful Writer: Secrets the Mainstream Publishers Don’t Want You to Know by Aaron Dennis.

This manual brings to your fingertips all the practical knowledge required to build your long term writing career. Any writer of any level will benefit from the material within this comprehensive guide. From the neophyte to the professional, anyone who reads this book will learn everything from formulating an idea for a story, to practicing the art of the short story, to writing proper fanfiction, and writing an original novel.

This book not only teaches how to write, but also how to market, edit, publish, and all with exercises and even free resources. From start to finish, the ideas presented are done so in an easy to understand and entertaining fashion. By the end of this manual, you will not only know how to write, edit, publish, and market your book, but you’ll know what kind of publishing is right for you.

Why don’t publishing companies want you to know these secrets? Publishers run an exclusive good ole’ boy club, and in doing so, they choose who they help to succeed, and who they help to fail, but when you learn these secrets, you’ll know that no writer needs a publisher in today’s internet age. Bypassing a publishing company not only allows you to maintain control and earn the bulk of your income, but it relegates the old, dinosaur, publishing companies to obscurity.

How to Become a Successful Writer Secrets the Mainstream Publishers Don't Want You to Know by Aaron Dennis

How to Become a Successful Writer Secrets the Mainstream Publishers Don’t Want You to Know by Aaron Dennis

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For anyone so much as thinking about writing a story; for anyone who has kept their nose to the grindstone for the past 5, 10, 15 years, How to Become a Successful Writer: Secrets the Mainstream Publishers Don’t Want You to Know by Aaron Dennis is an easy to understand guide that not only introduces topics about which you may not know, but it expounds upon numerous topics about which you must know to achieve long term success.

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How to Become a Successful Writer Secrets the Mainstream Publishers Don't Want You to Know by Aaron Dennis

How to Become a Successful Writer Secrets the Mainstream Publishers Don’t Want You to Know by Aaron Dennis

Buy it today from Smashwords

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Does sentence structure matter?

Since Quora likes to collapse my answers in an effort to keep me quiet, I’m copying and pasting some of the Quora Q and A’s in which I’ve participated. Here’s a question from Quora.

 

Question: Is the following sentence correctly structured?

 

“One has to draw our attention to the cultural differences thay may lead to miscommunication.” How can that sentence be improved?

 

Answer: First, thay is actually that. Second, you might want to replace that with which.

 

One has to draw our attention to the cultural differences, which may lead to miscommunication.

 

However, it’s still a bit confusing.

 

It sounds like the sentence is suggesting that an outside influence is required to point out to us that cultural differences can lead to miscommunication, or it might be saying that we should pay more attention to the miscommunications caused by the cultural differences, but then again, if these differences “may” lead to miscommunication, they also “may not” lead to miscommunication—it’s too open to interpretation. What do you want say?

 

Perhaps, a simpler version is the following:

 

Only an outside force can show us that cultural differences often lead to miscommunication.

 

That’s cut and dry.

 

The differences among cultures can lead to miscommunication. The differences among cultures do lead to miscommunication. Differences of culture are one cause of miscommunication. Differences of culture go unnoticed during miscommunication.

 

Unless someone points it out, no one might notice that differences of culture go unnoticed during miscommunication.

 

Again, what do you want to say to your audience? It is not all the same. Each sentence is very different and can have a huge impact on the overall idea present within a single paragraph.

 

Writing is all about getting the thoughts out of our heads and onto a physical or digital medium, but communication and storytelling are totally different worlds from just written thoughts.

 

Have any of you ever been speaking to friends, family, or a spouse, and someone asks you to repeat what you said, or asked you to clarify, or immediately started to berate you until you had to explain that what you were explaining wasn’t what they thought you were saying?

 

All the time, right? The way you think is the way you write, but your audience is not in your head, and since you can’t clarify to them specifically after having written whatever it is that you’re writing, you must be able to provide cogent arguments, ideas, and events to a broad range of recipients who cannot question you.

 

Writing the first draft of your book, story, blog post, etc is the easy part. After you’ve written it, you have to edit, and I don’t mean adding commas or correcting misspelled words; I mean it’s time to rewrite your thoughts for people who don’t live inside your head, so that no mistakes of interpretation can be made.

 

This is the power of words, punctuation, sentence structure, paragraph form, and all facets of editing. A writer provides a sequential account of events. An editor works as an interpreter; they are someone who relates those events to a specific audience, but you can edit your own work if you learn to read your work as a reader.

 

To read your work as a reader, the most important step is to get away from whatever you’ve written for a few weeks, maybe even a few months. Then, go back and read it, and you will surely come across instances wherein you won’t even know what you were trying to say. Those will be obvious fixes, but there will more subtle instances of miscommunication, where something makes sense to you, but probably won’t make sense to anyone else, or it may just be open to interpretation.

 

It’s crazy, but no author out there thinks that what they’ve written can possibly be misconstrued, and that anyone who might misconstrue must be a dunce, so, okay, imagine that everyone is a dunce, that way you won’t leave any room for misinterpretation.

 

Everything you write, must be absolutely on point, and should leave no room for interpretation, but that means that you have to read and reread your work dozens of times, and it means that you have to scrutinize each word, each sentence, and each paragraph. Then, you have to make sure that each scene is supported by the paragraphs, and that each chapter begins and ends properly, and that no one in the world can come up with a reason that your story doesn’t work—plot holes; they’re killers!

 

If this sounds like too much work, hire an editor. There’s no shame in it. Every single mainstream writer is paired with editors. It’s how the entire publishing industry works. Do you really think you don’t need an editor? Think again.

 

Learn more here.

How to write a novel or series, a Quora Question

Since Quora likes to collapse my answers in an effort to keep me quiet, I’m copying and pasting some of the Quora Q and A’s in which I’ve participated. Here’s a question from Quora.

Question: How do you write a novel or series?

 

Addendum: I’ve been reading the writer’s journey and I’m curious as to how some of the authors on quora go about their writing projects – I’m not looking for their writing advice insomuch as I’m interested in looking at what they actually do.

 

Answer: I think about the story. I envision a scene, a character, his perspective, his goal, the problem, the solution. I mull it over. I obsess over it. It consumes me. I see it all. I hear it all. I smell it all. I am the character, or I am his friend, or I am the unseen sojourner beside him.

 

Then, one day, I have to commit it to paper. By the time I’m four pages in, everything changes. I stop. I reassess and re-obsess. Before long, I have to write again.

 

A chapter, two chapters in, I see a twist, or a character comes to life and takes itself in a new direction. I follow, wondering where it all goes.

 

I just write; I just get the story down. That’s all anyone should do. There is nothing else that can really be said until the story has been written to completion. Completion doesn’t mean perfection; it doesn’t mean the story is ready to be published. It just means the first draft is done, and all the basics are down.

 

Occasionally, while writing, I go back and re-read former chapters to make sure there are no inconsistencies, but mostly, I try to just keep going forwards. By the time I get to the end, it’s never what I had envisioned. Because of this, I never use writing software, I never use outlines; all that crap is a creativity killer.

 

It is my belief that stringent outlines, which don’t allow for deviation, destroy inspiration. You can’t plan a garden. You can just plant flowers, and watch them grow. You can’t predict or control how they grow. After they start to grow, you can guide them. Once they’re fully grown, you can maintain them, but you can’t possibly plan on how flowers will grow.

 

You can plan for life with a newborn, but until you’re married, and your child is born, and growing, and learning, and adapting, there is no way to know how to live your life. You can’t plan for every contingency. Maybe, your boy won’t like baseball. Maybe, your girl will be too shy for dancing. Until you’re married with children, there is no way to know what will happen. The same goes for stories; there is no way to accurately outline what will happen, when, and how; you just write, and once it’s down, you can edit.

 

The story should be alive within the writer, and should come to life during the writing process. The writer should be as surprised as the audience.

 

I can’t tell you guys and gals how many characters I thought were good guys suddenly planned, and plotted, and derailed the story, but that’s what readers love, and they think I planned it that way, but no. Sometimes, events simply occur. Other times, something new comes to mind during the re-reading/editing process.

 

This happens after I get the story down. I read it, you know, like I’m reading it for the first time as a reader, and I find nuances, which I explore.

 

Oh, look, John wants to be with Carol even though she’s with Mike. Maybe John can try to woo her, and maybe that’ll make for some cool character growth!

 

Thoughts like that jump out at me after I’ve written the first draft. I explore those thoughts. Sometimes they work out. Sometimes they don’t. The first draft of the story is not the end product and should never be taken as such. The story isn’t finished until there’s nothing else that can be added, and then it’s time to cut everything superfluous, even if I like it because I have to think about what the audience will want, and if I force them to read every single little tiny thought I have, they’ll feel as though the story is pulling every which way; it feels jumbled, disorganized, confusing.

 

I know different methods work for different people, but fierce structure and routine destroys imagination, and at the end of the story, there is an editing process during which all the mess gets cleaned up and tied into everything else, which keeps my work from becoming convoluted. An outline should be only a limited tool, a guide, a loose idea, which is there only to bloom, to be modified as the occasion arises.

 

For, say, a single novel, there should only be a single plot twist if any at all, but I mostly write series, so things can get messy, which is why I do keep a notepad handy, and in it, I jot down a sentence or two in the event that I want to add a certain event during the editing process.

 

For instance, in the newly released Dragon Slayer

The Dragon of Time Two, Dragon Slayer By Aaron Dennis

The Dragon of Time Two, Dragon Slayer
By Aaron Dennis

I had intended for Scar, the protagonist, to kill a support character, but by the time I reached that portion of the story, that action no longer made sense, so I adapted, and it will seem as though what does happen was planned that way from the beginning.

 

I promise, you’ll never who I wanted him to kill or why. You’ll never know where it was supposed to happen.

 

So, as the question was asked: How do I write a novel or series?

 

I begin with an idea, no matter how undeveloped. I think about the idea, and jot down little notes. Inevitably, more and more scenes, actions, thoughts, and emotions come to mind, and when I have enough, I begin to write.

 

Maybe, my beginning is under developed. No big deal. Maybe, my middle is shaky. That’s okay. Maybe, I planned for one ending, but it no longer makes sense. That’s fine.

 

I just write, and as I write, more and more comes to mind. Eventually, I find myself wrapping up all the events, and the story has ended. Sometimes, I have some ideas for an aftermath, in which case, I’ll hold on to it for the sequel.

 

If there’s no after math, it’s time to get away from the novel. I need to forget it because the people reading it won’t be in my head.

 

Once I’ve forgotten the tale, I read it as a reader. I correct little mistakes. I fluff out the portions, which are lacking in description, dialogue, action, whatever, and I go through it over and over, probably more than 20 times by the time I’m ready to publish.

 

While re-reading, I cut whatever’s superfluous. I make notes for the sequel. I scan for inconsistencies. I search for better ways to show versus tell. I make sure to keep from repetitious retelling. I make certain that the main characters, the support crew, they’re all different. No stock characters–they cannot all sound like me when I talk or think. I give them choice words, mannerisms; I make them living people.

 

It’s a daunting undertaking, but this is why there are whole institutions devoted to writing; publishers don’t just accept a written body of work, and print it. They normally only take a look at vetted stories.

 

A literary agent accepts a finished product. They hand it off to a publisher. The acquisitions editor reads the story. If it looks good, they send it to editors and people who function as test readers. If the story can be edited for a large audience, and it appears to be attractive enough to reach a broad audience, that story gets picked up, and then the actual editing process occurs, and I promise you that it takes a long time to rewrite the entire story from that stage.

 

There’s a lot of people out there, readers, new writers, aspiring novelists, who think that writers just sit down and write out a perfect manuscript from word one to the end. Far from it; it’s a long, arduous process fraught with editing and re-writing. Many eyes have to look over the manuscript before it can be safely published, and for independent writers, this can be a most intimidating task.

 

Fortunately, there are writing groups, reading groups, beta-readers, and freelance editors. There are also numerous writers out there who blog, who answer questions, who give advice, who show the process, and so anyone who takes the time to learn, can start their career off properly.

 

Thanks for reading. Share with your friends! Come back anytime, and make sure to check out my resources, and download my free stories.

Can you succeed even without a solid publicity plan?

Since Quora likes to collapse my answers in an effort to keep me quiet, I’m copying and pasting some of the Quora Q and A’s in which I’ve participated. Here’s a question from Quora.

self aggrandizing aaron meme

Question: Would a great book succeed even without a solid publicity plan?

 

Answer: No, and I’m speaking from experience.

 

When I first began writing, I tried to tell everyone that my book was out, it was great, well written, edited, the whole shebang, but who did I tell?

 

Consider the question. With no publicity plan, who is there to tell that you have a book, and that it’s great, and that everyone should buy it?

 

With no publicity plan, you have no Twitter followers, no blog followers, no one subscribed to your website, no friends on FaceBook or Goodreads, no contacts on LinkedIn, etc. You must have a receptive audience. You must be able to tell receptive people, who are already interested in your kind of writing, that you have released a book, and how can you have people following your every move without a publicity plan?

 

The publicity plan builds exposure; by its nature, it calls people’s attention to you. Then, when people know you exist, you can let them know what you’re peddling, and how it’s different or better than what’s on the market now.

 

Exposure is absolutely necessary, and even books that are not so great tend to fly off the shelves when a publicist somewhere says, “these are great.” However, since such a thing was said to numerous individuals, who then told others, who then told others; the exposure led to readers, which led to conversations about those books regardless of how great those books were or weren’t; if they were terrible, they surely had great sells at first, because of a publicity plan, and then tanked when they failed to live up to the hype, but that’s a different discussion.

 

It’s tough to build a publicity plan, for sure. It’s even tougher to build a free publicity plan, but it is not impossible.

 

The simplest way to build fans is to engage with likeminded people. People are social creatures who enjoy discussing their likes and dislikes. They value their own opinions as well as the opinions of their peers, so it’s imperative that you, a writer, ask yourself some serious questions. What genre do you write? For whom are you writing? Like whom do you write? How are you different? Better?  More important? Be friends on FaceBook, Google+, Goodreads, and Twitter with those likeminded people. Discuss what they like. Discuss what you like. Start a book review blog or vlog—learn more about that here!!!

 

In the meantime, write your book, hire an editor, and engage beta-readers. Then, once you have loyal fans, show them that you’ve written a book, too.

 

There are other routes as well. If you have the money, you can sign on with netgalley and get your book in the hands of serious reviewers. Reviewers are important because those people discuss their likes and dislikes with likeminded people, so they are promoting for you; of course if your book sucks, you’ll never sell, or at least not for long. You can also purchase media release packages. Kirkus has some great packages, but you better have a fat wallet already. There are cheaper media packages, but even if you find them, they don’t guarantee great results.

 

I’ve personally spent as much as $100 on media packages, and saw virtually no increase in sales, so you get what you pay for, and no, Kirkus won’t guarantee you sales either, but their reach is far more extensive than any cheaper media package you’ll purchase. I still believe that spending money is the quickest and easiest way to inform potential readers that your book is available, but that exposure won’t guarantee sales. No exposure of any kind guarantees sales, but the more people you reach, the more likely you are to land a sale. It’s always a numbers game.

 

Free promotions, though slow moving due to the inherent difficulty in reaching people, by way of engaging likeminded audiences before releasing your debut novel, are far more efficient because what happens is that you build loyal fans who wish to discuss your book with others, and word of mouth is the best way to sell a product; you don’t buy Black and Decker because an ad told you to buy Black and Decker. The ad only informed you that Black and Decker exists, that it’s great, that it’s a deal. You buy Black and Decker because you asked your neighbor what brand of drill they use, and they informed you that they like Black and Decker; it’s the same with books.

 

Books are just a product. It doesn’t matter how great your book is. If no one knows it exists, no one can buy it. On the flip side, just because your book is great doesn’t mean that everyone will like it. There’s always going to be someone who doesn’t like Harry Potter.

 

On top of everything, it’s important to know that you aren’t selling a book anyway; you’re selling an idea. The title, cover art, and blurb portray that idea, and then the book explains the idea, so with no publicity plan, there is no way to sell anything.

 

Once again, be sure to read this article from Journal. I explain how to earn money from reading, but the importance of the article is that by design, the plan reaches numerous readers, so that when you do release your own book, you already have hundreds and maybe thousands of receptive fans.

 

Even Stephen King, who I can’t stand, tells writers that to be good writers they have to read a lot. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about because reading a lot doesn’t make anyone a good writer, however, if you do read a lot then chances are that you discuss what you read, which means that if you have an audience for your book discussions, you have audience for your original material. Of course, King doesn’t explain that…. He should be telling aspiring writers to engage readers because they build exposure, and they learn what their peers enjoy reading.

 

Before anyone jumps me, I won’t to point out a few things about King. I don’t believe he reads much. I don’t believe that he read much before he started writing, and even if he did, and you do, the idea that reading a lot makes you a better writer is invalid. Think about the fact that the version of The Stand that you read is not the version that King wrote. The version you read is the one rewritten by his editors, and you’ll never write like an editor because editors change their voice based on their authors’ voices, their publishers’ voices, and their projected readers’ predilections.

 

On that note, be sure to follow my blog on Quora, where I often discuss editing tips as well as other topics revolving around reading, writing, and selling books.