Destruction Incorporated

Welcome back to the wasteland!

Been a bit, but I don't want to waste any more time, so let's get into it. Not a long one today, and yet there is a bit to discuss.

I don't think I have to tell you much about the mess that is OldPub, the old publishing industry sometimes mistakenly called "TradPub" (there is nothing "traditional" about them), and how far they've declined. It's fairly obvious just from one perusal of the shelves of your local big bookstore that they are far beyond irrelevant despite all the money and "prestige" they have behind them. It's all flooded with Japanese manga for a very good reason, and that's because the industry has long lost the plot in connecting with the average reader. They have to outsource it now.

However, it is also good to remember how this all happened. There are are more and more people joining these niche spaces every day, trying to understand just what might have happened to lead us to this position where everything is so fractured. Why are bookstores completely barren of new material from this side of the world, why is what little there so formulaic and vapid, and why is a foreign culture leading the charge for our own entertainment instead? Not to mention, there are still plenty of older folks who have been around for a while who don't quite understand all of this, either, and mistakenly blame Japan for this situation. Lots of fingers pointing in different directions. All of them should be pointed at OldPub itself.

This is kind of an odd situation, if one thinks about it for more than a second. Theoretically, manga could be topped. However, what requires that to happen requires a total overhaul of how OldPub functions. It's simply not going to happen. There is way too much ideology and far too many fragile egos in play for any kind of reversal. It will all simply crumble away just as the infrastructure built by previous generations does. It is now Destruction Incorporated, and the idea of selling art and entertainment instead of religious pamphlets is far too absurd to continue. If it wasn't there would be discussions going on between parties instead of endless lectures from the failures in charge of the rusted mechanisms.

And to think it all started because the adults in charge forgot how to say no, and let in fanatics to destroy their own hard work from under them. It's not that absurd, however. In fact, it happened before! You probably even know to what event this statement refers to.

The blueprint for the sort of literary takeover that destroyed OldPub is epitomized by the siffy cultists way back in the 1930s, who then seized the industry in the 1940s and turned a market for normal people into their own fetish playground. The pulp revolution over the last decade specialized in the rejection of their frame of "Don't Read Anything Before 1940" to discover just how much fantastic writing was buried for petty political reasons and deliberately left out of print. You can read more about this specific problem in The Last Fanatics where I discovered it for myself as I was writing about it. If one cares about art at all, OldPub is a failure at preserving any of it.

For a more general picture of what is going on now, I suggest the above video showing how the Literary Cartel used the Fanatic blueprint to do the same thing to the wider industry. Books about nothing written to no one and heavily leaning upon gimmicks and the promise of becoming a micro niche celebrity is what the Literary Cartel decided to do to their industry. It's like its own Oprah's Book Club, complete with the advertisement of religious cult figures for whatever ideology OldPub wants to foist on you.

We live in an age off closed of silos where no one interacts outside of them or attempts to connect to a wider culture, or can even imagine one existing, therefore all that is left is ruling the tiny sandbox of the few peasants still unlucky enough to be there. There is no ambition to reach anything wider, nothing but lecturing, browbeating, and celebrating death and dismantling. Us Against Them, over and over again, repeat until infinity.

But how did they do this? What is the secret formula that allowed this cartel to create such a wasteland of entertainment and edification?

By creating a formula for doing it. Art formulas have not solved a single problem over the past century, but boy are they the main culprit in causing a lot of them!

The subject of formulas has become radioactive as a discussion point in recent years, though there isn't any reason it should be. It's very clear to anyone paying attention that every art formula that has popped up in the last 30 years or so does not work for the simple reason that none of them have produced classics or done anything but shrink the market into the exact situation it is in now. All it has done is enshrine fetishes as genres and to lash out at anyone outside (and even inside!) of the small and ever-shrinking spaces.

You don't have to like the current anti-formula (if that's what you want to call it) zeitgeist, but it is an inevitable kickback from people who had to sit aside and watch the destruction happen despite their plentiful warnings that it would lead to exactly this. The obsession with formula implies a distrust in the artist and the environment that might allow him to foster in, saying that in order to succeed there is somehow a one fits all pattern that will mold his unique vision into something Better. Though, again, if that were the case: why has it not happened yet?

The second video above from the same creator goes into the process of creative death through formulas in depth even more than usual video on the subject. The fact of the matter is that art requires identity given from the unique circumstances around the artist's life that lead him to where his is. If the only thing he has to express are the same buzzwords in the same delivery and from the same social positions and the same "Global Standards" approach to not rocking the boat as every other "individual" in the scene, then why would the audience be interested? At that point, it's all interchangeable and meaningless. What is the purpose of consuming slop like this?

When the people in charge tell you that shrinking is growing and ignorance is freedom, what is an artist supposed to gleam from it? How can you connect when the industry tells you that you are meant to be just another cog in the crumbling machinery instead?

Fanfiction writers in particular find the idea of being against the inarguable failing state of modern writing beyond the pale. After all, they saw how all the major IP franchises were brought down by fanfic-tier thinking and the resulting yawn the audiences let out in response. It doesn't even matter if the product "makes money" when it's out of the conversation in a few months anyway. At some point, instead of being a hobby, fanfic writing took over the corpo jobs to pump out more content. Nothing is being explored, because there is nothing left to explore in these properties, it's instead being rehashed and exploited.

This isn't to say there's no value in fanfic writing, but it has always meant to be what it was and never anything more. It's a hobby, not a career. By removing it from its context it has become as polluted as everything else in the industry has. Now there is no ambition beyond endlessly reheating and recycling so the dying system that hates you can stay afloat for five more minutes. What other reason would it have to act this way?

No one in the industry wants to do anything but put out Content, and that is proven, as the second video shows, to be the actual focus of Creative Writing courses in Current Year. It's far off from the purpose of writing, or even creating any kind of art, but is inevitable when the industry itself is run lock, stock, and barrel, by a small group of people who have very limited imagination or idea of what art is even capable of in the first place.

All they care about is the club. Just like the siffy crowd did way back in 1939 when they were figuring out a way to control the industry for themselves. That game has remained unchanged, regardless of the players in it.

This is the end result of unimaginative people running industries that are supposed to run on imagination. They not only cannot imagine appealing to people who aren't them, they think slogans and checkboxes are the end goal and height of art. There is nothing more than this.

How exactly do you reason with that? The simple answer is that you don't. The industry's death spiral is as comical is it is unbelievable, but it's also understandable in a climate where fanaticism is more important than connection. Say that right things and get rewarded, even if your actions don't match up with your words. None of it matters except cynical grifting and elbowing others out of the way for your share of the scraps, leading to a vapid climate of art and entertainment that chases all the normal people off. Eventually all you're left with is a gaggle of ladder climbers scrambling for the top rung that leads out of the sewer. It isn't taking you anywhere higher. Why are you even in the sewer to begin with? That's as much as can be imagined these days.

Without a monoculture to rally around, the audience will not demand better, because they have other options. Instead of complaining, they walk away, leaving the people in charge smug in the thought that their art must be top notch since no one is complaining about it. No, they just gave up on you instead, which is way worse. They don't even care enough to tell you they hate it. This should be the worst place for a creative to be, yet it's the one most strived for these days.

This leaves the "mainstream" to wither away, fighting for the last scraps as it all comes caving in. This leaves us all in those silos to pursue our own individual goals, never to interact with each other ever again. Whatever the end goal of all this modern nonsense is going to look like, I don't think anyone particularly knows or, honestly, cares.

Eventually there will be another monoculture again. It's unavoidable since it is part of human nature to need community and a way to express creativity in a way that benefits more than just themselves. Until then, however, all we can do is watch and observe as the Fanatic philosophy formulizes itself into death cult ritual and obliterates itself in the resulting purity spiral. And hopefully we never let this destructive behavior take hold again afterwards, though that is obviously hoping for a lot. It'll take a lot of time and effort, but hopefully it'll happen one day.

Regardless, Destruction Incorporated is simply the way the people in charge have decided to run things until the clock runs out. Let's see how it works out for them.

Check out the recent patron exclusive post & a new FREE podcast episode on the Patreon!

Help Out An Author

This is a cross-post. Please read.

From Hans Shantz over on Substack:

Russell and Morgan Newquist have long been active members in the Based Book community. Through running Silver Empire press, and through their own novels, they set an example for us all how to create and promote Based Books.

Now, their daughter, Sera, is suffering from serious cardiac problems, and Russell and Morgon have had to travel hours away from home to ensure that Sera gets the care she needs.





They will need to be at a downtown hotel within walking distance of the hospital, and that can get pricey. Plus all the other expenses that come with a crisis of this magnitude. Let’s help them out

Russell and Morgon have made it clear that any money not used directly for the expenses of this event will be donated to the Children’s Hospital of Alabama because they treat everyone regardless of ability to pay.

You may donate directly via GoFundMe, and consider also picking up one of their excellent books.



War Demons: A Supernatural Thriller
When he came home, so did they...

Driven by vengeance, Michael Alexander enlisted in the Army the day after 9/11. Five years later, disillusioned and broken by the horrors he witnessed in Afghanistan, Michael returns home to Georgia seeking to begin a new life. But he didn’t come alone. Something evil followed him, and it’s leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

The police are powerless. The Army has written Michael off. Left to face down a malevolent creature first encountered in the mountains of Afghanistan, he’ll rely on his training, a homeless prophet, and estranged family members from a love lost...

But none of them expected the dragon.

Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden collides with Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International in this supernatural thriller that goes straight to Hell!

Hellgate (Neighborhood Watch Book 1)

Emilia King has made an art of bad choices. Just ask her mother, she’ll tell you every single thing she’s done wrong for years.

When her latest bad choice changes the locks to their apartment and leaves all her stuff on the doorstep, Emilia can’t bear to hear “I told you so” one more time. So she moves in with her grandfather. Then she can have some space to figure out who…and what she wants to be, without her mother breathing down her neck.

What she finds there is anything but peace. Her grandfather battles invisible creatures in the dark. Neighbors torn apart by wild beasts.

Not to mention the moody, gorgeous man across the street with the motorcycle. The kind of man that’s her kryponite.

But when her grandfather falls ill, his position of head of the Neighborhood Watch falls to her. And in this neighborhood, it’s more than measuring grass height or catching petty thefts.

Down the Dragon Hole:
A Tale of The School of Spells & War

Alis was a quiet librarian at the campus library of the School of Spells & Magic - that is, until the sword wielding buffoon Cahan had the audacity to battle a dragon in her library! Now she's following him off on some foolhardy adventure. As they try to save the university from the mysterious Formless, she fights an equally important battle - to maintain her self respect!

The School of Spells & War is an ongoing collection of old fashioned sword-and-sorcery adventure stories following a wizard and warrior duo as they galavant across the continent of Thillon. Good-humored, powerful warrior Cahan and intelligent, skilled wizard Alis work together to serve their university, the school of spells and war, by battling dragons, investigating plots against the king, hunting witches, and dealing with the ongoing threat of the ancient and mysterious Formless.


Here’s to a speedy and successful recovery for Sera, and thank you all for being part of the Based Book community.

Hans

"Do You Understand?"

Welcome back to the wasteland!

We're finally in 2026 and the new year. Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long!

As you can see, things are a little different around here these days. Posts will come out when they come out, and will be about whatever I can make them about. However, most of my writing energy is focused elsewhere this year so it'll probably be a light one for posts. Regardless, here I am, and here is the first post for 2026.

Today's subject is not entirely related to the video above, though it is included in the subject. I realize what a controversial topic the AI thing is and how there are so many triggerwords that set emotions off in different directions when heard or read, but I'm hoping we can bypass all of that to talk about it from a different angle. Instead of talking about "real" or "fake" I want to talk about the future and how we're going to process information. 

The Second Story's video is specifically on how AI is coming about at a bad time for literacy and making it worse, which no one really denies, and she is very thorough in her argument. Whether you are all-in on or staunchly against AI, the truth of the matter is that there are positives and negatives to it neither side wants to acknowledge in order to keep their position pure and just. We can admit that. That is fine and all, but that means there are angles that can't be discussed without a portion of those involved in said argument flying off the handle in a fit or rage or smarmy sarcasm. This isn't exactly a productive use of anyone's time.

None of that will help with today's subject. I want to talk about a part of this whole debate that is never really addressed at all.

Now I know how divisive or tiring the topic might be, but I want to specifically point out one part in the video itself to focus on today. This is on how AI affects not art or even writers or artists, but on cultivating readers.

The clip is here:

 

For as long as I've been alive, and maybe for yourself as well, we've been very busy trying to automate the world to make it easier. The question might be to ask "easier for who?" but even that is not necessarily the subject for today's post.

The end goal of modern society for at least as long as HG Wells was talking about "The World Brain" and what "we should do with ourselves" has been a conscious effort from a gaggle of late 19th/early 20th century materialists to create Eden on Earth. All we had to do was train human beings with the right keywords and phrases and eventually they will become like algorithms themselves, endlessly operating until they fall apart with age to be replaced with new cogs in the machine. Heaven on Earth for those in charge.

However, without any theory of what human beings are beyond meat puppets on strings, they also hold no value of them as living beings because "living" is a vague term that can mean whatever you want. In essence, human beings are nothing but pawns on the board that get instantly replaced with new ones, because that is how those in charge think the world works. They don't actually have any theory in mind for groups or individuals, they don't care who anyone is or what they're apart of, all they want is new pieces to constantly replace old ones.

What's worse is that they don't even remember why they're playing this game in the first place. To them, it's just How It's Done, because that's how their father and grandfather and great-grandfather operated, oblivious in the knowledge that the period they live in is an anomaly in human history, not the advancement of it, and that it is very clearly coming to an end. Whether they realize that of not is irrelevant aside from the fact that they are clearly losing control.

This doesn't mean they will be "overthrown" or "destroyed" or any fancy buzzwords they taught us from the fiction and fictious accounts of history they allowed to be spread, but that they are decayed along with everything else. They might think they're winning, and in a material sense they probably are, but in the end they will also be a cheap mockery of what came before. They do know this. The question is if they can gather the strength to avert from the iceberg before it's too late and they end up like every other era in history they pretend never happened.

So what does all this have to do with literacy?

The point is that we were never taught to actually process information or learn. We were taught to react to key words and phrases to guide is into our slot to keep the factory chugging along, even as it falls apart around is due to misuse. "Literacy" has never actually existed to make us smarter or to build anything new, because that would go against the Spirt of the Age. Those were always just buzzwords to keep us in line and to puff our chests out. Remember the Kid Who Reads archetype from the '90s? The "reading is magic" and "imagination is everything" hokeyness? Those weren't done to make anyone more imaginative or to be better readers. If they were, and if everyone remembers that happened, because it did, why do less people read than ever before in human history?

And no, this isn't about the younger generations, because I can see the technological excuses coming a mile away. I'm talking about the older generations, the ones that were reading Harry Potter while playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or Goosebumps while playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time decades ago. Why don't they read anymore? They indulged in Reading Rainbow like everyone else, and they read when they were younger. So why not now?

We might be "busier" but every generation was busy and yet they all found time to read. One could also point out OldPub's complete collapse and failure to create readers (In truth, their job is to pass on the "correct" knowledge and behaviors, not teach creativity or spread imagination), but that wouldn't also explain the aversion to indie spaces or classics. At some point, literacy changed focus to relying entirely on catch words and social pressure at the expense of even understanding regime propaganda. They don't even want us to think that much anymore.

Perhaps that should be the question we ask when the fading culture of today drops things on our laps: how will this help us escape the trap we've been stuck in for so long? Will this get us out of the failed utopia of HG Wells and his World Brain? If not, then how is it designed to keep us there and what can we do differently?

For now, we can only ask questions, but if we aren't allowed to ask them, or even teach others how to ask, then we'll be stuck in the loop, destined to decay with the system that created it. And maybe that's the lesson in all this.

Anyway, thanks for reading and welcome to 2026! I'm not sure when the next post will be, but I will thank you for reading for so long. It's been a blast.

Have yourself a good week and I'll see you again.

Cirsova's second volume of The Mighty Sons of Hercules is halfway to being funded! Jump in to get yourself some exciting tales of peplum adventures from the best writers of weird and action today! And grab volume 1 while you're at it!

Weekend Lounge ~ The End of Fanfiction

Welcome to the weekend!

The year's almost over, so let's settle in with a good topic today. It can't decide if it wasn't to be snowy or cold where I am, so hopefully it's been steadier for you. Regardless, we've got less than a week until Christmas and less than two until the end of this very strange year. Let's get into it with a topic we've touched on before.

We're going back to the well again with the topic of fanfiction. Particularly we're going to discuss the fanfic mindset and what it has led to doing to creativity. The recent above video by The Second Story on topic blew up, as it usually does with this channel, because it hit on an industry taboo that has been choking the scene for over a quarter of a century at this point. Some of the backlash has been expected, but the larger point needs to be addressed: how did we get to where we are? It didn't fall out of the sky, and one of the sources of fanfic brain comes from the idea that nothing new can really ever be made, which explains a lot about today's climate.

So while we all know the weaknesses of fanfic (and even fanfic writers themselves know it), we still insist on dragging it into everything creative we do as if we need to. Why is that? Why do we insist on fanfic brain over using creative muscles to make something new? Why do we even glorify our inability to fashion originality? It is strange.

And why do we continually reward the lowest common denominator while we also admit it is also the lowest common denominator? This seems obviously destructive, and yet we persist in insisting it is the way it needs to be.

Part of this is due to the IP-heavy way we think about creativity and storytelling. We think about storytelling like children think about toy boxes. "I will have my own Star War", "My MC is just like Goku", "my setting is similar to Asimov but with a twist", and so on. It's "toyboxing": insisting on playing in someone else's world while simultaneously seizing control of it for your own gain. It's using someone else's work as a crutch while also trying to turn it into a strength at the same time. Fanfic brain at this stage has become terminal.

Essentially, we want to make "our own" versions of something else more than we want to make something original or say anything new. In essence, we want to endlessly replicate the feelings we experienced when we were kids experiencing this New Thing for the first time, and while there is nothing wrong with that on a surface level, there is a certain mentality that comes along with it that has very much become harmful. We would rather keep toyboxing than actually create or build anything at all.

As has been said relentlessly, there is no such thing as anything truly original, just reiterations on old ideas. This is true. It is the main reason modern genre checkbox obsession has become so limiting and heavily outdated, because we've been expected to rehash the same corporate IP ideas for over half a century at this point.

However, when one is inspired by something, it is usually because it means they have something they themselves wish to express influenced by that original source. To be honest, this is how we get all the best art and entertainment. This chain of influence is what makes it all so fascinating and all so human at the same time. This is what creation is.

Fanfic is the opposite of this. It is the equivalent of playing toys with your action figures to invent new scenarios alone in your room. The thing is, this is supposed to be done as a child when the imagination is still in development, when you still don't know what it is that speaks to you about these things. At the same time, fanfic is this process but with writing. It is a launching pad for younger people to help understand what it is that truly matters about what they love and either move on from it as they get tired of it, or move into writing original works inspired by what they love and contribute to the culture they grew in. The point is that this stuff is a starting point, not an end point.

"Toyboxing" 

But that isn't how it works anymore in our industries.

Now the mainstream is filled with people who see storytelling as little more than toyboxing and writing rooms as little more than fanfic factories to push their own head canon onto an audience that either must except it or go away. They don't really want to create: they want to usurp and become that thing that first inspired them in the first place by wearing its skin and commanding respect. They don't actually want anything new, they don't truly want to express anything, and they aren't at all looking to entertain. They just want their immature selfish desires validated, their fanfiction to be the new canon, and the obvious worship that follows.

It is a poisoning of the relationship between not only art and artist but between audience and artist. It is twisting the good to be purely in the service of selfish consumption. Everybody is an island, after all! Either get on mine, or get out. That's just where we are.

The issue isn't that any of this fanfic process exists at all, after all it pretty much always has and always will. The problem is that this is almost the entirety of not only the mainstream entertainment industry and a large portion of the independent one to. It's the baseline instead of a fringe, like it once was. Which medium is this description referring to specifically? That's the fun part: it's every single one of them. This is everything now.

Musicians wanting to be Led Zeppelin is nothing new, but they used to discover their own original sound along the way to becoming their own band. That doesn't happen anymore. Being inspired by the Simpsons meant something when it was the wittiest show on television, but not when it equates to being another clone with nothing to add to the conversation except cruder jokes and dumber dads with evens stiffer animation. What is the point of such a show, and what does it add to the conversation? Then there is the recent process of taking an old IP you might not have even grown up on and "updating" it for Modern Audiences while gutting it of everything that gave it that character in the first place. Toyboxing at the expense of the audience? That's just cultural vandalism, the obvious endpoint of fanfic brain. None of this aspires to grow anything, leaving the culture stagnant.

It doesn't aspire to be anything except either a thumb in the eye to enemies or a pat on the back from allies. That isn't art. It's junk. And it's the climate we operate in now.

The entire point of creating is to put something of your own out there into the world, to make your mark while simultaneously honoring what came before. The current way it is done of perverting the past while spitting on it and sneering at those you are meant to be communicating with is completely backwards. That is why it does not resonate. That is why the divide between audiences and artists and entertainers only seems to widen.

Until we move on from mocking while stealing from those who came before, the fissure will only widen. Not to say all fanfiction does this, but those with fanfiction brain definitely do lean in this direction in how they worship one part of the whole. It isn't everyone who writes fanfic, but the seed of the mentality is still very dangerous to where it should not be as widely spread as it has been over the past few decades. It cannot be the majority of art and entertainment, because when it is it becomes today's climate.

Nobody wants that, not even those currently in charge of these industries and doing this exact thing right now. It's all just a big mess of half-formed ideas couched with relationship drama that doesn't ever lead anywhere. No one can seem to write a happy ending anymore if they can't ever actually put their toys away for good.

So we must move on from this mentality into better things. It is the only way we can finally leave the mistakes of the past century behind. What else can we do but move on, and try for something a bit more satisfying than that which lead us to where we are?

Let's just hope that next time we remember what it's all for, and it's not ourselves and our own ego. There is more to existence than playing with our toybox while forcing others to watch, and we need to start showing it once more. We need to tell stories again.

And we will. The era of fanfiction is over. What comes next is to be seen. We still have to build it, after all.

Speaking of new, the latest issue of Cirsova just dropped! Check it out for some new stories of thrilling adventure and daring suspense!

Weekend Lounge ~ How to Read!

Welcome to the weekend!

I hope you're doing well. It's getting cold fast around here, and boy am I tired of the weather already. It's only December too! We still got a whole season ahead of us.

Not much of a post this week with the holidays swinging around soon, but I wanted to put this one out regardless. Given that books are ostensibly the main subject of the blog, or at least very adjacent to it, I wanted to take them on in today's post. It's also been a fairly consistent topic in a lot of circles recently, so it's probably time to focus at least a little on them.

What makes reading so important? You've almost certainly heard it was at some stage in your life, and it's almost just as certain that whatever reason you were given chased you away from reading instead of towards it. Why is that? We should consider that.

We have a lot of questions to ask before we can get answers.

Why you should read classics? What even is a classic? Do they exist? Why do they matter? All of these are important queries to ponder, though they are rarely asked even by those in charge. These are valuable questions that don't tend to get answered these days, or if they do they tend to be stock unsatisfying ones that have led to the current widespread literacy problems we've been suffering since the end of the 20th century.

I've made plenty of jokes about how when I grew up the Boomers in charge made reading seem very unappealing or lame, epitomized in the infamous "Chicken Lover" episode of South Park with the bookmobile guy. If you're old enough, you remember that stereotype he embodied. That joke character is the exact stereotype that turned reading from a hobby into being a social issue and punchline, and one that made it lacking in all excitement and masculinity. This is the key reason males of my generation and younger drifted away from the medium.

Of course it didn't start there: Golden Age Siffy Fandom hated masculinity, as you can see reading literally any article on the subject from the time, but it was a logical conclusion to make. The "Chicken Lover" character is no different from the pencil neck degenerate who hated Edgar Rice Burroughs and seethed over Ray Bradbury getting attention for writing the wrong stories. In fat, they are basically the same character. 

The parting with masculinity and males was a long time coming, and even when the industry had a lifeline with books like Goosebumps or Harry Potter that actually did appeal to males, the publishers went out of their way to shake that potential base as soon as they could. In the process, the audience has fled and to this day has no interest in coming back. As a result, OldPub has labeled itself as anti-male, in that males deliberately keep their distance from it. You can argue with the verbiage or their intentions if you want, but it is clear that they did it to themselves by choice.

That aside, reading has been dying for a good while. Something must be done to stop the hemorrhaging. However, that is only half the problem.

The other side of it is the question of how we bring people back to reading? That is what we must ponder. It's not a simple task and it requires a lot of work to answer. One thing that won't work, however, is finger wagging and making mandatory book lists of the sort that chased the wider masses out in the first place. The primary goal should be to make reading exciting and engaging, and that means finding and highlighting exciting and engaging books that do more than check boxes. In NewPub, there is no shortage of work being published that does this. The issue is more in finding it in the typhoon of books out there. In OldPub, the problem is backwards: there is much uninteresting material being pumped out, and it is extremely easy to find. Getting that straightened out should help the confusion and help the space grow.

The above video on learning what a classic book actually is and what it should entail is a good way to understand how to read in a world where reading is frowned upon. Well, unless we are discussing fanfic (and that will be for a future post), and the like. The fact is that there are a lot of reasons to read, and the classics can give you all of them at once. This is why they are classics and why they should be seen as the goal of the medium, something to aspire to beyond the bare minimum.

Unfortunately, the way they've been taught has not only damaged their reputation, but also the process of reading altogether. And what this hatred of reading has lead to a society that simply can't and doesn't want to read or process entire segments of knowledge that were once common not that long ago. This bad way of teaching is responsible for the destruction currently plaguing not only the entirety of the arts and entertainment sectors, but all of society itself.

As can be seen here:

This wider problem is not improving, and it will not until true value is placed on literacy again. This is because it turns out that reading is important, but not for lame and embarrassing Baby Boomer reasons like "magic" or "imagination" (though you don't hear those hoary tropes anymore, as if they meant nothing to those in charge to begin with), but because it is actually important to form us as people and a society. Literacy is a non-negotiable, as we're quickly rediscovering.

Reading is important to process the world around and above us, the universe inside and outside, the long gone past and the upcoming future, and each other. If we cannot do that anymore, then we are destined to implode inside ourselves. The world we inherited will lose everything we were supposed to carry on and leave us barren. If that happens, then all of this we have gained from our ancestors will have been for nothing. We're already losing important parts of ourselves for no good reason, and at this rate the next generations having nothing to start with will only make it more difficult for them to build on anything or succeed.

Current ways are simply not working.

Of course none of it is hopeless, but the amount of time being wasted clinging to dead industries and mechanisms that no longer (and probably never did) work, is holding up any real change in a direction we need. Instead we linger in talks about endless IPs, meaningless trope checklists, and how to wring more money out of dwindling audiences. None of these address the issue, and we all know it, but for whatever reason the conversation keeps circling around to them over and over.

True change starts from the bottom up. The base is what has to be build upon. Why is this hobby, this art, and this medium, important in the first place? What makes it so valuable, and why do we need to treat it more seriously? Why does all of this matter in the first place? We need to figure that out before we lose even more of our reason to create at all.

We're ready now. It's no longer the '90s and cynicism and overbearing sarcasm is finally dying, as is the irony poisoned sincerity that was big in the '00s. We have a path forward out of this pit at the bottom of this endless cycle we have been trapped in for so long.

Now to take it.

Thanks for reading, everyone! I'll see you soon.

Mysterious radio waves... Alien civilizations... Monsters in the Old West... Dark sorcery... 14 Tales of Wonder!

Weekend Lounge ~ Tumbling Down

Welcome to the weekend!

Hope you're all doing well. I haven't had a lot of time to do what I usually do recently due to a (rather serious) real life situation currently going on, so I apologize ahead of time. Things will probably be light around here until the end of the year until it is dealt with. Hopefully I can explain the situation all in the future better than this, but it is what it is right now.

So instead lets talk about other things.

Today I just wanted to highlight this video from David V Stewart as a bit of a companion to his recent one about NewPub's Content Flood and discovery problem. This time the subject is about how OldPub is using the aforementioned conveyor belt production techniques to pump out soulless product while charging a premium for it at the same time. In essence, any problem you might have with NewPub remains far worse in the old system. This isn't newly discovered information, but it is rare that you get such a clear example of it thrown in your face.

This event continues the trend of mass-produced product pumped out into the void for easy profit and to be instantly forgotten. The Content Mill era is still alive and strong.

We're still in the grifting stage of collapse where most people involved in it are merely looking for the quickest way to wring the audience dry before the system totally falls apart under the strain. OldPub, being so much worse off than any of us even realize, has been in this stage so long that the project referenced in the above video would have been shocking as little as a decade ago is now considered par for the course and not surprising at all. In fact now you will even get consumers defending this practice because Rules Were Followed (that no one agreed with). Any excuse for OldPub's behavior is just another sign of accepting decline.

The fact of the matter is that someone wanted a quick buck for less effort and they were willing to excuse obvious fraud to the audience in order to continue the grift. It was either that or they were simply unaware and unwilling to look into any of this because they just don't care. Regardless of what it is, the end result is the same. It is contempt for the audience.

While one could say this is good for NewPub and independent creators, in actuality is probably not good for anyone. Those disgusted who walk away will probably just never come back, and those who accept it will just encourage further decline. At this point, it feels more like the two separate systems have nothing to do with each other and what one does with not affect the other in any appreciable way. Whether you consider that bad or good is up to you, but it definitely seems to be the case that they no longer influence the other at all anymore.

This decay of OldPub has gotten to the point where, if you can slough through similar projects to the above cropping up all over, you are more likely to find something worth your time by avoiding the older industries. This is because, as the video shows, these companies don't really care what gets produced in any capacity. They only care if it's cheap and if they make big bank on whatever is tossed out with minimal effort. Such a mindset will not produce anything great. It can't.

This has been an increasing problem for decades and it's not going to stop anytime soon. There is a reason the older industries are fading. All this is to say it's why NewPub should not be looking to repeat the same errors as the dead industry we are watching break down before us. Pumping out product should not be a goal, not even if the product is "good" because art isn't product in the first place. It can be sold as one, but that is not the core of what it is and treating it like that has not made anything better. This is not a highfalutin way of referring just to "good" art either. No, all art is valuable beyond its monetary value and how much is exchanged to access it.

You can disagree with that assessment, but this old way of thinking about entertainment as disposable and replaceable is the exact reason those ancient industries are dying. They did not decide to randomly produce bad material--they realized their job was to pump out maximum product for maximum return and for minimal cost and effort. When this is the core of what you do, it's only natural that the thing itself was eventually going to be the last thing considered.

And lo and behold, that's exactly where we are. Turning NewPub and all the newer alternative spaces cropping up into this same state will eventually lead to the same result. There is no pause feature on Mr. Bones' Wild Ride. We already know all this.

Entropy doesn't take a day off. If you fight for the same failing processes and systems that lead us here, just in an "indie" coating, you will still end up in the same place you started in. And what good does that do anyone? Why would we want this to happen again?

Why wouldn't we want an alternative industry to actually be an alternative?

Fortunately, it looks as if most creators in the NewPub and adjoining spaces are a lot more ambitious than those in OldPub are now, and more creative in how they use their tools and ideas. But that does not mean we shouldn't keep on our toes that we don't fall into the same traps as the above. It's very easy when one loses sight of what this is all for.

That last thing we want is the same disaster to befall us again.

Anyway, that's all for this week. Thank you for all your support this year. It's been a strange one, and it's still about to get stranger (for me, at least). I'll try to get more interesting topics in the future, but for now that is it for now. 

Have yourself a good November and I'll see you soon!

In case you missed it, my story Void Railway is in Cirsova #22! I hope you like space cops in a space railway battling invisible monsters in the dark as the crushing abyss warps around them! Because that's what it's about!

Weekend Lounge ~ The Death of Fairy Tales

Welcome to the weekend!

It's been quite the week, for many varied reasons, but lets put that to the side for today's post. Instead, lets discuss something else.

Today, I wanted to talk about storytelling, fairy tales, and the importance of wonder. Specifically, I wanted to talk about how it's been both deliberately and accidentally malformed over the course of the 20th century to be what it is today. No one is going to deny that things have changed, but there is also no one who will defend it as in a good place, either.

However, it isn't as if we can just discuss this subject without going into hysterics about either who is at fault or who deserves less of the blame. The truth of the matter is that finger pointing won't do much at this stage. Despite that, we also have to discuss uncomfortable truths and the unintended consequences of off-loading creativity and storytelling to out megacorp overlords. How did we get so far down the hill in a mere century?

It wasn't as straightforward a tumble as you might think.

A good place to start on this subject is this series by YouTuber Cartoon Aesthetics entitled "How Disney Stole Your Childhood" covering the beginning of the Disney Corporation's early days and ambitions up to where it is today and how it has affected how millions of people see the world along the way. It is a revelatory series that fills in a lot of gaps into how culture became pop culture before becoming the disposable trash it is today. Despite the potentially controversial title of the series, this is a story of how a simple co-opting of fairy tales to make a fledgling company's movie productions cheaper ended up replacing an entire cultural institution and warping the way generations of children see storytelling, wonder, and the meaning of their own lives. 

Sound heavy? That might be because the stories we tell ourselves has always been more important than you might believe, and the fact that we've spent nearly a century outsourcing creativity to an increasingly culturally detached corporation has done untold damage to the societal fabric. It's also why we can't seem to tell stories anymore.

It's not even to say that was Walt Disney's original goal to end up here. He almost certainly didn't think such a thing as the current Disney Corporation was possible back in the day, but many of his decisions would butterfly effect out to change the entire world of entertainment, destroy reading, feminize storytelling, and also "grow" with the audience into adulthood, eventually leading to the creation of Disney Adults as the punchline they are today.

How did all that happen? That is quite the question. To go into that is a long and convoluted tale, which is why I linked to Cartoon Aesthetics' series throughout this piece. Check out the first video above and you will see the seeds of a lot poison flowers that would spring up in the decades to come. Not that anyone could see them at the time, and perhaps there is no real villain in the story, at least not in the early parts of it, but that is almost beside the point: choices have consequences, seen and unseen, and we are living with the consequences of those choices today.

Why do we have Fairy Tales to begin with? This isn't a question asked much anymore, despite how obvious it once was. Fairy Tales exist to present the world of both the imagination and the concrete intertwined with each other, not only to show children the way the universe is but also to remind adults the full encompassing view of existence we might sometimes forget. In essence, they are the stories of what makes us what we are and point is to what we should become, and what to avoid. They remind us of what being human is.

Fairy stories aren't dumbed down "proper stories", they aren't meant to be infantile, and they aren't supposed to be "time wasters" as is commonly thought to be the purpose of such stories today. No, in many ways Fairy Tales are the basis to all stories, presenting the line where wonder blurs with the mundane to create a full view of reality both seen and unseen. Yes, they might teach lessons, but they also teach reminders, which is why they have a uniting universal aspect to them which makes such creations cultural touchstones and invaluable.

Which is why outsourcing them has turned out to be a disastrous idea that has ended up doing untold damage to the cultural fabric.

The video series covers this, but goes beyond it into much of the insipidness the 20th century did with creativity, including the embarrassing watering down of "Imagination" as some effeminate magical spell that makes you smarter and above the rubes. If you are old enough, you certainly remember how lame it was back in the day. Read a book, and you'll be smart! It just happens! You might remember Gen Y being told just that with the rise of The Kid Who Reads and lame ideas in retrospect like Reading Rainbow leading to the archetype we all know well by now.

Who decided to hand over art and entertainment to the lamest people imaginable and let them rule it with an iron grip? Is it any wonder these people have lead us to where we are today?

This character didn't fall out of the sky

Yes, throughout the 20th century we not only devalued Fairy Tales, but also turned reading itself into a lame hobby purely for anti-social nerds who believed themselves special and above everyone else, two disastrous mistakes that ended up having negative consequences on more than just corporate entertainment but also social dynamics and general maturity. How else can we explain why we not only have Disney Adults but Daily Show snark as the baseline for adult behavior only becoming more and more prominent since the dawn of the 21st century? That didn't come from nowhere.

Not only that, but it became more and more acceptable to be a cruel human being, as long as you were doing it for a "good" cause. Where else this kind of behavior lead if not to total dehumanization and an unearned sense of superiority? Where else does it end anywhere other than today's Current Year misery?

There was a push when I was a kid to never grow up. If you're old enough you certainly remember it. However, the intent was to make you "retain" that childlike wonder inside yourself that was common in youth. Now, while there might be something to that advice, the reason it was even thought of to begin with was because those teaching it to the youth operated in a materialistic dead end world where your monetary gain is what gave you value as a human being and that those who died with the most toys won. Won what? Who knows. The greater point is that the "adult" world was simply not enticing, and the "kid" one was quickly being co-opted by those same forces who knew it. Essentially, none of this came out of nowhere.

This movement created the weird situation we're in now, where even those sneering at Disney Adults talk like 1980s movie bully stereotypes, megachurch pastor parodies (crafted by people who hate them to begin with), or outdated Gen X cool guys (because sarcasm from thirty years ago is still cool, like punk music!). This isn't just a Disney problem, not by a long shot, and it would be good to remember all of this sprung about from a century where those in charge deliberately committed cultural suicide and left their broken offspring to pick up the pieces. The only problem is they don't know how to do this. How could they when this is all they know?

Much of today's emptiness is undoubtedly caused by the lack of cultural cohesion and the rot of the 20th century accelerating everything into the mess it is today.

For instance, as the above video shows, the biggest reason Walt Disney achieved his success was not in aiming at males or even kids, but specifically at mothers, showing them safe, respectable, and cute, stories their children could digest without fuss. Since these mothers were the ones taking the kids to the cinema, they were the ones he aimed his marketing at. And it worked. It worked so well it changed everything.

And it would only work if society were itself structured in a way that allowed someone with this approach that level of control to begin with, not to mention a climate the prioritized safety over adventure. It is no wonder arts and entertainment became so feminized over the 20th century: that's the only direction it could possibly go, and go there it did. It's hard to blame Walt Disney himself for finding this niche, as he did not know where it would end up, but at some point those who followed after him definitely knew, which is how it all became so easily weaponized against its own customer base. Today's culturally irrelevant Disney is a result of this hubris.

Before the fall, however, Disney was unstoppable. Their approach was how the "Disney Version" of everything not only became the default view of those stories, but also morality and wonder itself. Even those destructive groups such as PMRC or ACT were not looking for a definition of wholesome that aligned with Christianity but on Disney Safetyism, itself an ideology a lot of Christians hold to this day without even seeming to realize it. Much of the 1950s stereotypes held up as the ideal (or evil) are not even 1950s ideals: they are the Disney movie version of reality.

Not only that, but the subversive entertainment to become prominent by the end of the 20th century was not reacting to any sort of objective morality or overarching view of goodness: they were reacting to the Disney view as if it were the default. Look how many still portray knights as either savage hypocritical killing machines or ignorant rubes taken up by liars (maybe even both!) which is not an inversion of reality, but a cartoon version they grew up with. You have plenty of swearing and blood in your mature story because the Disney version didn't have it, because your version of mature is effectively just Not Disney. This is not mature, but when Disney is seen as the default, perception is skewed. It is skewed not only for proponents, but also detractors.

In other words, almost all of our modern conception of storytelling, good or bad, is built on a misunderstanding formed by one man's brand that originated from nearly a century ago. This is just one great mess of nonsense, so it's no wonder younger generations find it so confusing to parse how we got to where we are today.

This is the point where one realizes that we are what we consume, and we have not been consuming reality for a long time.

In Part 2 of the series, our host moves from Fairy Tales and how they were (mostly) unintentionally co-opted and into how it affected the younger generations at the time before they were then spread to the younger generations to come. In other words, it is how Disneyfication works and how it's changed since Walt Disney was alive. And make no mistake, it has absolutely changed.

By the 1990s, Disney had grown so fat and profitable that it ended up invading every medium, every space, and every corner of the culture. Any Gen Y kids alive today would surely remember the onslaught of Disney products and noise everywhere they looked back then. It was never actually considered "cool" for guys to be into it, but that didn't mean they weren't exposed to the Disney brand at every opportunity.

This paired with both the subversion obsession of the era (again, based on Disney's wholesomeness, not the real deal), the pussification of reading as seen for girls, geeks, and weirdos, and the ubiquitous presence of the Disney brand itself, you ended out the century with a generation raised on corporate product while detached from the cultural roots it came from, yet also fed a constant diet of anti-social messaging (simultaneously paired with multi-cultural We Are The World weirdness) finally creating a generation that would be a made into a good global citizen. This concentrated unreality pushed as the New Normal would fix everything.

By the time the 2000s rolled around and the 20th century passed, everything that made Disney what it was in the first place had been destroyed, paved over, and co-opted by either Disney themselves or subversives twisting itself on the Disney view. In essence, reality had been completely supplanted by this new unreality.

Even when 9/11 came around to shatter this Disney reality as unrealistic and impossible, we clung to it all the tighter. When the media told us the Bad Guys were doing Bad Things, we snarked at them and obediently believed we could fix it all by Being Good in the acceptable way. What were these definitions of good and bad built on? They were Disney forgeries, not necessarily created by Walt Disney, but formed by a co-opting of his simplistic formula and corniness to create a weird subset of Adults who weren't Adults, but Kids who proudly Never Grew Up. Unreality.

All of this destruction originated from the same place, the same attitude.

The phenomenon of Disney Adults today is frequently focused on in the most blatant and obvious manner. We think of the ones who go to to Disney theme parks and whine about everything while acting like brats or the ones who go online to stalk or obsessively tear down anyone who dares think different from the modern Disney Media Conglomerate. However, the mentality does not stop with those obsessed with Disney (or even Disney adjacent properties like Star Wars or Marvel which are no different) but also consumes the forgery of reality known as Geek Culture.

Geek Culture itself is a mutation, born out of the 2000s where the media companies attempted to sell a Geek image to build itself a sort of Disney-like acolyte out of. All Geeks love all Geeky Products! What are Geeky Products? Why, things you were made fun of by those icky normal types who are now trying to co-opt your hobbies to control for themselves out of the blue for some reason. Forget that all of the product and brands were originally sold to kids by the millions for a quarter of a century before: you're special and unique for liking an IP and defending it against the normals (or let's just stop beating around the bush: "normies") who are invading your hobbies because . . . well, they just decided to one day. How dare they? This space was made for you so you could be cordoned off from the world and live in your own reality away from them.

You are superior and above the normie, after all: it's in their name! They're "normal" and normal is inferior. You are not normal; you're better.

Forget that normal people have no ideological compulsion to invade spaces and change them, and forget that these spaces have always been swarming with normal people (you just either never noticed them or paid attention), but it also gives cover to actual subversives to come in because all they need to do is learn the secret codewords and jargon and they can to anything they want when they get in the door. This is also what did eventually happen to Disney before it happened to anything else. These aren't normal people: they're self-centered obsessives who want control, because they are special and above everyone else.

This happened because at a certain point we became aware at how effective mass media was at altering the way people think and behave. The existence of Disney Adults even being a category at all shows just that. By the time of the "Disney Renaissance" in the late 1980s, the people in the company knew what they had and became more aggressive at pushing out what they wanted using the Disney formula but wrapped in the growing irony and cynicism of the time period. It eventually did bottom out, but by that time Disney had seized so much cultural capital (and other studios like Pixar) that they were able to weather the storm and survive like a cockroach in nuclear fallout.

That is why those who think Disney was "taken over" by weirdos or subversives are kind of missing the point. They have a vision now, one obtained through unreality, and they will work to make it real. They are so blinded by this falsehood at this point that in their quest to finally acquire the male demographic with Star Wars and Marvel they absolutely feminized and gutted them without even the least bit of subtlety, and are now scrambling for a way to get males without them somehow. As if they have already forgotten what they did wrong to begin with. No one could behave this way without having been soaked in Unreality for too long.

In other words, they are now lost and spinning out. Disney's peak has passed and as their own works have finally begun to hit the public domain (ironic, isn't it?) and they are quickly learning that very truth. That era is over, and we now are seeing the mistakes for what they were.

This is what the third and final part of Cartoon Aesthetics' series shows. We can now see the end result of the Disney Corporation's conquest of the modern world and the conquest of Fairy Tales. We see the end result of where it ended up: a soulless and empty husk of safe morality and shiny words which ultimately mean nothing and added up to nothing of value, at the end of the day. We see what a post-Disney world is all about.

Not to say that Disney itself never had value or produced anything of worth, but where its philosophy and direction eventually lead to could never go anywhere else. They weren't even necessarily the source of all of this, but more of a spirit of the times finally reaching its end point. The spirit of the 20th century is what it is, and it's long past expired.

The end result of the all of this is in the atomized dead end world we now inhabit. There is no more Pop Culture, there is no more shared monoculture, and there are no more shared values. Just as third places, local community, and the concept of identity itself has been subverted and hollowed out by modernity, so too is the remainder of old empires like the Disney corporation a vapid husk of what it once was. Old IPs made by much more talented and inspired people being worn as a skinsuit by modern Disney Adults who have no higher aspiration than to be a Good Person dictated by whatever the Good Guys in charge of them tell them is Good. Thus their own works must be constantly subverted and "updated" with modern morality and acceptable verbiage. It never ends.

Go get drunk with your friends in Disney World as you celebrate your 35th birthday. That is clearly what Walt himself intended, right? What higher aspiration can you even imagine with a mentality like that.

Nothing truly eternal can be built on or even built in the first place. All that remains is a race to the bottom of lowering standards, tired tropes and aesthetics, and emptiness disguised with bright colors and loud noises. This is the post-Disney world.

We have since lost sight of the original Fairy Tales and their aim to show us the world as it is in multiple forms. Storytelling itself is meant to present wonder, excitement, fascination, and awe--not to lock it down to trope lists, acceptable corporate language, and a weapon against your very neighbors. We have completely inverted them and in the process, lost ourselves.

Until we work to reclaim it, nothing will improve. As the above series subtly states and ends with, unreality only leads to more unreality. People cannot live in proximity with those who do not share their reality: we have all of history to show what that eventually grows into becoming. One vision will have to prevail in the end: and the one less than a century old that itself has been rotted out from the inside is not going to do much other than lead people to pills, head doctors, and the bottle. Which, unfortunately, is exactly what has happened to us.

The only solution is to go back, to remember where those Fairy Tales came from in the first place, and to build off them once again. Dead end roads and failed experiments must eventually be seen for what they are and be abandoned. Truth is more important than lies, and the best stories cannot lie: they can only tell the truth.

Truth is older than trends, it means more than sentimentality, and it runs deeper than cute images and saccharine catchphrases. It has to be rediscovered and reclaimed before everything falls apart worse than it already has. Thankfully, it is not too late yet.

There is more to everything than what we see. It is about time our stories finally reflected that again, otherwise unreality is all we will ever know. We cannot live without truth, we can only exist, and that will never be enough, not when we were made for more than this.

This is what Fairy Tales are for, after all. Until our stories change, we will not, and they cannot change until our perspective does. Here's hoping we manage before it is too late.

A story of a lost soul and a radio station playing in his head! Read Lightning Jim in Mistcreek Tales out now!

Based Books For Male Readers Sale

Find it Here!

July might be ending, but that doesn't mean there are no surprises to be had! For instance, here is a new book sale created for male readers. Looking for a good read for a guy in your life? Here is the chance to join in on something really fun!

Running from Wednesday, July 30th (today!) to Tuesday, August 5th, you will have your pick of exciting books made for a male audience. Find the sale over here!

Books on the sale page will be rotated among the selections every day, so new books will be at the top of the page as it goes. Therefore, if you missed something there's always a chance it will be more visible on another day. So be sure to keep checking. We're going to need more male readers going forward if we want to create a better industry, after all.

My book, Brutal Dreams, is a part of this sale!

A Living Nightmare 

After awakening in the woods, Christopher Archer finds himself trapped in a world outside of time. Fog monsters, armed gangsters, and a legendary spear, all await his arrival. But what about the fiancé who disappeared months ago?

As Archer explores this eternal midnight, he can only wonder—is this all just a dream, or is there something more hidden in the dark, watching his every move?

There is one choice. He must traverse the nightmare and learn the truth.

In other news, as mentioned earlier I am currently serializing my next non-fiction work, Fantasy Isn't Real, on the Patreon, as I work out the details on a few other projects. If you enjoyed my previous works in this style, you're going to want to read this one. It's going to be very much in the style of those controversial ones.

There's more to come but since this summer has been way too hectic and unpredictable it'll be some time before I can shake out exactly what is coming next. Regardless, if you want a preview, the Patreon is the place to be. I also have nearly 30 podcast episodes and two exclusive complete serials up on it with more to come. Joining definitely helps with production in these crazy times. You are also free to join in on the comments and offer feedback yourself. There's quite a lot there.

That's all for this short update post. Thanks for a wild July and I'll see you again in August!

Summer's not quite done yet!

Mistcreek Tales is out next week with my new story, Lightning Jim! Check out the complete story list below!

The Big Summer Booksale!

Find it Here!

It's that time of year again!

Get yourself 300 books, each for either a buck or free for one week only! Have your choice of some of the best NewPub has to offer from writers you already enjoy or maybe new ones you've never stumbled across before. There is no limit to what you might find.

It's a bit overwhelming with choice these days, but with the mainstream offering little of value you have more than enough choice in the independent NewPub space. With over 300 to choose from, you won't be bored anytime soon.

For myself, you can find the Gemini Man series on sale and, for the first time ever, The Pulp Mindset! I would jump on that one if I were you, because this is a one time thing. Amazon's parameter's for sales are getting more obtuse, which makes the time to be able to even do sales in the first place bizarre. Heck, sometimes you can only choose specific regional stores to do it. So be sure to jump on it for one of the few times I can guarantee it'll be there at all.

Aside from myself, there is quite the selection. Let me highlight a few to jump on, if you have yet to do so yet. I'm going to try more obscure books that even I might have missed on previous posts like this one. I myself haven't read (most) of these, it's just a chance to highlight a work or author that might become lost in the shuffle. See for yourself if it's for you.

Legends of Atlameria: Harbinger of Worlds End

Find it Here!

There exists a fine line between truth and legend, in the heart of Atlameria.

Following an encounter in a deadly forest, two unlikely souls must join as one—or perish alone. Outcast shape-changer, called Ursakar by his people; Thorn struggles to understand the mysteries of his shadowed past while bearing the burden of an even more uncertain future. Meanwhile, the huntress tasked with the execution of his kind, Keira is forced to question the nature of her mission and whether those of her ruling order are as noble as they appear. Past and present soon collide with the discovery of a relic both ancient and prophetic in design.

Drums of war resound from the north, yet the two find themselves beset by a far greater threat near at hand—the same darkness that prompted the downfall of those who dwelt amongst these lands long ago. Against an enemy all but forgotten to the sands of time, even the unlikeliest of allies will prove better than none. A harbinger of the end approaches, but only those with the eyes to see can forestall its inevitability.

The Kings of Corona

Find it Here!

Mauregal wants to marry his girlfriend, run his brewery, and enjoy his friends in sixth-century Britain; but the valley of Palavel is ruled by a series of capricious tyrants whose every whim is enforced by the mysterious Corona. Then a knight and his squire visit with news of a king named Arthur of a different sort, and things begin to change--but the power of the Corona must still be reckoned with. This is a young-adult Arthurian fantasy mystery tale, with a sprinkling of libertarian and Christian themes.

A Case of Lycans

Find it Here!

The central city of Cathedral is tumultuous at the best of times. These are not the best of times for the troublesome big city. Murderers masquerading as werewolves terrorized Cathedral. Corrupt law enforcement masquerading as justice seekers handicaps the city. False falling crimes statistics masquerading as actual facts haunts Cathedral. Bad intentions masquerading as good intentions intensifies the woes of the mega metropolis.

It is difficult to be a police detective in the twisted city of Cathedral at the best of times. Again, these are not the best of times. Cathedral homicide detectives, Lt. Eddie Knighton and Detective Emily Oftenmarch, known as the mud tusslers, diligently work to solve the ongoing homicides in the city of Cathedral while encountering the wrongdoings of killers dressed as werewolves. Those killers cloaked as werewolves leave a trail of unsolved murders. It becomes the pair of detectives' duty to sort werewolf themed homicidal maniacs from everyday homicidal maniacs.

To make the mud tusslers' job more difficult, private law enforcement companies focused on profitability disguise themselves as institutions for serving and protecting the public. Cathedral police policy disguised as departmental improvements impedes their progress. Malicious misdeeds camouflaged as madness complicates their investigations. Criminals are not as they appear to be, crimes are not what they seem to be, and the crimes of the evil are shrouded by the crimes of the wicked.

What a tangled web the citizens and employees of Cathedral weave when they practice to deceive. Emily and Eddie battle to untangle the devious deceptions of lycans, liars, and lunatics. The more they sleuth the more the dastardly duplicity in Cathedral becomes complicated. Crime begets crime, skullduggery begets skullduggery, and the masquerading murders continue to befuddle the police. Sin never ceases in a city that never sleeps. The sum of all this deception and macabre crime is enough to drive a detective in the urban supercenter to insanity. Or are they insane?

Where will the werewolves strike next? What is their motive? Wait, was that a werewolf over there?

Holding the Line: Book One of The Long Watch

Find it Here!

𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐮𝐩 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝟏𝟖-𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫-𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐲 𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫.

His mother had died so long ago, he could barely remember her. Now he lives with his alcoholic janitor father in the basement of the 150-year-old New Territorial Military Institute. Growing up at the prestigious, low-profile military academy, Danny had watched as the Territorial discretely provided a college education for the sons and daughters of politicians and royal families across the world, as well as the children of the rich and dysfunctional.

Beginning his freshman year at the Territorial on a “child of an employee” scholarship, Danny has a simple plan: graduate, leave behind his widowed drunk of a dad, and get the hell out of Wyoming.

That was before his home exploded. Before he met the sickly, spooky Tatiana who could See. Before the whispers in the night.

And that was before things got really weird.

Star Core: Wild Space

Find it Here!

In a war-ravaged solar system where Earth clings to the remnants of its fractured colonies, the only thing more dangerous than venturing into the unknown is what lies within it.

The elite Star Core have been tasked with an impossible mission: to infiltrate the uncharted territories beyond the Kuiper Belt—known as Wild Space—and neutralize a threat that could plunge the entire system into chaos. But Wild Space is no ordinary frontier. It’s a lawless expanse filled with rogue warlords, ruthless pirates, and remnants of humanity’s darkest secrets.

The Star Core’s mission will push them to their limits, testing their courage, loyalty, and their very humanity.

When the team uncovers the shocking truth about a legendary war criminal thought long dead, the stakes are raised higher than they ever imagined. With the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, the Core must navigate a deadly game of cat and mouse, where every decision could mean the difference between survival and oblivion.

Filled with heart-pounding action, relentless suspense, and deep space intrigue, Star Core: Into Wild Space is a thrilling ride that will leave you breathless. In the farthest reaches of space, where the lines between friend and foe blur, how far will they go to protect the future of mankind?

Prepare for a journey like no other, into the heart of darkness, and beyond.

The Arid Lands

Find it Here!

The Tyrhennians struggle to survive in the dried out basin of an ancient ocean. Inez knows no other world than this endless cycle of heat and brine, but listens to the stories of a distant land of great cities and endless seas.

She never believed them, until the day her brother is injured by a strange craft crossing the desolate plains. So she discovers that the stories are true. But as she tries to find her brother in a strange city she realises that she is not the only person from the salt plains here. Others from the Arid Lands have infiltrated the city - and they have a plan.

Coming to Power

Find it Here!

There’s another Earth, just a few steps away from ours, and it’s under siege by a dark, hungry god. It’s a planet where ancient enchantments still rule, where human society is built on the ruins of something greater. It’s calling for a hero.

An angelic guardian finds Jon on the run for killing his best friend’s murderer in defense. The spirit gives him a way out - travel to this other Earth and fight.

It brings him into the battle, praising him for being the first to answer the call in ages. Blessed with magic he could never have imagined, Jon begins his quest for the bloody shadow.

But the mad god knows he’s coming, and he’s got a legion of monsters ready and waiting.

The Mousetrap Murders

Find it Here!

A man wakes up in his car, unaware of how he got there...

Shaken by his loss of memory, he drives home, not knowing that in twenty-four hours he will be in jail, arrested for the kidnapping and murder of a missing college student. Though a mountain of evidence points to his guilt, this man, Julian Gutierrez, maintains his innocence. He is sentenced to Death Row, set to be executed for a crime he knows he did not commit, yet having no way of escaping his deadly and unjust fate.

That is, until the day a postcard arrives.

It claims to be from a witness that knows he is innocent. It is now up to Julian's sister and her husband to find out the truth before his time runs out. What they uncover is a mystery bigger than any of them could possibly imagine.

And in the shadows is a foe, calling himself The Fulcrum, waiting for the day that someone comes knocking, knocking at the door of the mousetrap he has constructed.

Shadow Hand Blues

Find it Here!

In 1954 budding blues virtuoso Waymon "Tornado" Fuller is executed for the murder of a North Carolina woman.

In 1994 nomadic hot-rodder, moonlighting private investigator and blues aficionado Deke Jones stumbles upon Fuller's guitar, triggering a mudslide of buried truths. Fuller's innocence is one revelation. Another is “Shadow Hand Blues”--the last song he recorded, which Jones has never heard of.

An impromptu search for the studio where the recording session took place leads Jones to a small hippie town seemingly still enjoying the Summer of Love, where the psychedelic atmosphere turns from surreal to hostile when he begins asking questions.

Vintage Fender Telecaster in one hand, steering wheel of his radical Cyclone Spoiler II in the other, Deke Jones launches a one-man crusade to exonerate the infamous musician and find the obscure recording. The blood trails are 40 years cold, but neither corrupt good ol' boy cops, sex industry sadists, nor fanatical pyramid-schemers can throw Deacon Jones off this case. This investigative pilgrimage propels Jones right into the bloodstained fingers of a clandestine power elite Tornado Fuller called the Shadow Hand.

Cayote Cal: Tales from the Weird West

Find it Here!

There's Trouble on the Range

In these thrilling tales from yesteryear, Coyote Cal and his trusty sidekick Big Yap encounter a wizard able to change his shape at will, a scheming witch, a confused zombie, la chupacabra grande, bloodthirsty vampyres, and other sordid fiends. Our heroes will have to rely on their wits, skills, and loads of hot lead to ensure justice prevails.

This volume collects all 9 weird western stories in the Coyote Cal Adventure Series, including:

"Fool's Gold" - Coyote Cal and Big Yap encounter their most challenging adversary yet: a Portuguese wizard able to change his shape at will. Our heroes will have to rely on their wits, skills, and loads of hot lead if they hope to foil this shape-shifter's evil schemes before he ends them, once and for all.

"Coyote Cal's Guide to the Weird, Wild West" - Coyote Cal must match wits with Donna "the Witch" Jamison, a master of the dark arts intent on planting him in the ground. Cal has stood toe to toe with his fair share of villains in the past--but this time, he's up against something altogether different in the form of a metal-mouthed gunslinger named Sleepy Rider and his dead brother, Easy.

"El Diablo de Paseo Grande" - Something's attacking the livestock outside the little town of Paseo Grande, and our heroes are hot on the monster's trail. But Coyote Cal, Big Yap, and Donna "the Witch" Jamison may have bitten off more than they can chew this time, and only one of them will be able to save the day -- or die trying.

"Harbinger of Arroyo Seco" - Like many heroes, Coyote Cal was once a boy... There's a storm brewing over the town of Arroyo Seco, and a sheriff with his uncanny eye on the future sees nothing but trouble for our hero-in-the-making. In love with an older woman and hunted by a gang of outlaws seeking retribution, young Calvin must walk a fine line between protecting the one he loves and becoming a ruthless killer.

The Rooster Rider

Find it Here!

On the borderlands of Wales, the newly knighted Sir Thomas of Barley Mill Cross, astride his mighty warhorse Rooster, recklessly challenges an evil Witch. Through her black arts, the Witch gets the better of Sir Thomas and Rooster. In the aftermath of the encounter, Rooster is an actual rooster, and Thomas is left size of a child’s doll. Torn from their own world and cast down among the small creatures of forest and farm, they are drawn into a savage conflict...the vicious weasel clans are conquering all the small creatures.

The small creatures need a hero. Desperately.

Thomas and Rooster’s only wish is to be restored, the witch magic broken, to return to their old lives. But Thomas is a knight who will live or die by his Oath, and he will not turn his back on those in need. Finding his way among the small creatures, knight and steed make friends willing to die by their side in battle, and make enemies willing to sacrifice themselves to send Thomas and Rooster to their doom.

In the chaos of war, Thomas and Rooster must find a way to stop the weasel clans and their wicked allies in time to have the spells binding them undone. This must happen before the witch is executed for her crimes. But will they make it? Or will they be forever cursed in their altered states, to follow the Oath along a path unlike any a knight has ever travelled?

Gods & Proxies

Find it Here!

WHEN THE GODS GO TO WAR, YOU HAD BETTER BE SURE THE ONE YOU SERVE WILL PREVAIL...

The invisible god, El Elyon, has promised the young nation of Yacov their own homeland. Trouble is, the land is full of giants, backed up by a pantheon of gods who would rather see Yacov slaughtered to a man.

And they are just men. The Yacovites are desert nomads without even enough swords for all their militia.

Salmon and Othniel are two of the young soldiers who must face the gigantic warriors in battle, starting at the fortress city of Bet-Yariq, with formidable walls that only giants empowered by gods could build.

Brave men's hearts melt with fear. The very planet reels to and fro as if ready to tear itself apart. But though El Elyon is outnumbered by the enemy gods, and his warriors are far outclassed, he has assured them that he himself will lead them into war, and together they will beat all the odds.

Living in Times of Dragons

Find it Here!

"...as with everything in my life, all this began with dreams..."

American ex-pat, father and widower, Roger Rommel, did not believe in dragons. Unfortunately, they did not return the sentiment.

After returning from a self-imposed exile to his adopted country of South Africa, Roger is confronted by these legendary fire-breathing reptiles who risked exposing their hidden world simply to hunt him. Gifted with the ability to create and enter dreams, as well as to see the future, he tries to survive and protect his son from enemies he does not understand. But the past is alive, and he finds himself linked to a conflict thousands of years old.

The world he knew is now stranger, more fantastic and terrifying than he truly knew, especially when everyone is out to get you.

That Axe Anciently Was Mine: Swords & Seventies

Find it Here!

What if the hero of a savage and ancient land returned from the deep mists of time?

Samuel Rider is a man out of time and place. A man with a destiny undreamed of.
Necromancers and demons, werewolves and the undead. The villains and monsters of legend lurk still in the night, unseen by most.

Samuel battles the strange, the deadly, and the unholy with a band of on-again-off-again allies in the Ancient Order of Chandlers.

Sword & Seventies – High adventure in the age of the birth of Heavy Metal!

Deathbringer

Find it Here!

Inga Alenir is a Swordbearer. She is the latest in a long line of women to inherit a magical weapon called Deathbringer. She's also dead, murdered on her wedding day by the ruthless and covetous noblewoman Yenda Avard, who steals the sword after killing Inga and her entire family.

And yet, some secrets won't stay buried. Deathbringer has a will and a consciousness of its own, and even has the power to raise Inga from the dead for a short time. It warns her that she has one week to find and retrieve the sword before death reclaims her—permanently. With each day bringing her doom and final demise ever closer, Inga will have to see just how far she's willing to go to achieve her vengeance.

DEATHBRINGER is a compositional mix between the violent, grisly hunt for revenge in the film THE NIGHTINGALE and the tale of Vasher and his talking sword Nightblood in Brandon Sanderson's WARBREAKER. Other inspiriations are Fred Saberhagen's BOOK OF SWORDS series and Michael Moorcock's ELRIC stories. Fans of dark fantasy, of tragic love stories and tales about seeking revenge against long odds will enjoy this debut novel by Blake Carpenter in the world of Agareth where a scorned, young widow fights back against the powerful elites that wronged her, and begins a journey that might turn the entire world against her.

Gun Magus

Find it Here!

Low on luck, but not ammo

The last thing Kenneth Jericho needed was a gunfight and car chase with human traffickers. What started as a bad morning only got worse.

A flash of light sends Ken to a strange world filled with magic, hideous monsters, beautiful women,
and seemingly unlimited ammo.

With pistol in hand, Ken is thrown into a race against time to stop a local ganglord's reign of terror. But is the thug the brains behind the violence, or is someone - or something - else pulling his strings?

Shoot the Devil 2: Dark Matter

Find it Here!

Welcome back to a world filled with horrors beyond count. A world where madmen fly across galaxies chasing forbidden power and ancient evil seeks to infect and eradicate all life. A world filled with heroes ready and willing to fight the darkness. To raise the crucifix and the blaster rifle to send the evil straight back to hell.

The Dragon Hand

Find it Here!

An ancient evil is returning to threaten the world—at least, that’s what one of voices in Serivak’s head is telling him.

As the only dragon in the kingdom and technically a prisoner of war, Serivak’s position as the King’s Hand via his friendship with the young king is precarious enough before the voice of one of his ancestors warned of the new threat. With the help of two young foreigners, Serivak endeavors to avert disaster—but as evidence of a conspiracy grows, his political enemies close to home may be even more dangerous.

Three Rivers Plague

Find it Here!

The unleashing of a biological weapon across the United States forces the government to begin rounding up high-profile individuals, in hopes of preserving American society. Famous rockstar Thomas Wylde, fresh off the catastrophe at his latest concert, is taken to a shelter in the sky. That is, until a member of his band falls victim to the weapon's infection, convincing him to escape into the post-apocalyptic city of Pittsburgh, now plagued by undead horrors, cults, cocaine junkies, and even the mafia. Their only hope is to find a cure to this disease before the transformation occurs. But not everyone is convinced of this new bioweapons' origins -- like Boston police detective Dick Kennedy.

It's up to Thomas and his band of survivors to discover the truth, not only about this new world, but about his government, his friends, and himself, all the while trying to carve out a slab of life for everyone and everything he cares about.

Stellar Stories: Volume 1

Find it Here!

Eight stories of rockets and robots, monsters and Martians, fistfights and beauties, wonders and awe...

A young man's blind date is kidnapped by Martians and he is drawn into her secrets. A brotherhood outside of time seeks to mend a Solar System devastated by lunatic machines. Men from a Plutonian research base confront metaphysical chaos on Charon. Two runaway sisters resolve to rescue the implanted helper-sentience of a deceased warrior. And more!

The Operators: Monster Makers

Find it Here!

The Department of SuperHuman Activities observes and polices the superpowered community in the United States. Though cooperation and open dialogue, the DSHA ensures the safety of superhumans and the public in general. Only during emergencies that regular law enforcement aren't equipped or trained to handle do they send in their emergency response team, the Operators. Led by Major Peter Hicks, the Hunter, and composed of superhumans from all over America, the Operators handle threats that others can't.

When people are killed in a series of strange animal attacks, the Operators are called to New Mexico to investigate. There, they discover a factory where monsters are made by an underground society of scientists and terrorists bent on world domination. The Operators are hard pressed to stop these monster makers in a war where safety is an illusion and not everyone will come out alive. Still, facing threats like this is their job, and it's time to get to work.

Chronologues: Tales on the Theme of Time

Find it Here!

“Time marches on...”

But in what direction? Whoever said that never clarified whether time had to always go forward, or backward, or in a straight line. In this collection, we invite you to delve into five tales that explore the beautiful, bendable, breakable nature of time itself.

“The Camera” by D.L. White
A haunting portrait of a young man who is stuck in his grief over the sudden loss of one of his best friends. A story of frozen moments in time, it is a supernatural snapshot of what happens when past regrets turn into an obsession.

“The Ladies Three” by Chad Olson
Want safe passage for your ship and crew? You can have it. The price the Ladies Three require is but an hour of one sailor’s time. An hour, and perhaps something more. But what happens when the sailor selected has plans of his own?

“The Annuity Squad” by James Kenneth Rogers
Divorced and down-on-his-luck, Ralph receives an unexpected windfall, and the promise of even more money in seven years’ time. Should he sign on the dotted line, or is it all too good to be true?

“The Theatrica Mechanica” by Eric Nilles
Discover a world of wizards, kingdoms and unusual beasts during a time of great upheaval. The peaceful and the wicked are destined to clash, a peace-loving king will discover he has been granted little time to prepare, and only by enlisting the most cunning members of his court does his kingdom have a chance to endure.

“What If?” by Debra Robic
Sylvia and Alan have lived long enough to be involuntarily housed in the State old folks’ home. Dispossessed and disempowered, they find a strange book that suggests the path out of this dystopian future might lie in changing the past — if they are brave enough.

Life Support: Secret Operations

Find it Here!

Father Tanner treats the sick and injured on a dusty backwater planet. Desperate for supplies, he takes a job to treat a visiting alien official, teaming up with Damien Rogers, an out-of-work smuggler, to get him there. The problem? They’re on the wrong side of enemy lines in the middle of a cold war.

Forced to hide their identities, Father Tanner and his team are stumped by the bizarre patient, whose condition steadily worsens. To make matters worse, the alien crew catches onto the ruse, and the missionary is forced to turn to kidnapping. Can they find the diagnosis before their only bargaining chip dies on the operating table?

Faith and Empire

Find it Here!

One Faith. One Galactic Empire. A Thousand Worlds To Convert!

In the 51st century, man has spread throughout a great swath of the galaxy without having found any sign of alien life or another habitable world. Instead, mankind has splintered into a score of bio-engineered sub-species spread out across more than a thousand terraformed worlds. The Holy Terran Empire rules over three hundred of these man-made planets. Earth, the One, True World is the Empire’s Capital. The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome governs the Empire, hand-in-hand, with the Imperial Family.

Not everyone is pleased with this arrangement.

Zephyrinus Zapatas, a dutiful citizen of the Empire and loyal son of the Church is more than happy with the Co-Dominion of Emperor and Pope. At sixteen, Zeph leaves home, seeking a life of service to the two crowns, hoping to find his opportunity by earning an invitation to join the Emperor’s Own, the elite Corps of Imperial Marines.

The Corps’ training will be arduous; its moral code, exacting, but; Zeph looks forward to the trials and the strictures. The Corps will demand sacrifices. In return, the Imperial Marines offer its recruits little more than a career fraught with peril to life and limb. Zeph is eager to accept the life, however short it might prove to be, because it comes with the chance of achieving his greatest ambition: reaching the rank of Knight Defender of the Faith and Empire.

The Holy Terran Empire is a new space opera series for anyone who can't get enough sword & blaster action.

Spengler's Future: An Outline of the Next 7 Centuries of Western History

Find it Here!

This projection of the future into the 27th century uses a simple computer program and even simpler interpretations of the Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West and Arnold Toynbee's Study of History. No, this is not a serious exercise, but it does suggest what the future would look like if the modern age really is analogous to the Hellenistic Age. Important years include 2080, 2309, and 2603.

So there you have it, 25 books out of over 300 in this year's sale, all for a buck or free. Check them out for yourself to see if they are for your liking, or maybe you might find something else that strikes your fancy instead!

I tried to focus on works that fall short of the review threshold on amazon (20 reviews) and works that have descriptions a bit out of the ordinary, of that would interest myself and any readers that share my interests. There is a lot to go through, so enjoy yourself and make some author's day by giving them a shot.

Also, as a reminder both my Gemini Man books and The Pulp Mindset are both included! Now is the chance to grab them.

As a reminder, the sale runs through Tuesday next week, so be sure to check on it before it's too late! Find yourself a new favorite NewPub writer!

That's all for this week! Have yourself a fun summer, enjoy the upcoming holiday, and I will see you again soon.

Aside from the sale, as a reminder, the new anthology Rock and Roll Mercenaries is out! 15 tales of hard rock adventure celebrating a musical genre unlike any other. Get yourself a copy today!