Pretending to write

Side blog for blathering on about a web novel I'll never post. Maybe also a bookblr blog.

[leannbolesch]

I understand that slavery is a normalized practice in the current book series I'm reading, but I was not prepared to see the protagonist hit with: "I assumed you were gay because you didn't rape your slave."

[leannbolesch]

Had no library books last week and now 3 came in all at once x_x

[leannbolesch]

Re-enactment of me when I started reading: Stone of Farewell almost a year after I finished The Dragonbone Chair

"Oh thank god it has a summary of the last book at the start!"

[leannbolesch]

I'm so dumb

I finally gave my new collapsible book stand a test and I couldn't figure out how to get one of the parts to keep from collapsing. Just wasted like 30 minutes of my life trying to look up other collapsible stands until I ended up back on the store listing for the one I got and... oops. Turns out there's one extra step that I overlooked. In hindsight, it's so obviously another moveable part to.

Anyway, the stand now works beautifully and I love it. Just a shame that the book I'm currently reading's a paperback, so I'm afraid I'll crease the spine if I use it with the stand ^_^; Ah well. Should be safe to use while I'm more in the middle of the book, and I can definitely employ it for the next hardcover I pick up.

I need to make an outing to a cafe or something just so I have an excuse to stick this in my purse.

[leannbolesch]

MGRP (on cliffhangers)

It's my own fault for (1) forgetting to keep track of when Red released to order it promptly and (2) not properly researching which all books comprised the final arc and waiting for Red's release before reading Black and White, but picking up the final book over a year after reading the previous one is jarring. I just remembered the first book ended with no deaths because of what an outlier for the series that is and forgot that the second book ended in the middle of a big battle. I probably should have gone back and re-read, since these aren't beefy books. I'm back in the swing of it now, but it was pretty off-putting to pick up in the middle of a fight that I'm expected to remember the details of.

Which has me thinking: That kind of cliffhanger definitely works way better between chapters than at the end of a book... unless, y'know, the next book's already out.

I was out and about when I read the ending to the first half of Restart, and I still remember being so desperate to know what happened next while unable to immediately open up the next book that I was anxiously pacing until I was able to go home and pick up where the first left off. But that wasn't an option when I read White. I had to wait, and this mid-clash cliffhanger that would definitely have me unable to pause between chapters just... doesn't work as well when you're left in suspense long enough to forget that's where you got left.

(Granted, Restart is the best arc, to the point that I've re-read it quite a few times, so part of that difference in suspense might also be how much more I liked the Restart cast compared to the Black, White, and Red cast.)

I'll have to keep that in mind for my own writing.

[leannbolesch]

I don't get why it isn't more standard to give word counts on books.

Like, in a pre-computer time I get it. You'd have to count manually, and publishers/agents know the general average word counts you can fit on a page with a given typeset, but like...

We live in a post-computer world. It's baffling to me when I get query instructions saying to report my word count by multiplying my total pages by X in accordance with such and such formatting guidelines rather than just going by the very precise word count my writing software provides. I can only assume this is one of those nonsenses where the publishing industry just insists on doing things as they've done them rather than adapting to new technology, but it would be so easy to just... include the word count in Amazon listings or whatever.

It's even more annoying to me as a reader than as a writer, because I know publishers are messing with font size and line spacing to make books 'feel' the right length, and you can get a 500 page book that's actually longer than a 700 page book, but the publisher for the first picked a small font and 1.0 line spacing to save on paper while the publisher for the latter used a bigger font and 1.75 spacing so that the reader would feel like they're a super reader who reads big, long books.

Mostly this annoys me in the moment because I'm setting up my storygraph annual reading goals today, and I always set the page goals to be roughly akin to [book count goal]x[lower range page count for a YA fantasy] but also I'm so aware now of how non-indicative page counts are for actual book length, and it feels pointless.

(Also my first book of the year wasn't fully input into Storygraph and whoever did add it put, I'm guessing, a semi-randomly generated page count based on the dimensions of their ereader, rather than the actual page count of the physical book, which is the edition they ostensibly uploaded data on. Which as got me paying close attention to page counts.)

[leannbolesch]

Okay. I read them both.

I wouldn't have known that The Conqueror's Shadow existed except that I read Shadow of the Conqueror and, while looking up the reviews/comments of other people who thought 'twas bad, saw someone claiming it was plagiarizing the other book.

My verdict on if 'twas: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They're both about a former conqueror who's gone to live in some remote area after things fell apart, and any other similarities beyond that feel like pretty logical directions to take that premise. An enemy who's trying to replicate something the original conqueror did is a pretty thematically appropriate threat to have them thwart, and having to face people they directly wronged or deal with the mistrust their past actions sowed just makes sense. You could make some broad stroke comparisons on those grounds, but the way that everything plays out is pretty different. Even the whole "villain is modeling themselves after the hero's past self" thing is a stretch of a comparison, because TCS's whole inciting incident is an explicit imitator warlord deliberately harassing Corvis to draw him out of retirement, and SotC's inciting incident is Daylen failing to off himself through the powers of plot armor and then deciding to play vigilante until randomly stumbling into a plot to reinstate some old ideals of his somewhere like 75% of the way through the book.

If anything was stolen, it was just the broad premise of "former conqueror who's since gone to live a quiet life goes on a new adventure." Otherwise, I think the stories are about as reasonably different as they could be for having that shared premise.

Weird about the names tho.

If the premise interests anyone, I do recommend The Conqueror's Shadow. 'Twas a pretty solid fantasy with a likable cast and just enough warfare stuff for my taste, and while there's a sequel, it wraps up in a way where you don't have to pick up the next book if you don't wanna. If "So bad it's good" books interested you, I had a time with Shadow of the Conqueror. It's actually making me chuckle here and now to think of how TCS has a relatively soft magic system while SotC is rigid as graphene, yet TCS is the one with zero BS copouts or illogical applications of its magic. I can't properly rant about the magic in SotC because the issues are too numerous for me to not get tangled up in tangents.

[leannbolesch]

I have managed to finish All The Books before year's end, despite having like 600 pages to read across the three books I was in the middle of as of last Sunday. This pleases me for the very persnickety reason that I want my book tracker app to have my annual reading goals count books that I read strictly in a given calendar year, rather than, say, having a book I read 90% of in 2025 instead be counted as a 2026 book because I read the last little bit after January 1.

That being said, reading has been the primary thing I did the last couple... weeks, actually. For reasons, I actually had five books to finish in the past two weeks, including one I had to start within that time span. (Two I had to start, if you count the one I didn't wanna read and then got to DNF because the family book group decided to cancel it in favor of another.) So now I'm on such a reading high that I kinda... wanna just start the next book, rather than wait until midnight.

Bah! I'll read a fanfic or something. I don't count fanfics in the book tracker, so it's fine if I'm in the middle of one of those when the year changes over.

I've been feeling sad about all the time I haven't had to play video games while trying to frantically finish 5 or 6 books in two weeks. You'd think I'd be all "Whooo! Vidya time!" now that I've not only finished the books but also don't wanna start another before midnight, and instead I'm sitting here feeling sad that I can't start another before midnight.

[leannbolesch]

Okay. I'm officially mad at this book.

"Why the locals all did not flee was not only a good question, it was the only question."

What the heck. I love this sentence so much. How dare Goldman write a sentence that I love so much more than any I've written as of late. The nerve.

[leannbolesch]

Woe be unto me to actually criticize this book because it's been a delight on literally every page and books don't usually remain relevant in pop culture for 50 years unless they have a stellar movie adaptation a very good story and writing to drive their success. But I'm still not over how it took <100 pages to get to Chapter 5, an then Chapter 5 was like 120 pages. I guess it works with the narrative frame of this being an "abridged version" and some chapters having more fat to cut than others, but that's a crazy disparity.

[leannbolesch]

I read too much manga

Reading The Princess Bride for the first time after having last seen the movie back when I was 7 or 8, and I'm admittedly a little shocked to realize "Inigo Montoya" is a Spanish name. You could totally spell it with hiragana and I'm just now realizing I sort of... assumed he was Japanese.

[leannbolesch]

I started reading Empire of the Vampire and I'm not sure I appreciate how it occasionally slaps me across the face with the fact that it's technically written in 3rd person.

[blackheartbiohazards]

➡️ Content warnings on fiction are a courtesy. 

➡️ Not every medium of fiction and storytelling has or is expected to have content warnings or extensive tagging.

➡️ Print novels do not traditionally warn for content in any way.

➡️ Until AO3 came along, fanfiction did not traditionally warn for content in any significant way.

➡️ An author is only obligated to warn for content to the degree mandated by the format they publish their fiction on.

➡️ Content warnings beyond the minimum are a courtesy, not an obligation.

➡️ 'Creator chose not to warn' is a valid tag that authors are allowed to use on AO3. It means there could be anything in there and you have accepted the risk. 'May contain peanuts!'

➡️ Writers are allowed to use 'Creator chose not to warn' for any reason, including to maintain surprise and avoid spoilers.

➡️ 'Creator chose not to warn' is not the same thing as 'no archive warnings apply'.

➡️ It is your responsibility to protect yourself and close a book, or hit the back button if you find something in fiction that you're reading that upsets you.

➡️ You are responsible for protecting yourself from fiction that causes you discomfort.

[leannbolesch]

This is my new favorite book review. Ma'am, what is your star rating system?

[leannbolesch]

I really want to be an indie book supporter, but it's kinda...

I don't know if Michael Sullivan counts in the same way, since he has some trad deals and his original series got a trad re-release that saw some level of editing, and he's definitely at the success level where he can pay for all the editing and ancillary services to compete with trad in terms of professionalism. But like... his stuff was pretty polished.

The last indie I otherwise read had, among other glaring issues, inconsistent name spellings mid-page in the first chapter. Now this one's got a sentence with words missing. I've seen glaring typos slip into trad books too and even loved a book that retconned a major character's name, but those all at least got at least half a book in, if not a few installments, before missing a spot of polish.

At least this one otherwise seems like it'll do better character writing than the last one I tried out. Well report back later with final thoughts.

[noodles-07]

this is possibly my favorite doesthedogdie dot com screenshot of all time. no it had a happy ending it just sucked ass. the characters were happy but I was not

[leannbolesch]

Me whenever the main duo go their separate ways at the end of the series, having grown from their time together so that their critical character flaws no longer hold them back from the different life goals they'd both expressed a desire for back in book one.

I understand that it works but I want them to stay together darn it!

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Seriously, you never know what you're gonna find in a library book.

[leannbolesch]

I mostly find hairs. Nail clippings feel more deliberate.