My book

xBlackWolfx · Post by **xBlackWolfx** » Tue Oct 11, 2016 3:18 am

I think it may be a good idea to make another thread about this, considering that this topic was obviously not the original intent of my previous thread.

As I've mentioned on this forum, I'm working on writing a superhero book. Today, I decided to look into self-promotion, which is something I will have to do if I hope to sell a single book.

I really don't know how I can do it. The one thing every seems to recommend is to use social media. I used to have a facebook account, but I deleted it. Besides, I had no friends on there anyway. I literally have no social life in the real world, or even online. Even if I did re-open an account, I doubt it would draw much attention. And well, I'm not an interesting person myself. I'm a loser, a nobody. I'll be turning 30 in December, and I have never had a job in my life (for reasons that were out of my control), and I live with my mother whom I am completely dependent on. I only have a high school diploma, because out local college offers virtually nothing now; I suspect it'll close down in a few years. And my mother is thousands of dollars in debt, mostly because she had to buy herself a house and everything when she divorced my father. She's actually nearing retirement age, is hopelessly in debt, and has no retirement fund. So yeah. And what's really ironic, she's doing better than most everyone else in this county. I often refer to where I live as a 'third-world back-water', even though I live in the United States.

And no, there's no comic shop here either, or even a bookstore. There used to be one when I was a child, but its long gone, and the building it used to be in is now a clothing store. There was a place here that did sell comics, but they decided to close down and do all their business online. The building got taken over by a guy who mostly just sells magic the gathering and board games. And besides, the census shows my home town only has a population of 2,000 people, so advertising myself locally wouldn't really do much good. Honestly, the best I can probably do is just throw something out there and hope its good enough that people start talking about it.

Another problem I have is, well the theme I was going for. Like I've said in another thread I made long long ago, I prefer to leave science out of my superhero world. For one, I don't see why a society would be no more advanced than us when they have all these super scientists around. I also don't really have a very positive opinion of science. The few scientist characters I've thought up at all evil. And really, I don't really care for science fiction anyway. The problem is, I was planning on putting a heavier emphasis on magic to compensate. I don't know how people would feel about a superhero world where a lot of the characters have a supernatural theme to them. Yes, there's more typical supers running around, but still. And really, I was thinking of making do with an idea I had. I had an idea for a superhero group for Black Iron (the city I mentioned in my Black Chameleon actual play) called 'The Guardians'. Simply put, they're a group of five magic-themed characters that fight the various supernatural cults that operate in Black Iron. But I've never really made them, mostly because its really hard to make 5 distinct characters each with a strong magic theme. I've only really thought up 3. One is doctor fate/doctor strange. Another is a guy in armor with an energy sword he can re-shape into anything he can imagine. And the third was just a guy with a horse he could summon at will. The third guy never got anywhere btw. I haven't even tried to stat any of them out in the game. I would really like to have that last Awesome Powers book. I honestly find it annoying that the one book I need most for my setting, is probably not going to come out for another year or two at best. No offense, and I do realize that magic is normally a pretty minor and often ignored part of superhero lore.

Do I have other groups I can go with? Yeah. I also thought about there being another group called 'The Wardens', who were simply a superhero group that worked at a mental hospital for people with superpowers. I also had an idea for a justice league-esque group that I haven't really fleshed out much. One of their members is basically an immortal who once live in the wild west but gained the powers of superman essentially. Basically, he's superman with the mind of a sheriff from a wild-west town. Another guy was just a straight-up parody of Captain America. And the third was a guy with powerful telekinetic abilities. He's the only really original one. Never bothered to come up with more than that, because honestly they more exist just to flesh out the backstory of the world. I don't actually care for them.

Anyway, I have a lot of woes right now, obviously. I have no idea how I'm going to promote my book, I live with my mother who is hopelessly in debt, and I don't even know if people into superheroes will even buy into my book. Yeah, the doctor strange movie may help, but it'll probably be at least another year or two before my book comes out, I'm certain all the fervor will have died down by then.

Post by **BASHMAN** » Wed Oct 12, 2016 5:47 pm

Is your book idea a novel or an RPG related material? I can't really give advice on publishing a novel, but via RPGnow and DriveThruRPG.com, it is possible to self-publish your own RPG material.

Promoting that material may mean biting the bullet and creating some Social Media accounts. You don't have to have a lot of online friends; join groups. There are lots of groups on Facebook and other Social Media websites that have hundreds or thousands of members.

xBlackWolfx · Post by **xBlackWolfx** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 12:34 am

I'm trying to write a novel. I've been wanting to since I was in middle school, its literally the career path I decided to take. Back then though, it was easy to live off of your book. Now, not so much. Now a days, really the only reason you would try is because you enjoy it. For me, its more its just the only thing I can really do. I have no college education, no way to get one, never even had a job before. There's no way I could get myself hired. If I want to make money, I'll have to do it unemployed.

I'm hesitant to use facebook, because well I have a lot of mental issues and that's rather apparent on my account. I've since disabled it. I could make another, if I could get myself a new email. I used to use yahoo and well, now I'm trying to avoid using it as much as possible. I don't know what I'm going to do about that. I tried to sign up to gmail, but after reading the privacy agreement, I immediately deleted that account. Yeah, my life's a mess. But you are right, the only way I can promote myself is to join a group on facebook or some forum and get active on that. I guess I'll just have to sign up for gmail and go with that.

Post by **BASHMAN** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 10:17 am

If you are worried about issues of what you type getting you in trouble, etc. it is important that you compartmentalize your social media account. You would need to think of this as "This is the company account" rather than a personal account. Even if the account is using your actual name, think of that as your brand, not your personal account to talk about whatever you feel like doing. It is a business account for doing business things.

xBlackWolfx · Post by **xBlackWolfx** » Sat Oct 15, 2016 2:31 pm

I finished reading that book.

[spoiler]
First off, I have to see he is a VERY good writer. But I didn't like the story he told. Penny wanted so bad to be a hero and not a villain, but she could never achieve that no matter what she did. And then he gets sucked into the super villain community, which is full of characters that a child should obviously NOT be around, where she is manipulated into doing something against her will just to keep from being outed. And in the end, even when she defies the spider and tries to sabotage her plan, she is still branded a villain by the media AND the spider at least apparently decides to forgive them, for w/e ungodly reason, so what they did didn't even get them ejected from the supervillain community. And in the end, she just accepts it. I did kind of suspect that honestly, looking at the titles for the next two books in the series. But still, I would've preferred to have read a book about a superHERO, because that's what I'm having problems with writing.

Anyway, I bought the book primarily because how it was advertised: he found a way to make a silver-age superhero world make logical sense. And I thought, well if he could do it, then I could to. Granted, I'm not interest in silver age stuff, but that's beside the point. I couldn't find much information online, other than him explaining how supers keep their identities secret. So I bought the book and tried to learn from that. I don't know if I'm stupid or what, but I didn't really see it. Perhaps it was because it wasn't explicitely explained, outside the fact that heroes and villains have a truce of some kind, which apparently doesn't prevent heroes from arresting villains, but keeps them from messing with them in their own neighborhood.

I may need to meditate on it a bit so make sense of his world. I'm not too keen on reading the rest of the series though. He's a superb writer, don't get me wrong, I just don't like what he writes about. The description of the author (which has to be the weirdest description I've ever seen) mentions that he prefers to write villain characters. Lovely. I will still ponder his book, to try and decipher the rules of his world, but I don't think I'll invest in the rest of the series.
[/spoiler]

Solarblast · Post by **Solarblast** » Sat Oct 15, 2016 10:12 pm

I once ran a Champions campaign were all the characters had to have a mystical/magic background. The back story was that a very old wizard and his wizard brother had been battling an evil mage since the days of Atlantis. One brother had already been killed when fighting the evil mage by the name of Dark Bishop. The other brother, who knew his time was coming soon got together a group of superheroes, all with mystical/magic origin stories. I had:

Arcana, the female apprentice of the Atlantean wizard.
Tombstone, a MDPD officer who had his soul placed in the body of a stone golem.
Corax, a wereraven and
Isgerd, a Valyrie cursed to be turned into a statue but was set free in the modern, with Pegasus name Tid-Bit no less.

Had a lot of fun with this game. I ended the campaign with a battle Arizona where the final conflict destroyed an entire Mesa.

Just thought I would throw that out there.

Solarblast · Post by **Solarblast** » Sat Oct 15, 2016 10:16 pm

xBlackWolfx wrote:I finished reading that book.

First off, I have to see he is a VERY good writer. But I didn't like the story he told. Penny wanted so bad to be a hero and not a villain, but she could never achieve that no matter what she did. And then he gets sucked into the super villain community, which is full of characters that a child should obviously NOT be around, where she is manipulated into doing something against her will just to keep from being outed. And in the end, even when she defies the spider and tries to sabotage her plan, she is still branded a villain by the media AND the spider at least apparently decides to forgive them, for w/e ungodly reason, so what they did didn't even get them ejected from the supervillain community. And in the end, she just accepts it. I did kind of suspect that honestly, looking at the titles for the next two books in the series. But still, I would've preferred to have read a book about a superHERO, because that's what I'm having problems with writing.

Anyway, I bought the book primarily because how it was advertised: he found a way to make a silver-age superhero world make logical sense. And I thought, well if he could do it, then I could to. Granted, I'm not interest in silver age stuff, but that's beside the point. I couldn't find much information online, other than him explaining how supers keep their identities secret. So I bought the book and tried to learn from that. I don't know if I'm stupid or what, but I didn't really see it. Perhaps it was because it wasn't explicitely explained, outside the fact that heroes and villains have a truce of some kind, which apparently doesn't prevent heroes from arresting villains, but keeps them from messing with them in their own neighborhood.

I may need to meditate on it a bit so make sense of his world. I'm not too keen on reading the rest of the series though. He's a superb writer, don't get me wrong, I just don't like what he writes about. The description of the author (which has to be the weirdest description I've ever seen) mentions that he prefers to write villain characters. Lovely. I will still ponder his book, to try and decipher the rules of his world, but I don't think I'll invest in the rest of the series.

What book are you talking about?

Solarblast · Post by **Solarblast** » Sat Oct 15, 2016 10:30 pm

Try checking out different urban fantasy stuff. It sounds like you are going in that direction. Honestly when I think about urban fantasy I tend of think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Also check out some movies in that genre. Probably what you need to think about is whether magic is commonly known or if it is something that people don't know about is kind of a secret world.

Like take Hellboy for instance. He is initially kept secret and takes out supernatural threats the idea is that magic world is unknown to most people. We tend to try to explain away things. That wasn't a werewolf that attacked us it was pack of wild dogs, that guy didn't shoot fire out of his hands he had a flame thrower, and so forth. Also don't necessarily just read comics. Comics got their ideas from fiction. The Hulk for instance was inspired by Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Batman was inspired by the Shadow and Zorro.

Just some ideas. BTW you should really try the BASH facebook page they are really helpful and I would try and correspond with you. I know what you mean about gaming and comic book stores. I do have a Barnes and Noble in driving distance but only just recently did a gaming store look like it going get started.

xBlackWolfx · Post by **xBlackWolfx** » Sun Oct 16, 2016 12:45 am

Solarblast wrote:
What book are you talking about?

Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, by Richard Roberts. And sorry if if I spoiled it for you.

edit: I needed to add, I'm not interested in writing an urban fantasy. Really, I don't feel like writing fantasy at all. I just wanted a way to get around the 'super science' problem. Like I've said, I don't see why their world would be at the same tech level as ours when they have all these super geniuses constantly inventing things. I wanted to just remove them, and have magic-themed characters take their place for more... 'not-normal' adventures. Perhaps I need to just come up with another solution.

edit 2: I'm not too keen on writing science fiction either, honestly I'd rather write fantasy than science fiction. But thinking about it, I guess I could incorporate some advanced tech without it really breaking anything. Like hologram monitors and such.

xBlackWolfx · Post by **xBlackWolfx** » Tue Oct 18, 2016 4:24 pm

I have come up with an idea for a plot, but it involves murder, which I was hoping to avoid. Like I said, I know kids are probably going to read what I like, so I need to keep it clean.

Technically, there is two different plots, both rather short. I decided it may be a good idea to just write a collection of short stories. It would probably be more effective at showing off my world.

The two stories I came up with each have a theme: what happens if you don't maintain a secret identity, and what happens if you decide to play 'judge, jury, and executioner'.

I admit, I just have a hard time thinking up nice, pleasant things. I don't know if I've mentioned it on this forum, but I watch k-pop. Every day. I probably spend at least half an hour to an hour every day watching it. And I've been doing it every day ever since I first saw Gangnam style. Why is a 29-year-old male, you until about a year ago listened to European metal, so obsessed with k-pop??? Its because I have no happy thoughts of my own.

I'm sitting here trying to come up with something nice and clean, and positive thoughts never enter my head. Yeah, I'm a mess. I don't even know if I can do this. I mean, look at my actual play. I can't even keep that clean even though I think the thing violates the rules of this forum.

Post by **BASHMAN** » Tue Oct 18, 2016 7:21 pm

A series of short stories seems like a good idea; you can look at different parts of the world or from different POVs. You can also explore and create this setting a bit at a time. You don't have to commit to one huge plot; but you can have the plots overlap if you like.

There is a series you might want to check out (definitely not for kids) called "Wild Cards". It is an anthology written by many different authors, but edited by George RR Martin (who does write some of the chapters).

It is a good example of multiple different POVs / short stories overlapping.

xBlackWolfx · Post by **xBlackWolfx** » Wed Oct 19, 2016 1:51 pm

I have a plot, but I can't think of an origin story for the main character. He's a telekinetic who besides being able to move objects and fly can also create forcefields and sent out blasts of 'telekinetic' energy.

I can't think of an origin for his powers. I don't like the idea of a mutant. In my world, 'mutants' don't get new abilities humans don't possess. They essentially just become stronger, faster, or super intelligent.

And like I've said, I despise science. I don't want to write a scientist character, or someone who got their powers from a scientific accident or experiment. Maybe I'm just being foolish. I like superheroes obviously, and I want to write them, but I hate science. Isn't that a bit of a contradiction? And my favorite DC character is Batman of all things.

I've thought about giving him a magic origin, but I think having him gain his powers from a magic artifact would make him look like a rip-off of green lantern. But I'm thinking I may have to lean towards that.

Post by **BASHMAN** » Wed Oct 19, 2016 3:42 pm

Why not have him be an alien? Or he's simply born with "the gift" and went from being a typical "psychic" to having much more potent powers? Maybe he's a centuries old magician who once entertained Queen Victoria, able to remain young through discovery of the philosopher's stone. Or he's the result of a metahuman breeding project, where the gene that unlocks human psychic potential was finally switched on deliberately.

MrJupiter · Post by **MrJupiter** » Wed Oct 19, 2016 7:15 pm

BASHMAN wrote:...Or he's simply born with "the gift" and went from being a typical "psychic" to having much more potent powers? ...

Hey, xBlackWolfx, I really like the simplicity of BASHMAN's "gifted" psychic. Everyone has heard of those people who can supposedly read thoughts, catch glimpses of the future, or move coins across a table with just a thought. Your hero could have been one of those "telekinetic" types: nothing special in a world of super powers. Your hero's "gift" was just a cool party trick until the day he got caught between two powerful supers. As their battle raged, he fled to a nearby building for shelter, joining a handful of others who were already there.

Unfortunately, the building was targeted by the villain with a powerful attack in an attempt to distract the hero, and it collapsed upon its helpless refugees before they could be rescued. Everyone was surprised to see that your character, and all of his fellow shelterers were safe. Despite chocking it up to a fluke of luck, your character realized that the sheer terror and adrenaline of the moment had somehow broke open whatever fastener restrained his "gift", and he had reflexively used his, now powerful, telekinetic powers to hold back tons of crushing debris.

Your character doesn't need anything more complicated than something like that as an origin for his powers. It might also give him a heroic contact, should he choose to confess his newly boosted ability to the other hero. The villain in question might also become an ongoing nemisis for your hero as well...

Solarblast · Post by **Solarblast** » Wed Oct 19, 2016 9:24 pm

Okay, since you mentioned it often, I have to ask, why do you hate science? I mean you are on the internet right now using a computer so yeah, both are products of science. As far as the origin thing maybe it could be what Mr. Jupiter said. That sounds good.