Wouldn’t care what the job was, no way would I date someone famous.
I made the mistake of publishing my first two books under my real name and was local famous for a while. Got real old, real fast. And that’s with the books being absolute flops. Can’t imagine how bad it would have been if they’d sold well.
An unknown woman with a dagger in her arm shows up outside a village.
They start helping her, only for a swarm of death’s minions to swarm them and kill everyone but the woman and one boy. They wander off into the woods until they find, or are found by, depending on how you look at it, a woodsman.
Needless to say, none of them are that simple. The woman is a Scion, the word in that world for a human that can house a god or goddess. She is the Scion of Gaea, and had been kidnapped by the Scion of Thanatos, god of death. The woodsman is a warrior that left the service of his king, and the path of semi-spiritual combat that he followed after his wife and unborn child died during labor. The boy is a rare kind of Scion that can not only house any god, but can continue to do so after having housed one.
Scions matter because the gods once warred and nearly destroyed everything. Only a pact forged by a handful of gods and goddesses devoted to peace keeps the gods from walking the world in all their power like they did during the war. So the Scions are how they not only manifest for their worshippers, but it’s how they apply their power in most ways.
But the gods still plot and scheme ways to gain new power, or settle old scores. And that’s what the woodsman warrior got sucked into. Along the way to taking the lady home, they build a kind of family and damn near die plenty. It’s told by the woodsman to students.
Anyway, that’s the basis of the first book. The second is told by the boy when he’s older, and dealing with machinations of Thanatos again. The unfinished third is him as an adult, but I don’t think I’ll ever finish it.
They weren’t great. Kinda mid tier tbh, and that’s being generous. But they are good, light reading. Alas, not a damn copy sold lol. No room for a small, unmarketed author to sell much of anything, ever.
I’ve got other stuff written, though none officially published. Only one available through standard means. The rest are out there on soulseek though, a buddy fucked up and had the files in his shared folder lol.
There’s those two fantasy stories, one more modern urban/rural fantasy novel, a short story collection (mostly off of reddit writing prompts tbh), and supposedly the children’s book I wrote but lost the files for after a hard drive crash. My buddy deleted the files after he found out they’d gotten “borrowed” via soulseek, so that children’s book is essentially lost unless someone has it available and luck up finding it that way.
Anyway, there’s not much to it, really. Sent the first one to an agent, she found a small publisher that was interested. Didn’t sell, and the publisher failed a few years later.
Honestly, that is a tonne of work, blood, sweat and tears.
To me the measure of success in the form of monetary success is limited. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong - I am sure most want to have their work recognised and appreciated. Hell, we all got to eat.
But there is so much to that - your effort, your work, vision and the ability follow through and finish.It’s amazing.
There are a few of you in the world. Most of us eat, work, shit and die. You create. Thank you for that. That is the mark of success - Creation. Amazing!
Wouldn’t care what the job was, no way would I date someone famous.
I made the mistake of publishing my first two books under my real name and was local famous for a while. Got real old, real fast. And that’s with the books being absolute flops. Can’t imagine how bad it would have been if they’d sold well.
What a cool story you have. Can you tell us more? It’s amazing that you published two books. Massive kudos!
Well, those books were fairly simple fantasy.
An unknown woman with a dagger in her arm shows up outside a village.
They start helping her, only for a swarm of death’s minions to swarm them and kill everyone but the woman and one boy. They wander off into the woods until they find, or are found by, depending on how you look at it, a woodsman.
Needless to say, none of them are that simple. The woman is a Scion, the word in that world for a human that can house a god or goddess. She is the Scion of Gaea, and had been kidnapped by the Scion of Thanatos, god of death. The woodsman is a warrior that left the service of his king, and the path of semi-spiritual combat that he followed after his wife and unborn child died during labor. The boy is a rare kind of Scion that can not only house any god, but can continue to do so after having housed one.
Scions matter because the gods once warred and nearly destroyed everything. Only a pact forged by a handful of gods and goddesses devoted to peace keeps the gods from walking the world in all their power like they did during the war. So the Scions are how they not only manifest for their worshippers, but it’s how they apply their power in most ways.
But the gods still plot and scheme ways to gain new power, or settle old scores. And that’s what the woodsman warrior got sucked into. Along the way to taking the lady home, they build a kind of family and damn near die plenty. It’s told by the woodsman to students.
Anyway, that’s the basis of the first book. The second is told by the boy when he’s older, and dealing with machinations of Thanatos again. The unfinished third is him as an adult, but I don’t think I’ll ever finish it.
They weren’t great. Kinda mid tier tbh, and that’s being generous. But they are good, light reading. Alas, not a damn copy sold lol. No room for a small, unmarketed author to sell much of anything, ever.
I’ve got other stuff written, though none officially published. Only one available through standard means. The rest are out there on soulseek though, a buddy fucked up and had the files in his shared folder lol.
There’s those two fantasy stories, one more modern urban/rural fantasy novel, a short story collection (mostly off of reddit writing prompts tbh), and supposedly the children’s book I wrote but lost the files for after a hard drive crash. My buddy deleted the files after he found out they’d gotten “borrowed” via soulseek, so that children’s book is essentially lost unless someone has it available and luck up finding it that way.
Anyway, there’s not much to it, really. Sent the first one to an agent, she found a small publisher that was interested. Didn’t sell, and the publisher failed a few years later.
Honestly, that is a tonne of work, blood, sweat and tears.
To me the measure of success in the form of monetary success is limited. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong - I am sure most want to have their work recognised and appreciated. Hell, we all got to eat.
But there is so much to that - your effort, your work, vision and the ability follow through and finish.It’s amazing.
There are a few of you in the world. Most of us eat, work, shit and die. You create. Thank you for that. That is the mark of success - Creation. Amazing!