This is actually Jeff Shank working on a striking puppet for The Howling, which I absolutely yanked from this fabulous collectionof behind-the-scenes pics.
So, what’s up with Wattpad? It’s a hellscape. It really is just awful. Imagine a place with potentially millions of readers, with no way to promote your story to those readers outside the Wattpad People choosing your story and putting it on the main page (which doesn’t seem to change for months at a time). This wouldn’t me too terrible if they didn’t use an algorithm to choose what they promote, and if they weren’t deliberately catering to teenagers (who love “Werewolf Romance,” among other problematic things, which loosely translates to “Sadistic Beastiality” — not kidding, teenagers nowadays are fucking weird and I don’t think they understand how this looks). The only promotional resource they had that you could control was posting once a week (per story) on their forums. The problem with that is that readers rarely went to the forums — it’s full of writers. If you’re serious about your writing, you have two choices — you can do everything you can to get readers to read your writing, or you can content yourself with other writers reading your writing, which means you have to read their writing, and you can tell each other how great it is, and maybe even exchange ideas about how to promote your writing, but let’s face it, with all your reading and writing and backslapping, who’s got time to do much of anything else? That’s what’s called a Circle Jerk. Minus the super jacuzzi (and if there’s no super jacuzzi, I’m out).
And, no offense, other writers: I have a lot of books. A lot. I read them. I have at least three books going at all times, and I will never run out of books I want to read because something about them made me want to read them (including doing research for my own writing). I literally haven’t two minutes to read books I am obligated to read because someone said they’d read my book. In that case, I don’t want you to read my book — I want you to write and promote your book. I will do the same.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter now because they actually shut down the forums because — and I can’t stop laughing at this — a number of ultra-woke teens kept politicizing every other conversation on there, generally polluting and creating a toxic environment for everyone (which, was really a blessing, because being forced to spend any time on an Internet forum with teenagers at this point in my life, is just so very bad). But since the Great Forum Cataclysm (the kids were really upset), there’s been zero place to just throw up anything that simply says, “Hey, I got a thing. It’s about this. Come take a look.”
So, screw it. I’m going to be transferring stuff over from there to here. I’ve been hiesitant to so it because, well, it was a bunch of work to get drafts up to post there, and it’ll be a bunch of work to do that here (but at least here I can actually schedule posts, so I don’t need to do it manually). I’ll make a separate page tab for each book, and put up a clickable Table of Contents. It was totally my bad putting it up there in the first place — it just seemed like a convenient publishing platform when, at the time, I didn’t have this blog up and running again. But, now this is here, why bother over there?
Starting Monday, I will be posting “chapters” (they’re not chapters — the book is in four parts, but that’s too long to post) of my Robert Louis Stevenson werewolf book, The Beast of Gévaudan. Here’s the blurb…
Robert Louis Stevenson treks through the French highlands hoping to heal his recently broken heart — prompted by the loss of one Mrs. Fanny Osbourne — and to gather notes for a new travelogue, “Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes.” Along with the fickle Modestine, his pack donkey, Stevenson journeys 120 miles through villages and valleys, encountering innkeepers and fellow travelers, a monk-filled monastery, a violent, angry mob, and more superstitious locals than one could adequately poke with a donkey goad. These things he’d expected, but not the mysterious figure trailing him, the murder, nor, above all, a confrontation with the notorious Beast of Gévaudan of 18th-century legend. Hunted, heart-sick, questioning his own sanity and senses, Stevenson forms unlikely alliances as he is forced to face an entire region of werewolves — and possibly worse — in order to reach his destination and desire, Alès and a long-for letter from his estranged love.
I’ll post new bits every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And, once I get a few things ironed out here, I will move ‘Florida Man’ and ‘Dread Confluence’ over here as well.
