19’s answer to “I'm nearly done with Schadenfreude, and finding it awesome. You are a wonderful writer. Love Eric…” > Likes and Comments
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Forgot the second thing that pisses me off the most: crying about the commas. I long to strap those people down and make them try to read Requiem for a Dream. They'll be BEGGING for my nontraditional commas back in a matter of minutes.
I have kind of a scattered handful of friends, but I'm always happy to have more betas. I've learned if you give it to ten people to beta you'll get a usable report back from maybe three of them. Not complaining, mind you, that's a lot of work, people have lives, and some of them who say things like "This is really good!" don't quite understand what an author needs from a beta.
I definitely have a wide, deep streak of sadist. ; )
I honestly can't recommend Requiem for a Dream in any way, except as a cautionary example of how NOT to write a book, IMO. No quotes, no traditional paragraphs, and "& he sed" ALL THE TIME CONSTANTLY, on top of being preachy and frankly made of bullshit about drug use. The story itself is okay-to-good. The movie is amazing. The book never deserved a movie at all, IMO. If you're going to do something nontraditional and flashy, you should do one or two things, tops, like that. You're asking your reader to machete through too much jungle of your cutesy tricks when you use them ALL in the whole book. Read A Clockwork Orange if you want to watch an author try something completely outside of the box and actually SUCCEED.
It's Jared Leto, Jennifer Connolly, and Ellen Burstyn, maybe there was a re-release. It's heartbreaking, I warn you, I will probably never watch it again. Jared Leto is a very good actor and a very pretty boy (if you like that sort of thing) but he becomes repellent when he's crying, the poor dear. Not that he's bad at doing so on film, just that what his face does is kind of a waste of his beauty.
I was flipping through the proof (working on an alternate cover for Schadenfreude, I refuse to change it worldwide and REFUSE to have it not be for sale in Germany and Canada) and someone already apparently got me to fix Clauberg's name. I may have just done it from memory the first time through.
You may look for a movie called Bent, if you haven't seen it. I hadn't until after SF was published, but if there is ever an Edelweiss to go along with it, I'll be watching at least the first bits of that movie repeatedly. Gay club in Berlin, early in the Third Reich, with cameos by Mick Jagger and Ian McKellen, it's very sad too, as our protagonist winds up in (Buchenwald? I can't remember which camp, I'm afraid) but absolutely incredible and worth watching. I've no idea how I didn't find it before, there's kind of a depressing lack of Holocaust/Nazi books and films that have ANYTHING to do with what was done to GLBT people.
And most of them haven't even read it, for fuck's sake. I often long to tell them, "You know who ELSE wanted degenerate art forbidden?" but I try not to reply to "critics" (not that those are critics, those are crybullies) for courtesy's sake. However, let one come at me directly (this almost NEVER EVER happens, they are indeed cowards) and the gloves are off. I'm quite sure it was one of those whiners that made Amazon pull SF from Canada and Germany without even bothering to tell me--since they sold it there for a couple of YEARS with no trouble.
And that's something few to no readers ever NOTICE. Erich would have died without Ahren. Yes, he was abusive, but he largely did NOT maim his boy, and kept him fed and reasonably safe (from everyone else) and even provided him with the means to escape/survive after the camp was liberated. This is more of what makes me so sick of the crybully sorts. They insist everything is very black and white: either you're one of them, wailing about social justice and tolerance while being intolerant of EVERYTHING--or you're worse than Hitler. There is no middle ground. (eyeroll goes here)
I definitely noticed the drop in my income when they did that--and I assure you, I am insanely broke and always in a state of desperation--but I supposed everyone who wanted a copy already had one, more or less. Until a reader told me she'd tried to recommend it to another German reader a few days after she read it and found it pulled I had no IDEA. And when I bitched at them Amazon referred me to their TOS. I wasn't having any of THAT nonsense and I told them that they approved it based on that same TOS two years before and were selling it the entire time. I suggested in no uncertain terms that this was more of the same cowardice that made them pull Confederate flags from sale, and that it was pathetic to watch. Then I had to fight them for months to release a different paperback edition instead of changing the cover (which was what they wanted me to do.)
I was going to ask if you were in the UK (quid, above) if you do wind up reviewing, it would be a great help to me if you'd put it on Amazon.uk also. It annoys me intensely that they don't have reviews cross-posted across regional sites.
I often select movies and books based on what is getting the most crying and teeth-gnashing from the Bubble Wrap Brigade, so reviews like "Vile" make me very happy.
If I were a reader and not the author, that review would have made me try to buy that book so hard I'd probably need a new mouse to go along with it.
They definitely need to be called out. They continue to behave in this fashion because it continues to WORK. That's another reason I don't come running and respond to them. They thrive on it. Besides, you dears usually do a lovely job of that for me, which I enjoy watching.
And no, I certainly didn't forget that scene. It's incredibly important. Removing that number gives Erich....something of a chance at a normal life. Gay men who were "liberated" were promptly sent right back to jail under Paragraph 75 and that law was not rescinded until 1994, ffs.
One more try at a message I screwed up above. EDIT would be nice, Goodreads:
19 I LOVED that review and posted it on Tumblr, and a friend made me a shirt that says VILE in its honor.
Yep, the swastika the size of a quarter. The laws in those countries are against "public display" which I would not think would involve the cover of a book in a bookstore, not that SF is in any bookstores! Amazon even refuses to carry MOVIES or anything on amazon.de with swastikas--even about the Third Reich. It's ridiculous.
I just approved the proof for the second edition, and it should be available on Amazon in a few days.
People who go around looking for things to be offended by get no sympathy from me. They have serious control and boundary issues, intense narcissism, and they're very insecure. They must be searching for such things deliberately, simply to attack them. It's a real shame the term "Neo-Nazi" is already taken. Essentially they are saying STOP LIKING THINGS I DON'T LIKE. What are you, five?
Amazon is not great, but they're the only game I know of in town. I'm interested in where else your friend went to sell her work. Amazon bought Createspace, so I'm dealing with Amazon all over the place. Honestly, as a customer I am very fond of them, and aside from this caving-to-crybullies nonsense I'd had no problems with them, but I don't like the ACX terms (to make an audiobook, which I still might do) and other nonsense. I will say that so far, they pay me correctly and regularly. However, they are basically rejecting reviews constantly, refusing to give any reason why, and accused my friend of receiving PAY from me to leave a review. The funny part is this friend is why I have a home to live in to BEGIN with, any material gifts or help come from him to ME, never the other way around. But meanwhile, terrible books with a hundred obviously fake reviews are fine with them. I can't IMAGINE why.....(snort)
The only changes I made to Schadenfreude for the "Alternate Artwork Edition" are the cover art, the trim and font size, and a few tweaks to the layout to get it to fit on the page correctly, and I think I tidied up my wording somewhere, but I removed nothing, and certainly didn't make it any safer or more soothing. It's the same book. The new cover is a collage of actual Nazi relics, instead of the hand-painted original cover. It no longer features a swastika, instead this time around it's essentially MADE OF THEM because I tend to get ornery when people are being ridiculous.
I cannot currently FIND my "VILE" shirt, I moved earlier this year into this incredibly tiny home and many things are still packed up. The photo in that shirt is absolutely on the to-do list, though.
Well, I doubt BDSM books is going to want anything to do with me. This is why I'm on AO3, is so people can at least look at a sample and find out I exist. AFF got tremendous responses from readers and then deleted my Schadenfreude sample because apparently even STATING that the book is published and can be purchased is "advertising" and they want me to pay for that. So, you want me to play in your nightclub, on your stage, for free, while you take all the money from the door and from the bar, and I'm not even allowed to say where else I'm performing unless I pay YOU? How about no.
I like the original cover very much. It makes it clear what the book is about even as a thumbnail, and visually suggests your "papers-please" to my eye.
AO3/AFF: Most places either demand you provide the entire story for free and don't link to your site, or to places to buy the book (How am I supposed to eat and pay rent again?) or they have a long list of forbidden things which may as well be a synopsis of my books.
Math and time/dates are against my religion and I am not even about to take them seriously. Actually earlier drafts do say he was fourteen when Kaltherzig asks. I tweaked it upward a tiny little after trying to work out WHEN German students leave school, and we also don't really know how long he was an apprentice. I THINK he says "Sixteen this March," or something close to that when Kaltherzig asks which would make him still fifteen at the time of his arrest, and yes, he'd have been 19/20 when he leaves America. That's math-y enough for me.
Any purists who somehow are hung on those trees in THIS forest are welcome to ask for a refund, lol. To be absolutely frank, after this long and after reformatting this for the alternate artwork edition, I am sick unto death of looking at this manuscript. I appreciate the nudge towards the issue, but I am not going to slice open my stitches and do surgery on every single version of this novel to fix that. However, I will, when the future inevitably requires it, simply delete the "eight" you refer to and have Erich think of that kiss as "years ago" and.......problem solved.
I don't mean this to sound snippy, either. I appreciate your attention to detail. Ever considered a part-time career as an editor? You'd be absolutely brilliant at it.
I'm already on Smashwords and I love them, but I will be looking into BDSM books in my upcoming "vacation" time in a week or three. The worst they can say is no, right? There is no such thing as too many sources.
You are not the first to send me that Kafka quote, though it moves me to silence and an allergy attack every time. If I keep doing my job, you will not be the last. (smile)
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Forgot the second thing that pisses me off the most: crying about the commas. I long to strap those people down and make them try to read Requiem for a Dream. They'll be BEGGING for my nontraditional commas back in a matter of minutes.
I have kind of a scattered handful of friends, but I'm always happy to have more betas. I've learned if you give it to ten people to beta you'll get a usable report back from maybe three of them. Not complaining, mind you, that's a lot of work, people have lives, and some of them who say things like "This is really good!" don't quite understand what an author needs from a beta. I definitely have a wide, deep streak of sadist. ; )
I honestly can't recommend Requiem for a Dream in any way, except as a cautionary example of how NOT to write a book, IMO. No quotes, no traditional paragraphs, and "& he sed" ALL THE TIME CONSTANTLY, on top of being preachy and frankly made of bullshit about drug use. The story itself is okay-to-good. The movie is amazing. The book never deserved a movie at all, IMO. If you're going to do something nontraditional and flashy, you should do one or two things, tops, like that. You're asking your reader to machete through too much jungle of your cutesy tricks when you use them ALL in the whole book. Read A Clockwork Orange if you want to watch an author try something completely outside of the box and actually SUCCEED.
It's Jared Leto, Jennifer Connolly, and Ellen Burstyn, maybe there was a re-release. It's heartbreaking, I warn you, I will probably never watch it again. Jared Leto is a very good actor and a very pretty boy (if you like that sort of thing) but he becomes repellent when he's crying, the poor dear. Not that he's bad at doing so on film, just that what his face does is kind of a waste of his beauty.I was flipping through the proof (working on an alternate cover for Schadenfreude, I refuse to change it worldwide and REFUSE to have it not be for sale in Germany and Canada) and someone already apparently got me to fix Clauberg's name. I may have just done it from memory the first time through.
You may look for a movie called Bent, if you haven't seen it. I hadn't until after SF was published, but if there is ever an Edelweiss to go along with it, I'll be watching at least the first bits of that movie repeatedly. Gay club in Berlin, early in the Third Reich, with cameos by Mick Jagger and Ian McKellen, it's very sad too, as our protagonist winds up in (Buchenwald? I can't remember which camp, I'm afraid) but absolutely incredible and worth watching. I've no idea how I didn't find it before, there's kind of a depressing lack of Holocaust/Nazi books and films that have ANYTHING to do with what was done to GLBT people.
And most of them haven't even read it, for fuck's sake. I often long to tell them, "You know who ELSE wanted degenerate art forbidden?" but I try not to reply to "critics" (not that those are critics, those are crybullies) for courtesy's sake. However, let one come at me directly (this almost NEVER EVER happens, they are indeed cowards) and the gloves are off. I'm quite sure it was one of those whiners that made Amazon pull SF from Canada and Germany without even bothering to tell me--since they sold it there for a couple of YEARS with no trouble.
And that's something few to no readers ever NOTICE. Erich would have died without Ahren. Yes, he was abusive, but he largely did NOT maim his boy, and kept him fed and reasonably safe (from everyone else) and even provided him with the means to escape/survive after the camp was liberated. This is more of what makes me so sick of the crybully sorts. They insist everything is very black and white: either you're one of them, wailing about social justice and tolerance while being intolerant of EVERYTHING--or you're worse than Hitler. There is no middle ground. (eyeroll goes here)
I definitely noticed the drop in my income when they did that--and I assure you, I am insanely broke and always in a state of desperation--but I supposed everyone who wanted a copy already had one, more or less. Until a reader told me she'd tried to recommend it to another German reader a few days after she read it and found it pulled I had no IDEA. And when I bitched at them Amazon referred me to their TOS. I wasn't having any of THAT nonsense and I told them that they approved it based on that same TOS two years before and were selling it the entire time. I suggested in no uncertain terms that this was more of the same cowardice that made them pull Confederate flags from sale, and that it was pathetic to watch. Then I had to fight them for months to release a different paperback edition instead of changing the cover (which was what they wanted me to do.)
I was going to ask if you were in the UK (quid, above) if you do wind up reviewing, it would be a great help to me if you'd put it on Amazon.uk also. It annoys me intensely that they don't have reviews cross-posted across regional sites.
I often select movies and books based on what is getting the most crying and teeth-gnashing from the Bubble Wrap Brigade, so reviews like "Vile" make me very happy.
If I were a reader and not the author, that review would have made me try to buy that book so hard I'd probably need a new mouse to go along with it.
They definitely need to be called out. They continue to behave in this fashion because it continues to WORK. That's another reason I don't come running and respond to them. They thrive on it. Besides, you dears usually do a lovely job of that for me, which I enjoy watching.
And no, I certainly didn't forget that scene. It's incredibly important. Removing that number gives Erich....something of a chance at a normal life. Gay men who were "liberated" were promptly sent right back to jail under Paragraph 75 and that law was not rescinded until 1994, ffs.
One more try at a message I screwed up above. EDIT would be nice, Goodreads:19 I LOVED that review and posted it on Tumblr, and a friend made me a shirt that says VILE in its honor.
Yep, the swastika the size of a quarter. The laws in those countries are against "public display" which I would not think would involve the cover of a book in a bookstore, not that SF is in any bookstores! Amazon even refuses to carry MOVIES or anything on amazon.de with swastikas--even about the Third Reich. It's ridiculous.
I just approved the proof for the second edition, and it should be available on Amazon in a few days.
People who go around looking for things to be offended by get no sympathy from me. They have serious control and boundary issues, intense narcissism, and they're very insecure. They must be searching for such things deliberately, simply to attack them. It's a real shame the term "Neo-Nazi" is already taken. Essentially they are saying STOP LIKING THINGS I DON'T LIKE. What are you, five?
Amazon is not great, but they're the only game I know of in town. I'm interested in where else your friend went to sell her work. Amazon bought Createspace, so I'm dealing with Amazon all over the place. Honestly, as a customer I am very fond of them, and aside from this caving-to-crybullies nonsense I'd had no problems with them, but I don't like the ACX terms (to make an audiobook, which I still might do) and other nonsense. I will say that so far, they pay me correctly and regularly. However, they are basically rejecting reviews constantly, refusing to give any reason why, and accused my friend of receiving PAY from me to leave a review. The funny part is this friend is why I have a home to live in to BEGIN with, any material gifts or help come from him to ME, never the other way around. But meanwhile, terrible books with a hundred obviously fake reviews are fine with them. I can't IMAGINE why.....(snort)The only changes I made to Schadenfreude for the "Alternate Artwork Edition" are the cover art, the trim and font size, and a few tweaks to the layout to get it to fit on the page correctly, and I think I tidied up my wording somewhere, but I removed nothing, and certainly didn't make it any safer or more soothing. It's the same book. The new cover is a collage of actual Nazi relics, instead of the hand-painted original cover. It no longer features a swastika, instead this time around it's essentially MADE OF THEM because I tend to get ornery when people are being ridiculous.
I cannot currently FIND my "VILE" shirt, I moved earlier this year into this incredibly tiny home and many things are still packed up. The photo in that shirt is absolutely on the to-do list, though.
Well, I doubt BDSM books is going to want anything to do with me. This is why I'm on AO3, is so people can at least look at a sample and find out I exist. AFF got tremendous responses from readers and then deleted my Schadenfreude sample because apparently even STATING that the book is published and can be purchased is "advertising" and they want me to pay for that. So, you want me to play in your nightclub, on your stage, for free, while you take all the money from the door and from the bar, and I'm not even allowed to say where else I'm performing unless I pay YOU? How about no.
I like the original cover very much. It makes it clear what the book is about even as a thumbnail, and visually suggests your "papers-please" to my eye.
AO3/AFF: Most places either demand you provide the entire story for free and don't link to your site, or to places to buy the book (How am I supposed to eat and pay rent again?) or they have a long list of forbidden things which may as well be a synopsis of my books.
Math and time/dates are against my religion and I am not even about to take them seriously. Actually earlier drafts do say he was fourteen when Kaltherzig asks. I tweaked it upward a tiny little after trying to work out WHEN German students leave school, and we also don't really know how long he was an apprentice. I THINK he says "Sixteen this March," or something close to that when Kaltherzig asks which would make him still fifteen at the time of his arrest, and yes, he'd have been 19/20 when he leaves America. That's math-y enough for me.
Any purists who somehow are hung on those trees in THIS forest are welcome to ask for a refund, lol. To be absolutely frank, after this long and after reformatting this for the alternate artwork edition, I am sick unto death of looking at this manuscript. I appreciate the nudge towards the issue, but I am not going to slice open my stitches and do surgery on every single version of this novel to fix that. However, I will, when the future inevitably requires it, simply delete the "eight" you refer to and have Erich think of that kiss as "years ago" and.......problem solved.I don't mean this to sound snippy, either. I appreciate your attention to detail. Ever considered a part-time career as an editor? You'd be absolutely brilliant at it.
I'm already on Smashwords and I love them, but I will be looking into BDSM books in my upcoming "vacation" time in a week or three. The worst they can say is no, right? There is no such thing as too many sources.You are not the first to send me that Kafka quote, though it moves me to silence and an allergy attack every time. If I keep doing my job, you will not be the last. (smile)
I would never laugh, dear, I'm honored any of you choose to spend your time and energy leaving reviews for me. I have no assets, no marketing ability, no budget, and no connections, so YOU and others doing that are my sole means of acquiring more readers.
Those two things piss me off the most: "It's not realistic!" YEARS of research and several RL experiments went into that book. It's as realistic as it's going to get, and the parts that are not I'm well aware of. I also can't help but notice the one screaming "It was nothing like that!" the loudest is the one who refuses to read the book, so how the fuck would she know? XD.
Psychomotor is much longer than Schadenfreude, and much, much darker. I actually paused while writing it and wrote Schadenfreude in the space of a few months to give myself a break from the emotional weight of PMA. I'm busy now trying to make that gargantuan book into something I'm willing to share with all of you.