Jolt Country

I bought Chris's first book available through Kindle (A Real Piece of Work) a few months ago and I loved it. It's got everything I look for in a private eye novel.

His sequel, also starring his protagonist Dakota Stevens, just dr-dr-dropped at the above link.

Why don't you buy it so I don't have to punch you in the face.

Chris has gone on to write two more books in the series. I'm going to give them all four star reviews on Amazon, assuming that four stars is the max I can give. If you give an author four stars there, they get 70% of that, so I wanted to make sure I stated my rating elsewhere so it could be seen in whole.

I have probable read enough detective novels to where I can appreciate the differences between them. The genre itself appeals to me because if they were just cops doing their thing they would be tough to root for because cops have a ton of legal resources available to them, and the books would be shorter as cops these days enjoy shooting possible suspects in the face.

I'll go into further detail eventually, but I also think that the detective gives you the best insight into the actual author constructing these stories. I sort of wish that all my favorite novelists had a detective or noir book in them, so the fact that Chris does this as his main thing is pretty awesome.

They're great books. Again, I will be going into more detail, but here is Chris's author page:

http://www.amazon.com/Chris-Orcutt/e/B006881DOA

A Real Piece of Work is good enough to enter my physical collection shelf, a shelf I don't take lightly considering the number of times a woman in my life tells me to get my shit and get out. The Rich Are Different is the rare novel ... the rare anything that is second but improves on the first. That never happens unless it's the Godfather movie series or Civilization game series.

I'm late for work now, but this was important to me. They are $6 a pop, go get them and let's have a conversation here. I think all of you have healed from the beatings I administered in the first post.

Very cool. I will check these out. Noirish stuff is pretty much 95% of my fiction reading lately. Or something, I can't be bothered to really figure that out.

Is this a friend of yours? (is it the Chris that used to post here long long ago?)

A different Chris! That Chris (Danzaland) left the BBS scene many years ago. He is living in Rochester and has a wife and two kids. We still keep in contact regularly.

I became aware of this Chris thanks to some weblog postings of Jason Scott. In fact, let me link to one: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4485

Chris's work comes highly recommended and I plan on checking out the series soon.

I read Jason's post in regards to Chris and I can relate to a lot of it. Not the part about being a fantastic and dedicated author of course, but the part about trying to compete with... I don't know what the literary term is, but in the gaming world we call it shovelware. It's bargain (and usually shitty) software that is sold for pennies on the dollar that is cranked out by the minute and placed on shelves next to quality titles. Unfortunately, when one game is $10 and another is $50, guess which one mom is picking up for the kids! So yes, spending years working on a great novel is very admirable, and by the time you get it out someone will have shoveled out a dozen episodes of their latest zombie apocalypse garbage.

A couple of years ago someone sent me a link to a novella and asked me to read it and give my opinion. I did both; it was a vampire love story and it was pretty awful. Turned out, the story was written by a girl who is now a millionaire. She cranks out these novels once a month and sells them as eBooks. She's a moody teen and her audience is moody teens and it's a model that's obviously working for her. This girl is not cranking out the next great American novel. I am sure she's sad about that fact, but only because she is a goth and is sad about everything. I am sure she is sad about being a millionaire, too.

There's always that Venn diagram with two circles, one with "things I love doing" and the other, "things that will make me money." And not everything in that overlap is equal. I like writing, and I like selling books, but books about diets, cookbooks, and self-help guides are going to outsell books about old computers a million to one. I have read lots and lots of "retro memoirs" and gaming related novels and most of those guys haven't quit their day jobs. I don't know why I am explaining this to a forum filled with gifted programmers who work on text adventures.

One of my best friends has two masters degrees in art (education and history). He works during the day doing layout and design for posters, pamphlets, and travel brochures. He spends his paycheck on canvases and art supplies so he can do what he loves on the weekend. In a perfect world he would be a millionaire and the guys who wrote Candy Crush would die penniless.

It is also frustrating that I don't know how to buy stuff for Kindle and send it to my friends, like how we are able to do so with games on Steam.

There must be a way. Right? There's gotta be a way.

A couple of years ago someone sent me a link to a novella and asked me to read it and give my opinion. I did both; it was a vampire love story and it was pretty awful. Turned out, the story was written by a girl who is now a millionaire. She cranks out these novels once a month and sells them as eBooks. She's a moody teen and her audience is moody teens and it's a model that's obviously working for her. This girl is not cranking out the next great American novel. I am sure she's sad about that fact, but only because she is a goth and is sad about everything. I am sure she is sad about being a millionaire, too.

The one thing I worry about for my own stuff is that I:

1) Fail to see the problems with it.

2) Have a vision in my brain about what the games are like that don't match that of players.

3) Am using the whole, "Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good and the fact that I'm heavily marginalized means the 'right people get it'" thought process as a crutch.

It's sooooo easy for me to say, well, I work in text adventures. A minor field! I make geek comedies. A minor field of a minor field! I make personal adventure stories instead of stuff like Zork. A minor field of a minor field of a minor field! ... That doesn't mean they are automatically good just because they appeal to a small subset of possible players.

Bill Burr once said -- in response to being asked why there aren't more female comedians invited to some event I can't remember -- "Be Undeniable."* That's where my resolution is going to take me for 2015. That novella for Cyberganked that you, me and my brother are working on is going to be undeniable. My brother has it easy, his story is finished and it's absolutely reprehensibly funny and he couldn't give two shits if anyone in the world ever read it. You and me care about this stuff and I'm really going to make sure I bleed on the page this time out.


* Bill Burr tends to poo-poo over other people's problems, but I kind of like that about him.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:It is also frustrating that I don't know how to buy stuff for Kindle and send it to my friends, like how we are able to do so with games on Steam.

There must be a way. Right? There's gotta be a way.

"To purchase a Kindle book as a gift:

From the Kindle Store Kindle Store (Amazon.com full site), select the book you want to purchase as a gift. ...
On the product detail page, click the Give as a Gift button.
Enter the personal e-mail address of your gift recipient. ...
Enter a delivery date and an optional gift message."

From Amazon.com Help: Give and Receive Fire & Kindle Devices ... obtained by typing how to give a kindle book as a gift into Google.

Paul provided useful information AND worked a zinger into the end of his message. Somebody buy that guy a slop burger!