Topic: The shameless return

[NUMBERZero]

Welp. Here I am.

I should really be coming back here more often again. Gotta try to match Scyphi's post count x.x

Ever since Steam released Descent on Steam, I've been slowly trying to tweak it and get it updated with all of the stuff I had in my original installation. For a time, the Steam version was actually more stable than the original. Unfortunately, I botched that somewhere and I need to do a clean install on Steam again.

Good news is that I still haven't lost my touch. The joystick I use has with a few wonky buttons, including the slide up for the hat switch (I'm doomed), but I manage.

In real life news, I've been here baking in Arizona. Moved out of Florida three years ago. Hated the place. Terrible people. A person from the West Coast does not belong there. While I have been here in Arizona, I've been making more friends and I have been studying in college. I was shooting for a degree in Mechanical Engineering, but Calculus 3 and Differential Equations has proven to be extremely tough for me. I've been thinking about something with IT or Computer Science.




I have also been working on a special hobby for the past three years...


STOP NOW IF YOU AREN'T INTERESTED SHAMELESS ADVERTISEMENT FOR AN ADULT SCI-FI EPIC


If you're still here, good! You're in for a ride

Take a look at this (gigantic image warning): http://d.facdn.net/art/razgriz1032/1403646818.razgriz1032_raz_v_final2_text_.jpg

Over the past three years, I've been working on a little something. Plotting. Schemimg. Do you all remember Darcshadow7? He has become my brother out here in Arizona. He's the one who got me interested in a particular "fandom" that I am sure a lot of us here have the guilty pleasure of knowing. *nudges Scyphi and Kaia. Probably a bunch of other pilots. I lost track of them all*


What that means is I have written an eBook called Advent: Plunge into Bedlam. It is an adult science fiction novel set in the somewhat near future in an alternate reality. It is the first book in a six part series. It starts with an ancient immortal soldier with the heart, mind, and body of a young adult who goes on a routine mission to squash some Space Pirate bugs. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned. He and his squad are captured and are going to be experimented upon in a pirate bioweapons project. Fortunately for him, he manages to escape at the last second.

Good, right? Wrong. It was too late for him. He'd already been injected with a DNA changing virus. His internal medical nanites are losing the battle within him and he quickly looses all of his advanced equipment; basically everything that made him unique. What will happen to him?

Alone on a strange world with no skills beyond his lax military background, he must find out what happened to his soldiers and find a way to get back with what little he's got. The alternative is to try to grow up and try to make a name for himself, or else he'll lose himself and never return.


So if you have stuck around this long, then you have to go check it out!

Here is the book itself! It's not released yet. It will be fully available on the 29th, but you can read the first 10% of it right now!
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/452445

This is my Smashwords profile, the website I am using to publish for now (will use Amazon as well later).
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Razgriz1032

And this is Advent's facebook page where I will post updates and ideas and such.
ps://www.facebook.com/bookadvent


Here's the kicker. It is priced at $5.99 right now. BUT. If you use this coupon code at checkout, it'll be half off. TF55H
This is only for you guys. Material Defenders are the best!


Please, if you are interested, go ahead and read it and leave a review! My current goal right now is to try to sell 1,000 copies in two months. It's a gigantic goal, especially since I've been slow to get marketing going. I never really expected to publish a real novel, but here I am. They say to "aim high." My future goal will be to hopefully get it published in print. Nothing beats the soft pages of a real book, if you ask me.




And that is what I have been up to.

[Kaiaatzl]

Awesomeness & well done & welcome back & stuff like that.
Your book definitely sounds like something I will read in the near future.

[Scyphi]

Gotta try to match Scyphi's post count x.x

It's not...THAT high. WillyP's is higher. At least it's not 3000+ like it was back on ol' PD.com before she went down.

Read the ten percent preview. I went into it partly afraid it'd be very amateurish prose, but was pleased to see that wasn't the case, for the writing is fairly decent. The establishment that it is an adult story was perhaps a little misleading...by "adult" I typically expect the work to be, for all intents and purposes, adult. This seemed more less so in comparison to other works I've had to read, though maybe I just didn't get far enough into the tale before the preview reached an end. Dunno how well the anthropomorphic civilization the main character finds himself in would go over with the average reader...didn't really get to learn much about it before the preview ended, but it's got potential for even the non-furry reader, if they'll give it a chance (though the inclusion of a shark anthro might push it...I've discovered that if you're going to write something with anthros for the average audience, you sometimes have to be choosey with what animals you do or do not feature inside said work).

Some thoughts on the writing itself: Your chapters are kind of arbitrarily divided up. This isn't a bad thing mostly, though it does leave some chapters startlingly short, so much so that from a logistical stand-point, one has to question if it really needs to be a separate chapter. For example, those first four or five chapters I read could easily be combined to make one, two, or three chapters and not hurt the flow any. Something to consider.

Found one typo; during the pirate commander's monologue (I believe...somewhere in there), there's a word "they" missing a "y" so to become "the," messing with the context.

Speaking of the pirates, you don't give much description of them. I wasn't reading in depth per say (I have homework I ought to be doing, so with that in mind, I admit to skimming some spots) so I might have just missed it, but all I caught is that they are implied to be alien, not very human-like, and not much else, leaving a reader a little hard to grasp a picture of what they look like in their heads. The fact that I might have missed it suggests it altogether could stand to be more detailed.

Also, the main character and the clone soldiers are not established to be human until the main character winds up on the anthro world; up until then it is left to be just presumed they are human by the reader, which you could get away with, but seeing the story deals with races that are quite clearly NOT human, giving the reader some kind of clue or other signifier of their humanity a little sooner is suggested. Given the future setting and interactions with other worlds/races, stating they are from Terra (Earth) doesn't necessarily mean they're human (what if they're not native? Family line came from somewhere else? The reader wouldn't know if they need to consider this. See what I'm saying?)

The Portal gag was kind of cheesy, but I'm one to talk. 

Anyway, as stories go, this one is pretty good. Best of luck with your pursuits!

[NUMBERZero]

I keep looking at those chapters and I agree that they are short. Unfortunately I think it is best that way for the beginning. Chapters to come will be a lot longer.

In the paragraph where it is describing how clones follow orders to the T, but rather unlike absolute slave clones, they have feelings and emotions, I punctuate it with, "They were almost human." Does that count as implying they were human?

Good eye on the missing pirate descriptions. I added that in. That was exciting to write.

Couldn't find the "they" and "the" problem in the pirate commander monologue.

And there are actually two Valve game references in the place where the portal gag was. The other one was from Left 4 Dead 2



The adult part comes later. For now, it's sort of a thrill ride to get into the book, but things start slowing down and getting a little more bleak and the main characters come together. There's blood, guts, and violence, and then... chapter 16... last part of chapter 15... beginning of chapter 17... Mostly chapter 16. No violence. I hope you get the idea :S



Thanks, Scyphi! This was helpful. You haven't changed. Level-headed as ever!

[Sapphirus]

Welcome back, NZ!

I guess that The review forum visit must go on. (okay, that was terrible of me)
PS- Mektek has shelved Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries and Assault Tech 1: Battletech and moved on to Heavy Gear.

[Scyphi]

I keep looking at those chapters and I agree that they are short. Unfortunately I think it is best that way for the beginning. Chapters to come will be a lot longer.

Well, writer's prerogative.

In the paragraph where it is describing how clones follow orders to the T, but rather unlike absolute slave clones, they have feelings and emotions, I punctuate it with, "They were almost human." Does that count as implying they were human?

Actually, more of the opposite, as it implies there's something about them that sets them apart. Obviously, you mean that they're just clones, but you don't quite make it clear what they're clones of and whether or not they're humanoid. Again, some kind of clue to at least point the reader in the right direction of who and what they are physically and visually would be helpful. It doesn't even have to be a direct statement that "they were human" per say, just something that strongly indicates that they are, or close enough to one.

Couldn't find the "they" and "the" problem in the pirate commander monologue.

I can't find now either, so either I imagined it (which doesn't seem likely as that's never happened before) or I'm remembering it's location wrong...hmm...

And there are actually two Valve game references in the place where the portal gag was. The other one was from Left 4 Dead 2

I don't know anything about Left 4 Dead, so that reference just flew over my head.

[NUMBERZero]

Well there's the book cover showing the human
Imma fix it anyway.

So. Heavy Gear? Looks pretty cool. I'm sure Darcshadow7 (now called Ronin RedFox) would be interested too if he weren't so busy nowadays.

[Scyphi]

Well there's the book cover showing the human

Yeah, with a winged anthro dragon thing standing right next to him.

[NUMBERZero]

Time out. 10th paragraph down (including the unindented beginning) of chapter 1, "This physically twenty year old human male..."

Regardless, I'll definitely add in more detail. It neeeeeeds iiiit. If you missed it, then it's not right and I want to fix it. It'll be better. I'll have his looks more established rather than letting the illustration speak.

EDIT: There. Went overboard. Should have done it years ago.
Next, I've got to figure out how to get the page breaks to work. Formatting didn't work exactly right.

I am also getting the thing on Amazon.

And I have decided that every Wednesday is going to be kinda dedicated to touching up this one, but mostly dedicated for rewriting the second one. Oh god the second one... So long. So... many... revisions.

[Scyphi]

Welcome to the world of writing, NUMBERZero.

[Kaizerwolf]

Zero! Good to see you around. I'm glad to hear you're doing well. I'm in college for IT myself, and thankfully I didn't need to go past Calculus 1, nor do I need differential equations! IT is definitely the way to go. 

[Foil]

Calc III and Diff Eq were awesome.  Tough, but awesome.

(With that said, I'm now developing software... )

[Kaiaatzl]

You sound like my brother...
While I'm just very happy I scraped an A minus in Forensic Psych in a semester when I wasn't taking any other courses.