Writing to Market: This Book is Spishy

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I’m reading up on writing recently, as part of my ongoing efforts to hopefully someday make a living off of that, since on size of market alone my odds are much better there than in tabletop gaming. As part of that, I dropped some pocket change on a Kindle book called “Writing to Market” which claims to help books sell better by finding underserved genres and serving them. This sounds like a reasonable strategy to me if you can find the damn things and decided it was worth $4 to see if this guy actually knows how to dowse for untapped markets.

Here is a screenshot from my Kindle app of page one, with a relevant claim highlighted:Writing to Market 1

So you can probably guess that somewhere in this book I’ve found an example that did use romance. You may not guess that it is on page two:

Writing to Market 2

I’m going to give this guy the benefit of the doubt that he meant examples of finding a genre or something, rather than all examples, period. Even assuming it’s just slightly sloppy phrasing, though, I’m immediately more skeptical of taking writing advice from someone who let an apparent contradiction slip in separated by like five paragraphs. This isn’t a Reddit comment or a blog post. I paid him for this. Why wasn’t this caught in revision?

Travelogue: Unseasonal Agitation

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Dear brother,

For a full week now, the Hamlet has been overrun by mosquitos and other insects. Given that, you might be wondering if I’m in the southern parts of Europe where winter doesn’t hit nearly as hard. I am not. It is two (metric) degrees above freezing right now, and there are bugs everywhere. I guess European bugs don’t mind the cold so much? Really, these ones seem to be thriving on it. I guess that one part of Uncharted 3 where the villa in temperate France houses tons of enormous spiders was more plausible than we thought.

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The Hydra

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It was late last night when I finished this post. I decided I’d go to sleep and go over it real quick in the morning to make small tweaks before copy/pasting it into the blog. Then my alarm failed to go off. I still don’t know what. When I woke up naturally (and two hours late) it was still on and set to the right time (AM, not PM). I think it may be broken. Anyway, I’m backdating this to two hours ago, and let’s all just agree to pretend that it was posted on time.

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Hollow Knight

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Hollow Knight is a game I got during the Steam Christmas sale but only bothered playing just now. It may just be because I’ve only just started playing, and more flaws will reveal themselves over time, but Hollow Knight is an incredible game. I can’t find enough good things to say about it. Its atmosphere is amazing, the location – a fallen kingdom of sapient bugs called Hallownest – is interesting and new and varied and makes me want to explore it, the combat is fun and challenging. It’s something I’d recommend to anyone who likes Metroidvania games even a little bit.

One thing that I like about it that I couldn’t have told you I’d like in advance is how small and agile the player character is (at this point I’m not sure if you’re the titular hollow knight or if maybe the hollow knight is the main bad guy or just some critical piece of background lore or what). The player character is at least a little bit smaller than almost every enemy and NPC encountered and is kind of adorable, but the controls are extremely responsive, the arc of the sword slash is wide, and the mana you use to heal or attack at range is recharged by smacking enemies, which encourages (and as time goes on, more and more requires) a very mobile and aggressive playstyle. The juxtaposition between how cute the character looks and how very deadly he can be with just a little practice is strangely compelling.

So I spent most of my spare time playing Hollow Knight today, which is why I’m posting about it instead of making real content.

Capturing Towns in Vestitas

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Many of the towns in Vestitas can be captured as a result of engaging with the adventures associated with their hex, as often the town government is in on or targeted by whatever conspiracy is afoot. When that doesn’t happen, however, characters may capture towns with pure military force. This requires two things: To clear out the current forces holding the town, and to install new ones behind.

Every hex encounter town in Vestitas is held by three forces. For the Imperium, these forces are the PDF, the Ecclesiarchy, and the Arbites. For Chaos territory, these forces are the Red Guard, Chaos sorcerers, and the Praetorians. Every town has a single squad of PDF/Red Guard with a chimera, an Ecclesiarchy preacher or Chaos sorcerer, and a pair of Arbites or Praetorians, plus the Lord Mayor, who is either a noble or a warlord. Once the first three (PDF, Ecclesiarchy, and Arbites or Red Guard, sorcerer, and Praetorians) have been defeated, the Lord Mayor will flee, although if he ends up being killed in the fracas, that works too.

Either way, once the players have cleaned the town out, they must drop a squad of at least a half-dozen of their own loyal minions on the town to provide the muscle. Providing a spiritual leader and someone to investigate crimes that dumb-as-bricks paramilitaries can’t figure out is optional, but encouraged.