While I retain my exceptionally bleak views about writing and publication, that in no way alters the platinum-plated, uranium-cored fact I’m lucky to have so many helpful friends who have been kind enough to volunteer their time in wading through the perversions of the written word which I pass off as ‘writing’ :)
I just spent the last couple of hours collating and re-reviewing the feedback I’ve received to date, and while I'm still severely lacking in numbers when it comes to beta readers, I’m grateful to everyone who’s been willing to take the time to read my writings and provide feedback (whether written down or via phone while I take notes), and it’s nice to see both positive AND negative critiques -- even knowing 'friend bias' is ineradicable, it's nice to see people can still be objective enough to serve up negatives as well (and cogent ones, no less :D )
So: to everyone who has assisted, here’s the first of many public thank-yous :)
~J
[N.B.: I’m not listing people here by name, and won’t be doing so anywhere publicly without their express permission, though as promised, everyone who has provided feedback will be credited in the acknowledgments at the VERY least (and in whatever fashion/under whatever name they’d prefer).]
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
If things weren't so utterly insane right now...
...A WHOLE lot more would have already appeared here. So, to reassure my audience (both of you), at some point very soon, I'll be posting stuff here. Random stuff. Garbage off the top of my head.
Among other things, I have a rant about how I wish people who write action scenes involving firearms were to do some LIVE FIELD RESEARCH before they wrote about them. In fact, I've got an entire rant just for that point alone.
In the meantime, helpful hint: I don't care if you've got a character bustin' a cap indoors/in a confined space with even so much as a damn 9: try shooting off even a single 115gr field round in a reasonably sized room, and THEN see how well normal, conversational tones go down.
Contrariwise -- and I've always though this a useful fact to know -- with all other factors the same, one might find a 147gr (subsonic) round shot in the same room (same layout, etcetera) is not only less deafening, but is shockingly much less audible than one might imagine outside the building. Don't ask me how I know that.
Provided I make it to that rant, I'll lay down some figures for the different calibers and different weights (in grains and grams, even, if I'm so inclined) and why it is that subsonic rounds *ARE* so much quieter than supersonic rounds (as if the answer wasn't right there in the words themselves...I mean...Duh, right?).
Hell -- if I'm feeling particularly ballistically minded, I might even cover the yaw of repose (though I'm going to wager that's probably a wee bit too technical for even the most diligent realists among you (unless you're writing about longer-range stuff).
I just realized, given I haven't seen the American Sniper movie, for all I know, they cover that sort of thing there, and the job of educating tons of people who write action scenes where
A) Nobody keeps track of the rounds shot
B) People are magically immune to tinnitus, and
C) The characters seem immune to the simple physics which covers events like crowd waves
...Will have already been taken care of, and I won't have to drone on and on about it. That'd be nice, actually.
Of course, then I've got an entire essay I wrote in one sitting which is, coincidentally enough (no relation to the above, honest) about suicide. Given the particularly personal nature of that one, I remain uncertain that it will ever be published here, in this dim and dusty corner of the Internet, regardless of how infrequently it's visited.
I actually do have happy stuff to post. Honest.* Time permitting, it'll make it up here. Eventually.
~J
----
* I reserve the right to define "happy", naturally :>
Among other things, I have a rant about how I wish people who write action scenes involving firearms were to do some LIVE FIELD RESEARCH before they wrote about them. In fact, I've got an entire rant just for that point alone.
In the meantime, helpful hint: I don't care if you've got a character bustin' a cap indoors/in a confined space with even so much as a damn 9: try shooting off even a single 115gr field round in a reasonably sized room, and THEN see how well normal, conversational tones go down.
Contrariwise -- and I've always though this a useful fact to know -- with all other factors the same, one might find a 147gr (subsonic) round shot in the same room (same layout, etcetera) is not only less deafening, but is shockingly much less audible than one might imagine outside the building. Don't ask me how I know that.
Provided I make it to that rant, I'll lay down some figures for the different calibers and different weights (in grains and grams, even, if I'm so inclined) and why it is that subsonic rounds *ARE* so much quieter than supersonic rounds (as if the answer wasn't right there in the words themselves...I mean...Duh, right?).
Hell -- if I'm feeling particularly ballistically minded, I might even cover the yaw of repose (though I'm going to wager that's probably a wee bit too technical for even the most diligent realists among you (unless you're writing about longer-range stuff).
I just realized, given I haven't seen the American Sniper movie, for all I know, they cover that sort of thing there, and the job of educating tons of people who write action scenes where
A) Nobody keeps track of the rounds shot
B) People are magically immune to tinnitus, and
C) The characters seem immune to the simple physics which covers events like crowd waves
...Will have already been taken care of, and I won't have to drone on and on about it. That'd be nice, actually.
Of course, then I've got an entire essay I wrote in one sitting which is, coincidentally enough (no relation to the above, honest) about suicide. Given the particularly personal nature of that one, I remain uncertain that it will ever be published here, in this dim and dusty corner of the Internet, regardless of how infrequently it's visited.
I actually do have happy stuff to post. Honest.* Time permitting, it'll make it up here. Eventually.
~J
----
* I reserve the right to define "happy", naturally :>
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