Changing the structure of the Atomic Sea series.

Amazon, oh Amazon. You give, then you take away.

Sigh. Amazon has instituted another one of their infamous algorithm changes, stripping away almost all of the bumps they were giving indie writers. They had helped promote indie writers in numerous ways, but now no longer. Why? Are they trying to weed out the chaff? I don’t know. The upshot is that essentially the only way Amazon is allowing indie writers to be visible these days is through the Hot New Releases section. If you publish a book and sell/give away enough copies, they’ll promote you up for up to thirty days since the release in that category (because after thirty days it’s not “new”). Writers are now calling this the 30-day Cliff. In the case of “The Atomic Sea: Part One”, that means they promoted it for two weeks. Why? Because I allowed two weeks to gather reviews before I scheduled the free promotion, so I only had two weeks left in that 30 days for Amazon to give me a boost. I sold very few copies before the promo, so Amazon didn’t give me a hand until I had.

What does this mean? It means that after those two glorious weeks “The Atomic Sea” dropped off the radar of Amazon almost entirely. Readers who had read Part One went on to buy Part Two (of course!), but since I released Part Two at the same time as Part One and did no additional promotion for it Amazon didn’t give me a boost for Part Two. So out of two massive epic fantasy / science fiction novels that I’m very proud of, Amazon only helped me sell one of them for two weeks. Two. weeks.

So I’m going to do this. Amazon seems to be forcing indie writers like myself to write in a serial format as in the old Charles Dickens days, releasing a chapter or two a month for loyal readers. I think this is pretty lame, and I don’t want to issue “The Atomic Sea” chapter by chapter. But if I don’t split it up I’m virtually committing business suicide. No one can find my books unless they’re new releases. So what do I do?

I’m going to split the difference. I’m dividing “The Atomic Sea: Part One” into two volumes, replacing what was “Part Two” with the second half of what was “Part One”. These are still hefty tomes, even divided, each at over 60,000 words, so I don’t feel too guilty about this. The volume that was Part Two is/was even more massive, reaching 155,000 words. So that’s going to be split up into thirds. I’ll release them a month or so apart, so that hopefully Amazon will give me a bump for each one.

And so on.

Ideally this way will satisfy my artistic self (refusing to release the novels a few chapters at a time and providing an entire novel (50,000 words or more is considered novel-length, and sometimes as low as 20,000) to readers while at the same time allowing Amazon to promote my new releases. I hope I don’t annoy too many readers out there who have already read the original versions of Part One and Part Two, and if so I  apologize sincerely. This was not my intention or design but only a response to Amazon making it very hard out there for indie writers. Know that you can still purchase the paperback versions of both full-length original versions, so if you want a copy for your bookshelves or to give as a gift they are available (or in the case of Part Two if you simply want to read it, as it will now be divided into three parts, the first of which will be released toward the end of February). Of course eventually I’ll provide omnibus versions that will contain the ebooks in their original (and preferred) forms.

I hope Amazon changes things up soon, as this is a lousy way of treating their writers. Perhaps they think that readers want a serial, monthly experience, where they follow a few chapters of a story over a long period of time. I don’t know. Is it? It’s not the way I prefer to read (and it’s not what I’m going to provide my readers; again, even the shorter versions of my books are novel-length manuscripts). More likely it’s simply that Amazon has determined they can make more money this way. The only good thing I can say about this is that I can keep Part One at a permanent discount now and not feel that I’m shooting myself in the foot by doing so. I love The Atomic Sea and want new readers to discover it. So go, put all this unpleasantness behind you (I’m trying, too) and dive into an adventure like no other.

 

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The Hobbit: Part Three: Battle of the Five Armies

SPOILERS BELOW!

Okay, so my initial reaction to the final Peter Jackson Middle-Earth movie wasn’t as positive as I was expecting. I actually quite liked a lot of the second Hobbit movie — Smaug, for example, was excellent — and I was fully expecting PJ to nail the landing with Part Three. I thought he’d be able to pull all the threads together and deliver a satisfying finish, just as he did with Return of the King ten years ago. Sure, he doesn’t have the wealth of material to draw on that he did back then — The Hobbit is no Lord of the Rings, of course (and it’s not supposed to be). But surely he would have some plan for Part Three, right? Some way to pull it all together?

Sadly, no. “Battle of the Five Armies” is the least of the three Hobbit movies. It feels bloated and poorly constructed. Massive monsters (the rock-boring worms) are introduced in one scene, then never heard from again. Whole fleets of giant bats are introduced, take Legolas for one short CGI flight, then vanish utterly. The Battle itself becomes a mess of lousy CGI and weak characterization. We learn that Smaug’s hoard is cursed with dragon-sickness, which is strange, as it was the curse on the hoard (and on the mind of the hoarder) that supposedly drew Smaug in the first place. So that means the hoard gets cursed twice, which just seems like poor storytelling.

In short, I was utterly disappointed with “Battle of the Five Armies”. I’m a massive “Lord of the Rings” fan and have watched those movies more times than I can count. In addition, I’m also a Tolkien nerd and have read every single word he’s ever written multiple times, including “The Silmarillion” and “The Lost Tales” (both of which I utterly love).

I think Peter Jackson has done an amazing job with Middle-Earth, and I was fully expecting that to continue with the Hobbit movies. And he had an entire decade (!!!) to work on the script. My mind reels at how he and his partners could have botched it so terribly. Part of the fault, of course, lies in the source material. J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” is a charming, briskly-paced children’s fantasy, not an epic saga a la “Lord of the Rings”, and if translated to the screen it should have been one movie, two at the absolute most. When stretched out into three long movies, it becomes bloated and hollow, even with the extra material involving the Necromancer filling it out. Then add all the crappy CGI, odd story decisions (a dwarf-elf romance “could” work, maybe, but not like this) and general excess (Legolas surfing on spiders, leaping from dwarf head to dwarf head) and you get a hot mess. If the orcs had been achieved practically, I could enjoy these movies a lot more, but the dodgy CGI through which they were achieved saps my enjoyment a great deal.

Okay, back to “Battle of the Five Armies”, specifically. Bilbo has one big heroic contribution to the novel’s central conflict, slaying the dragon. He’s the one that spots the missing scale and relays the information to Bard, who utilizes it to kill Smaug. In the movie this never happens. Although the moment is set up in Part Two, when indeed Bilbo sees the missing scale, he’s never able to do anything with the information in Part Three. Bard independently sees the missing scale and kills Smaug (in a very anti-climactic fight, by the way). So what was the point of Bilbo seeing the missing scale in the first place? It surely wasn’t to set up the idea that indeed the scale was missing, as that’s achieved during the flashback in Part Two. So that whole story thread went nowhere and robbed Bilbo of his greatest glory.

Which brings me to the Arkenstone. If Bilbo helping to slay Smaug is to be denied him, then surely he can be an effective hero elsewhere, right? Maybe he can steal the Arkenstone and stop the battle between the good guys.

Nope. He steals the stone, alright, but the battle goes on as planned, or begins to, anyway, before the arrival of the CGI orcs, after which Bilbo does very little. He’s giving a brief mission to do at one point and accomplishes it, but for little story gain. He essentially does nothing to warrant his status as main character throughout the entire final movie, which is a shame as he was fairly effective in Part Two, rescuing the dwarves repeatedly and infiltrating Smaug’s lair, etc. But any hobbity heroism is thrown out the window in Part Three for lame CGI battles.

And they are lame. I could forgive this movie a lot if the battles — er, Battle — kicked ass. But it doesn’t. It goes on and on, and on some more, but it’s never a tenth as involving as the Battle of Pelennor Fields. Hell, it’s played for laughs! Afrid, the weasel-faced sidekick to the Master, has one comic misadventure after another while at the same time tension is supposed to be mounting up. I kind of enjoy Alfrid, broad as he is, but his antics undermine what should be the most gripping part of the whole narrative.

Sigh. I’m running out of steam here. I think I’m going to leave off of the rant for the moment, leaving the possibility open to return to it at some future time. I can’t even summon the passion for “The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies” to properly lambast it.

I will, however, pick up the Extended Edition the first day it comes out, and I’ll eagerly watch it, hoping beyond hope that somehow, some way, Peter Jackson is able to fix his last foray into Middle-Earth in that version, if not in this.

If nothing else, hopefully someone will make a great fan edit out of these movies.

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Map of Felgrad

Alright! I’m finally getting into the swing of this whole website business and am putting all my maps up with (hopefully) functioning links. Here’s the map of the beleaguered kingdom of Felgrad and the lands immediately south of it, the setting of my dark epic fantasy War of the Moonstone, whose first volume (it’s divided into two parts) can be found HERE.

 

Map of Felgrad

Map of Felgrad

 

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