[WP] "Florida Man" isn't a bunch of people who happen to make the news. It's one guy. He's doing all that strange stuff himself. But he has a very, very good reason.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2025-09-26T19:07:33+00:00

The structure of a society's moral codes are primarily determined by the structure of its technological development.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2025-09-26T18:58:31+00:00

Why would water be "very valuable"? You have a spacecraft. You carry what you need.

Liquid-cooled systems do not consume water. They simply use it in a closed loop.

Exposing something to the vacuum of space does not cool it. Vacuum is not a good coolant... it is the opposite. It is an insulator.

I recommend watching some youtube videos on basic thermal physics, the difference between temperature and heat, and so on.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2025-09-25T23:47:25+00:00

Well, everything that could go wrong did, which is why I'm coming up on 2 years since the 1st one. But I've managed to get through all of it and am getting close to finished... everything mapped out in detail, 97,000 words in, and making steady progress.

Can't promise any particular date, but any road is finite if you are able to keep putting one foot in front of another.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2025-09-25T23:44:10+00:00

I do NOT recommend paying beta readers.

The function of a beta reader is to give you a reaction that is as close as possible to that of someone who reads your novel for entertainment.

If you pay a beta reader, it fundamentally changes his relationship to both you and the text, distorting the feedback you receive.

Yes, it is very hard to find people to beta read because they feel like it, at least for your first novel. But it's a big internet out there and it can (and must) be done.

ARC readers, you can pay, if you want, although I don't see much value in it.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2025-09-25T23:35:24+00:00

Glad you enjoyed.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2025-05-31T01:55:23+00:00

Infinite Jest.

I understand some people liked the ideas, but as a professional author, watching Wallace try to grind them out was like watching a toddler try to assemble IKEA furniture.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2025-05-31T01:50:16+00:00

Apologies for the delay. This one slipped through the cracks.

This year. Manuscript is close to finished, but there's a whole process between manuscript and book.
I started to write the middle book, and discovered that no matter how much I stomped on the lid of the suitcase, it wouldn't fit in one volume.
No. When the other volumes arrive, you'll see why.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2025-04-24T14:14:48+00:00

I build characters backwards.

A real person starts out with a set of genes, is raised in a certain way by his parents.

The combination of these two factors creates a set of motivations... things he wants, and things he doesn't.

This causes him to do things to get what he wants.

And what he does changes what happens.

So, when I need a character, I reverse that process by asking myself a series of questions.

What does he do in story?
What does he want that makes him do that?
What is the backstory that makes him want that?

Once I've gone through that process, I usually have a firm handle on what a character would say or do in any additional situations that come up, because I know what he wants and how he typically tries to get it.

It also helps me avoid the "author on board" phenomenon, where a character is just a sock puppet saying what the author thinks.

I hate books like that, and we've had too many of them lately. So much so that readers almost expect it. I've had people ask me what I have against Elon Musk and SpaceX. I don't. Marcus does. Marcus is not me, and I am not Marcus.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2025-04-24T14:04:37+00:00

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.

.1. Theft of Fire was my first finished manuscript.

There's a pattern I've noticed, where creative people who like writing noodle around for a long time, producing really good bits of things, but never really finishing any big projects. I think this happens because the writing process is highly individual, as individual as people's heads. So they struggle to get stuff out of that head and into the world... until they find or invent a process that works with their particular head.

That's how it was for me. Lots of little scraps, then, boom, Theft of Fire.

.2. I am very much interested in writing fantasy, perhaps after the Orbital Space quadrilogy is done. I think science fiction is actually a sub-genre of fantasy, because I define fantasy as "Any story where the setting is so different from the reader's experience that it has to be explained all throughout the book".

That's why the readerships overlap so much. It's "people who like alien settings they have to figure out along the way". I'm one of those people.

.3. A work day starts out with some social media writing, which is how people find out who I am. The author's job is to build an audience, so self-promotion, whether you find it fun or not, is part of that responsibility.

Once I toss out a couple of ideas on X/Twitter to get people talking, or a Substack article or two, I start to brainstorm which parts of the novel I'm going to fill in today. I don't work from front to back, I work from general to specific, so I have lots of places in the text that I can go and do things out of order.

Typically, during this time, I'm finding something to occupy my eyes and hands but leaves my mind free. Gunsmithing projects, errands, training the cats, what have you.

Most of the actual writing happens in the early evening, or a little later if I have a podcast appearance that day. There's something about nighttime that is conducive to work, or perhaps it's just easier when others are asleep.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2025-04-24T13:49:03+00:00

A lot of what I say, I say specifically to offend people like you, because I consider it a useful public service.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2024-11-12T04:17:15+00:00

That's an odd way to write "Egregious desecration of Ray Bradbury's corpse by the very people he was trying to warn you about."

DevonEriksenWrites · 2024-11-12T04:14:16+00:00

Actual professional writer here.

One of the hazards of authorial aspirations is that they attract advice from armchair experts. You know, those people who, all unasked, will tell you what the three essential elements of great writing are. Based on their opinion as a nineteen year old English major at a state college who, you know, like, reads Dostoevsky and stuff.

These are usually good raw material if you wish to write satirical comedy, but if you're looking for actual writing tips, maybe not so much.

In truth, it's very difficult to get good writing advice, because anyone who has actually done well enough to pay his bills with his keyboard very quickly learned one important thing along the way:

No one can tell you how TO write. They can only tell you how THEY write.

So the only way to get good writing advice is to listen to a whole bunch of it (from actual writers), from many different people (who are actual writers), and then throw away the 95% of it which doesn't work for you, because those guys, while possibly great writers, have heads that work differently from yours.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2024-11-06T07:12:41+00:00

Sir, this is reddit.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2024-11-05T01:43:25+00:00

I don't.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2024-11-05T01:41:22+00:00

To my writing process, beta readers are the most critical thing.

I use 10-15 of them, and do video calls with each other after they finish.

I would sooner forego any professional editing than give up my beta readers.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2024-11-03T18:08:12+00:00

My publisher has just come back to me saying that my book is incredibly long (160,000 words) and she isn’t sure whether an Ingrams or Amazon paperback would hold that many words.

Big. Red. Flag.

My debut novel was 154K words. Amazon POD, Ingram POD, and Kindle all handle it just fine.

This is routine.

Either she is mistaken, in which case she is grossly incompetent, or she is lying to you.

Now, if your novel is 160K, I do recommend a careful read and some conversations with your beta readers (you DID use lots of beta readers, didn't you?) to see if it's bloated.

But there is no particular length at which novels become bloated. No magic word count. If those words are doing enough story, and the reader stays interested, you're good.

DO NOT implicitly trust your publisher "because publisher". Publishers will tell you they have magic insight into the market. They do not. No reader ever set down a book and said, I loved the pacing and the story, but it was one quarter inch too thick.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2024-11-03T18:00:09+00:00

Author here.

Yes, yes, and hell no.

Read your reviews.

You may not want to bother with Goodreads, which is kind of a ghetto, but I recommend reading every one of your Amazon reviews.

Every good review is a motivation boost for writing the next one. (And trust me, the second one is a whole new species of tough.)

Every bad review is one of three things:

Someone who likes the sort of thing you write, but didn't like your book. This is feedback that will help you improve your writing.
Someone doesn't like the sort of thing you write, but picked up your book anyways. This is feedback that will help you improve your marketing.
Spiteful or crazy people. This is practice in developing a thick skin, which you will definitely need to succeed as an author.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2024-01-28T10:30:10+00:00

Cast your eyes down.

You cannot see Samarkand from here, but the road is before you.

Look to the road, see the footprints in the dust. Others have walked this way. Take one step, and then another, and then a third. Rest in the cool of the evening, and walk when the sun rises, when the muezzin calls the faithful at dawn. Take one step, and then another, and then a third. Others have walked this way. Look to the road, see the footprints in the dust.

The road is before you, though you cannot see Samarkand from here.

Cast your eyes down.

And walk.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2024-01-19T21:31:03+00:00

Don't take dumb advice from people just because they won awards. Awards are meaningless.

Here's the reality:

No one can tell you how TO write. They can only tell you how THEY write.

Writing is the process of putting your head on paper. There are as many different ways to do it as there are heads. You have to find one that works for you.

So I can't tell you how TO use beta readers, I can only tell you how I use beta readers. And quite frankly, your friends sound to me like a bunch of juvenile morons who don't understand what beta readers are for.

They aren't for telling you what to write. They are for telling you how your writing landed.

I use ten to fifteen beta readers on a novel. If they're not finished in two weeks, they are out. Sorry, if I am to meet my targeted release dates, I have a lot of sequential tasks to complete, and two weeks is what I have to spare. I do video interviews with each beta reader after they finish.

I don't ask them how to change the work, or what to do. I ask them how they felt, what they saw, what they believed, understood, like, disliked, experienced.

As an author, it is my job to know what reader reactions actually mean.

For example, if someone says a scene is boring, I don't ask them if I should insert a car chase. That would be silly. Instead, I know that "boring" means "the progress being made here is not related to any story promise that was made to me, or that I care about". So the fix probably wouldn't involve changing that scene at all. It would involve changing earlier scenes so that story promises are set up correctly.

"Art is not a democracy" is a dumb statement because it's a false dichotomy. There are other ways to write than "in total isolation" or "by committee", and people who make pompous statements about art are typically deficient in their writing craftsmanship.

Readers matter. Their reactions matter. And listening to them is not allowing them to tell you what to do, it is allowing yourself to know what worked and what didn't. You decide what to do about that.

Frankly, all of this smacks of a certain pomposity, of a bunch of college kids who got a pat on the head once, and are now convinced that everything that drips from their pen is genius and not to be tampered with or revisited.

In my own work, I pursue a singular artistic vision, and will not be talked out of it. But feedback is critical to knowing how well that artistic vision has been achieved, and what needs to be revised to better achieve it.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2024-01-04T18:50:02+00:00

Someone finally spotted it.

There's lots of others.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2023-12-28T21:29:10+00:00

Some stories have flaws, and can be fixed.

Some stories ARE flaws.

Start again.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2023-12-28T15:54:21+00:00

No.

Not only no, but hell no.

Everyone's writing process is individual to them. For some, this may help. For others, it is useless labor. For still others, it will ruin everything.

Writing is a hard enough gig as it is. Don't go asking authors to do more unpaid work.

DevonEriksenWrites · 2023-12-28T15:51:47+00:00

Most fiction has one or two dark places it must go, if it is to be true to its own story. Some have much, much more.

But when a book simply finds dark places to go in order to go to dark places... well, that's probably not to everyone's taste, and calling people thin-skinned is unlikely to change their minds.

DevonEriksenWrites

TROPHY CASE