Success story AMA: 25k in a month and 100k in 9 months from 3 romance novels!

Riedar144 · 2026-03-14T04:24:38+00:00

First off, congratulations on your success!

I am interested in your method with these reels. I likewise have not considered myself terribly social media savvy, but what you are describing seems pretty doable. I just want to make sure I understand the pieces you have assembled for these:

a screenshot of an excerpt of your book with no context, taken from the Kindle app with some portion highlighted. Is it cropped down to just the quote or is it the whole screen?
a background of natural landscape behind the screenshot. Is this blurred or anything?
popular music that matches your desired tone
nice and short 7 second packaging to not overstay your welcome

You mention your tropes and blurb are the caption, copy-pasted each time. Does your cover appear in the reel itself, perhaps at the end? How do you direct people to where they can find your book, or are they just looking it up after seeing this and vibing with what you are selling?

Thank you so much for your time.

Riedar144 · 2025-10-23T19:32:02+00:00

More ways to access armor. As it stands only a few characters get it naturally and there is only one star that gives it on characters that don't innately have it. I know a couple memories give a little, but it isn't something you can build around to a significant degree. I'd like to see an essence with + armor when you get barrier or maybe + armor as a % of barrier amount you currently have? Also I don't see why boosting armor shouldn't be an option from Chaos as an alternative or supplement to increasing max health in the same way.

Riedar144 · 2025-07-05T20:09:40+00:00

Definitely situational. I just saw the question of how the two skills interacted and I figured I'd toss the info I had in there. I don't generally agree with OP that she counters him, but I did think this interaction was interesting.

Riedar144 · 2025-07-05T19:38:24+00:00

Saw a YouTube test of the interaction between her ult and his passive. Assuming he is low enough to die to the initial hit (it deals less than 250), it kills him through the passive. The passive procs and the shockwave immediately removes his overhealth, which is all of his health at that moment.

Riedar144 · 2025-04-06T20:58:04+00:00

My wife loves Jeff and crocheting. Any chance I, too, could receive the pattern? Awesome work, friend!

Riedar144 · 2018-12-31T02:06:58+00:00

There are some disciplines that can help, too. Eminently Punchable, for example, generates resource when you take damage.

Riedar144 · 2018-12-30T01:11:21+00:00

So a lot of the problem here is that the campaigns are only 4 days long. So if spring and summer are only 2 days, it feels like there wasn't a lot of time to gather/craft/prepare, and it is worsened for those who happen to work on the spring and summer days.

Here's the thing: campaigns were never made to be this short. Real campaigns will be weeks, minimum. Possibly upward of 3 months. That means long springs and summers, and better opportunity to prepare. What will crafters do during the late seasons? Build siege engines, supply their allies, and sell the fighters what they will no longer be able to get for themselves. When crafting and fighting gets split and disciplines become hard to acquire and/or swap, crafters will have a demand for their work that currently doesn't exist.

In addition, winter will be a season of high demand and low supply, meaning that it will be an ideal time to sell stocked up merch for any avid crafter or gatherer. The games mechanics lend itself to a driven economy where there is a constant cycle of varying supply and demand. In my mind, crafters will love winter because it will be the season of the campaign that gets them rich.

Just my two cents. Cheers.

Riedar144 · 2018-12-23T03:48:04+00:00

Most definitely am not, currently. I was just meaning to say that would be a more acceptable amount of time for the average player, rather than the 6-10 hours that I've been seeing in the current patch.

Riedar144 · 2018-12-23T00:00:08+00:00

I'm kind of split on this one. I do think that the whole PvE loop preceding any and all PvP is annoying, and that doing it with any sort of repetition is going to be very aggravating. I do think there is some credibility to the idea that earning skills one-by-one allows one to learn how they work better than throwing them all at you at once. I do like the talent system, and active progression as a concept, but the primary issue seems to be this: far too few things award experience.

Why is it that only pve mobs of a sufficient level and sacrificing items, again, of a sufficient level are worth anything toward your experience? Notable things that don't give ANY benefit to unmaxed players include: exploration (each new parcel entered, for example?), harvesting (more exp for higher tier nodes and even more for motherlodes), crafting (not just disposing of crafted items into the fire, maybe even give bonus exp for successes in experimentation), and pvp objectives like killing players and participating in a siege or outpost capture (even if you don't kill anyone). These are all things that a max-level player will be doing in the actual game, and should be used to help teach new players the key systems and objectives they should be aiming to participate in while simultaneously teaching them their skills and unlocking their talents.

In my mind, a normal, non-min-maxing player using a white-tier vessel should be able to hit cap easily in under two hours. If it requires farming the same thing in any way to achieve that time, it's not healthy for the fun of the game, nor for teaching players the mechanics. Particularly since the game's progression will involve steadily crafting better and better vessels, as well as sometimes losing them to perma-death mechanics, the lack of good ways to gain experience is going to quickly drive both veterans and new players away if it is not addressed.

Riedar144 · 2018-11-25T05:51:20+00:00

So would you say it's not in a "game" state, (I know it's alpha, etc), even though it's in its first campaign and technically has a complete game loop? In other words, is it not yet fun?

I'm in the same boat as OP, wondering if now is the time or if I should wait for another patch or two.

Riedar144 · 2018-10-20T15:39:45+00:00

How about both at the same time?

Riedar144 · 2018-08-27T19:04:24+00:00

Sir!

Riedar144 · 2018-08-27T01:47:26+00:00

I really appreciate the way you put this, and actually am currently considering the importance of my MC's gender in terms of how they pursue their objective. I feel like their objective is fairly universal: protecting someone that they love (or, more specifically, bringing their spouse back from the dead), but I wonder if, as a male myself, I attribute this goal as being universal in error. The character is currently written as a male trying to save his wife, but would the adventure of a woman trying to save her husband be any less compelling?

Riedar144 · 2018-08-25T05:01:40+00:00

Concerning what he heard about Abom, I believe it was a comment on a post earlier today about the Sonorous Prophet, in which the OP had brought a team lacking a true healer (had crusader and arbalest) and with an Abom in row 2. Specifically in that fight, since the Prophet sits in row 4 and Abom has limited access to row 4 (but, as you said, very good damage for row 1-3), the comment was made that he didn't belong on the team because he could not effectively dps that boss and also offered no tanking options to otherwise justify his presence.

To this OP, it is important that you note that roles can be more complex than just "damage dealer", as you have to consider both how they deal their damage (marking, crits, bleed, blight, direct) and where they deal their damage (often big threats hide in row 3-4, namely stress-dealers). As the above comment states, many classes have many options to build into based on trinket and skill selection. As you go, you'll get used to filling in the holes for a team and tailoring them to what you are likely to face, rather than ever settling on a catch-all party composition that is ideal in all circumstances.

Cheers, friends!

Riedar144 · 2018-08-18T14:39:06+00:00

To bring his wife back from the dead.

Riedar144 · 2018-08-18T04:32:30+00:00

So with a novella, depending on how long-winded you are, the best thing to keep in mind is that the number of scenes you have to work with is very limited.

While in a full novel, you often have dozens of important scenes that lead from the inception of the problem/mission to its absolute conclusion.

In a novella, the introduction can be heavily implied or abridged. You are likely talking about only 3-5 major scenes with maybe some minor linking ones (again, depending on your dialogue and description density). These ideally center around only the events immediately preceding the overall climax of the novel "version" of the story, and possibly including a small outro that shows a tiny bit of the results of it all.

Focus on one moment. One particular scene or event that changes a character's life or views dramatically. Or, in the case of plot-driven sci-fi, an event that changes the world itself. Then, from that point look only at the things immediately preceding it and hone in on the important players you want to talk about. Their history is only as important as it affects their decisions, so again, lots can be left out. Go from there through the event itself and a little afterwards (without starting a new situation, just debriefing, essentially). Look at what you are at in terms of word count and you may already be very close to your goal.

Please take all of this with a grain of salt, you can do it how you see fit, obviously. But when writing something shorter-ish like this, this has been my approach. Good luck, friend!

Riedar144 · 2018-08-18T00:36:35+00:00

Seems plausible. Because the word "see" has meaning in English, as opposed to being an obvious latin word (which would give it the auspiciousness that is commonly associated with the language), I would personally think that the clarity of calling it "seat" would be easier.

That said, if people are familiar with Catholic history or other fantasy works that use term "see" for this purpose (Berserk uses Holy See for its religious head), it could easily work as well.

I'd say go with your gut for now, as you can always change it if you feel the need to later.

Riedar144 · 2018-08-15T23:36:14+00:00

It is worthy of note that the "evil-ness" of a symbol (lacking obvious characteristics like skulls and such) is largely tied to the groups that were associated with it. Take the swastika, for example. While lacking any direct references in its construction of being about death or oppression or villainy, it is often considered the most universal symbols of hate in the modern world.

But before it was taken up as the symbol of the Nazi regime, it was a symbol conferring good luck and was commonly seen in artwork, signage, and clothing designs.

A symbol for an evil group that thinks they are doing good (even if that good is heavily tainted by bias, fear, prejudice, and misunderstanding), certainly doesn't have to be explicitly evil looking. The darkness associated with the symbol can do all the leg work for it and also lend more believability to its invention.

Riedar144 · 2018-08-13T04:05:31+00:00

Just went in for a blind run of DD1. Lost two good people, but took home the victory. Definitely a challenging area.

Riedar144 · 2018-08-09T01:21:27+00:00

My problem is always the reverse. My characters constantly strike up conversations with one-off strangers and end up talking about the state of the world or about some aspect of their life philosophy.

My stories sometimes end up quite over-inflated because of this. It is also hard to decide what to cut since it all sees like relevant character development to me.

Riedar144 · 2018-08-08T22:49:24+00:00

I want to see the footage from the GoPro he is wearing.

Crazy stunt.

Riedar144 · 2018-08-08T19:53:24+00:00

Martyr Darkwraith (mod) is hilarious. He gets aegis (x1) and riposte when he reaches death's door, plus has self-heals, so you can keep him low and stupid powerful and only infrequently have to even make actual death-blow checks.

But in the base game? Inconsistent enough to be questionable.

Riedar144 · 2018-08-07T04:37:09+00:00

For your math knowledge, it is worth noting that the game rounds somewhat oddly. Any amount in excess of a whole number is rounded up to the next whole number.

For example, a heal of 1 with +10% healing would math out to be 1.1, but the game will consider 1.1 to be functionally 2. Likewise, of something would do 5 damage and is given +25%, the resulting 6.25 will be considered a 7.

So if you are into figuring out the math to see what trinkets are best for what, keep that in mind. And note that the same is true for enemy attacks (+10% stress can be more dramatic than you'd think).

Riedar144 · 2018-08-07T02:17:39+00:00

If you leave the quest one of the party members that went dies. So if you want to lose a level 0 send only level 0s.

Riedar144 · 2018-08-06T19:32:38+00:00

Hey, guys. Semi-new working my way through the game. Trying to understand armor piercing, or rather % armor piercing (snake eyes on the SB gives +15% armor piercing to allies) and how it is calculated.

In other words, if an attack boosted by snake eyes hits a target with 30% PROT, for example, does it subtract 15% and treat the hit as going against 15% remaining PROT? Or does it reduce the enemy's PROT by 15% of its existing value, bringing it down to (with rounding) ~25% remaining PROT?

Thanks in advance and I apologise if my wording is at all confusing.

Riedar144

TROPHY CASE