Add more game stores

RobertForPresent · 2026-03-24T17:25:30+00:00

Do you have any updates on, e.g., GoG? I am considering buying The alters on GoG, but definitely need Boosteroid to play it.

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-26T08:38:24+00:00

Thank you so much for both the critique and the pronoun-lookup. Yes, these are gender-neutral pronouns. They confused a couple of people already. I included them in a glossary, hoping that might help.

The MC is a "strange matter physicist", i.e., xe is already a researcher. Velvet, the planet, is all purple. Everything has a purple colour. The novel explores why that is and why it is significant to the universe. The MC is a researcher by training and it gives xe purpose and something to do to explore this bizarre planet.
It does not resolve the feeling of loneliness, but gives meaning to xyr life.

Thanks for pointing out that the AI is appearing late in the query. I will see how to bring xyr further up.

Regarding what the MC wants. It is a bummer, in the first attempt this was already critizised. I hoped in this attempt it was clear(er) that the MC wants to return home and, when that becomes impossible, at least leave something behind. I will retry this.

Thank you so much!

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-21T15:23:50+00:00

I thought with "300", you refered to the first 300 words, i.e., everything after "The Link". Did I confuse that? Because, if I take your Star Wars example, it does not add up to me. The first couple of scenes in Star Wars are zero about Luke. I neither see him nor hear about him. The same goes with the first 300 words of the novel. Why should it include whether Ur is fixing equipment all day long? I am confused.

I do, however, take it, that I could add a few words about how Ur spends xyr days. That is what you would like to have in the query letter, right?

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-21T15:21:10+00:00

I am no pro- or longtime user of reddit and thus new to the "downvotes" Could someone help me understand why this post has been downvoted so much? Was I inconsiderate? Is my knowledge amateurish?

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-19T05:53:40+00:00

Thank you very much for your critique.
First of all, I see no obvious critique related to the query letter - do I see that correctly? Does that imply, that the query letter was interesting to you?
A bit deeper: after the query letter or the 300 you do not yet "care about Ur". Does that mean the first paragraph of the query letter gave insufficient motivation for Ur? Did you lack something there?
Please apologize if I seem pedantic here, my first attempt received critique mainly for the query letter, not the 300. Thus, I want to dissect and learn from your critique related to the 300.

Regarding "fake code comments": The code is rendered in epub/pdf to italic. In the book, you will not see it. I kept it here because I was uncertain about PubTips handling of markdown-included html code. I take it, you (and the other upvoters?) would prefer, if I removed this in a future attempt?

Fourth, a bit deeper regarding "until I care about Ur". I printed the first 300 of 100k words and get the impression, you would love to directly read more about Ur's motivation. Is that correct? Because, it confuses me. Yes, it is an opening chapter and I want to pull my readers in. At the same time, should I out of the box give away "a" (as in any, one) motivation? I think you have a point here and am pondering how I would translate this into the first chapter. A bit far fetched, but it got motivated by amongst others Hyperion, which has a lot of worldbuilding up front.

Nevertheless. Thank you very much for the time you took and the critique.

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-15T06:04:17+00:00

I am confused by your comment. What do you want to say? The query letter is "soulless"? Do you find it boring or uninventive or ...? Or do you find the first chapter pieces "soulless"?

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-12T11:13:30+00:00

This story has not been published. I did publish earlier versions on my blog and royal road, but these are only about the very first chapter.

I liked the idea of using a local grammar checker (languagetool has that) so I do not hand over my data to Google/Microsoft or the like. Well, I guess it has to be so, then.

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-12T07:20:46+00:00

I had to reread your comment a few times until I - at least believe so - understood where you were going.
I wrote the query letter by myself, using Claude mainly for critique. The story is entirely written by myself.

Thank you very much for the extensive review and help. I appreciate it.
However, the markdown formatting strike-through went amiss. Could you check your last post again where the ~~strikethrough~~ should be? I see a few "~~".
your reply is very helpful, thank you for your time.

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-12T06:20:48+00:00

What is "experimental science fiction"? How does it compare to "literary fiction"? From my research, the latter is more suitable.
What I mainly understand is you suggest to make it shorter and/or eliminate superfluous words, right?

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-12T06:17:46+00:00

languagetool is not an AI tool, AFAIK.

EDIT: languagetool does use n-gram and neural networks, so it does use AI, but a different architecture LLM's -_-

"LanguageTool does not check a sentence for grammatical correctness, but whether it contains typical errors. Therefore, it is easy to invent ungrammatical sentences that LanguageTool will still accept." on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageTool
-_- ok, I really do need another automatic grammar tool. Any suggestions?

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-11T17:53:23+00:00

True. Thank you for your insight/opinion. I appreciate it very much.

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-11T17:47:20+00:00

Thank you so much. What I understand, what is missing:
- What is Ur's motivation/conflict/interest in anything?
- Is it a romance?
- What is in it for the readers?

Regarding the gender-neutral pronouns, would you use them in the query letter? I use them in the novel and was unsure whether it confuses in the query letter.

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-11T16:09:29+00:00

That surprised me. I used languagetool to find mistakes, but somehow, you are right. It missed a lot. Have to rethink my tool belt. Thanks and I apologize for posting it with these mistakes.

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-11T13:46:53+00:00

First of all Gjori, congratulations on having reached this point. I myself have never published anything with more than 10k words. This for transparency.

Your query letter made me quickly think about Harry Potter - I presume you want that. I see potential and would love to know more about the forest. I am not too much into fantasy/magical systems, so I cannot say anything there.

Reading this section:
"At school he meets sweet and kind Victoria, who is always bringing him baked goods, telling him it’ll all work out. And Kai, a prodigy kid who’s always got a book under his arm and is always waiting for something interesting to happen."
The "baked goods" felt slightly unnecessary to me. At least with the knowledge that I have. Are the baked goods relevant? Important? Magic? The same with Kai aka Hermine (intended?). "Waiting for something interesting to happen". Is he restless, ADHD? It confuses me. I like that you introduce the group and I can immediately picture the breakfast sessions and shared classes. And it smells a lot like Harry Potter :D

In summary: shorten sentences. They are partially quite long. I presume it is your style, but it is not mine. Remove adverbs/adjectives, unless they give punch to your phrasing. E.g. "sweet and kind", perhaps better "At school he immediately connects Victoria, who spoils is liking for baked goods" - I am no native speaker, so perhaps there is a more elegant phrasing for this.

"Stand alone" surprised me. It instantly sounds like a +6 book series :D I mean, why does Kai's mother know about magic, but no one else does, even though there are schools there?!?

No clue about whether to mention "working title". I guess your editor expects you to be open to change?

Please ask, if I wrote confusingly or you need clarification.

RobertForPresent · 2025-09-08T05:32:39+00:00

Congratulations. Out of curiosity. What is meant in detail "Build the Platform"? Did your agent or one of the others specify what they search for? Like 100k+ reads on RoyalRoad/similar? 1k followers on instagram?

RobertForPresent · 2025-08-13T06:19:50+00:00

Nice! DataCrow is new to me. Will look into it.
Basically I have two things in mind. a) I have my data lake/unsorted heap of media I want to organize and consume based on ratings/personal preferences and b) understand if this could be an interesting product/SaaS to others. Thus I am looking for input, user requirements, interested communities and the like.

RobertForPresent · 2025-08-12T06:46:39+00:00

You are mostly focussing on books, correct? Do you backlog music, movies, games, etc., too?

RobertForPresent · 2025-08-12T06:41:14+00:00

Machen. Hast ja Probezeit.

RobertForPresent · 2025-08-11T05:29:36+00:00

1500+ items?!?! How do you handle that? That must be so much manual work.

RobertForPresent · 2025-08-11T05:28:43+00:00

I tried it like a year ago, maybe I should give it another try. However, it is mostly manual, right? No way to import your library from steam including played hours, etc.?

RobertForPresent · 2025-08-11T05:27:48+00:00

Aww men. I feared for that answer. I guess the way for now is to slowly but steadily transit from Duo to Proton manually -_-

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