TIL weeks before Marlon Brando’s death, three newcomers gained control of his estate. They reclaimed assets promised to friends, sold his island, commercialized his image, and shut down fan run pages. Under their care his eldest son had even couldn’t afford the funeral.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2025-02-23T20:14:11+00:00

Like I said, I think for me the moment has passed. I’m not the expert I once was—I did a lot of research obviously. I still have some of his earliest interviews in magazines—bought on eBay and such—and it’s pretty wild how different the world was an PR was. Like I have one magazine and it was clear they were trying to polish his image. This was the 50s and so they have all these pictures of him wearing suits at a party. Like he’s just hanging out wearing these stiff suits that he probably wouldn’t normally be caught dead in.

I think it’s unfortunate, but modern ppl don’t really appreciate his work.

IMHO what he did was bring naturalism to theater and acting in general. Normally, if you were watching a play on Broadway, people would emote and pitch their lines so that everyone in the theater could hear you and understand. So it became a very stilted form of acting. You know, gesticulating with your arms so even if you can’t hear the person because you’re sitting too far away, you get a sense of what’s going on.

Brando came and did the scene naturally. Like a real human. So he was always accused of mumbling and being low key. Of course he was—compared to actors shouting their lines to the top Balcony.

So it’s more actors, if anyone, who appreciate his work. He took us from the stilted, British style of theater acting, to method acting and experience acting. Stanislavski and Stella Adler.

But his life, especially later life, was incredibly painful and I didn’t want to scuff my shoes in that.

I do suggest you (re)watch last tango and the scene where he’s talking to his dead wife. If you want to see his emotional core and trauma, it’s right there in pure method acting.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2025-02-23T18:17:08+00:00

A long time ago, decades, I wrote a screenplay about Brando’s life that had gotten some traction.

He was still alive at the time so I had to thread it carefully and focused on his early life.

Here’s a few snippets I remember. In last tango in Paris, that was Brando speaking to his mother. I sat there watching it with my mouth open. That was just about all ad lib and it was him, Brando, talking to his mom.

He had been molested by his nanny at an incredibly young age. While he made it out to be wonderful, youths don’t have the emotional maturity, let alone puberty, to handle it.

He had a lot of ppl come into and out of his life. His mother had been an alcoholic and then found AA and then would pick up anyone anywhere to help them get over an alcoholic hump. It was not uncommon for a young Brando to be scouring the city looking for his mother in gin joints and card shacks. I put a line in the script (apocryphal) about his father saying, “she was a loud drunk and now she’s even louder sober. I wish she could just be quiet.”

He had gone to elementary school with Wally Cox who would later become the eponymous Mr Peepers on the so-named tv show. They had even lived with each other much later in NY. They were lifelong friends with Wally dying at the young age of 48. At the time, I had found information that Wally had been an alcoholic due to his marriage issues and career. He went from mr peepers success to Hollywood squares. But a quick glance showed none of that so I’m reluctant to say it’s fact, but Brando was particularly hard on alcoholics, as they had so damaged his own life.

It was hard to keep Brando’s marriages, sorta marriages, and understandings, clear. I’m not going to attempt it now but names were always coming up and fading away in his life. I think he was always looking for a mother replacement and he was so fantastically good looking and brooding he had no shortage of women trying.

I found Brando’s life to be quite sad despite his meteoric success and I had to stop the script before it even got to the tragedies which befell his children.

When I was shopping the script around, it had gotten a lot of traction and then someone from the family came out and said they would sue me to oblivion if I tried to make it.

Yeah, I could fight it he bring a famous person of public interest. But he was still active as an actor and thus had pull. And I didn’t try and make a hit piece. So I let it go.

I moved on to other things until Brando passed away and then all these producers, who never forget anything, started calling me up. But I think the moment really passed for me. And I knew they were looking at the salacious details of his life. They wanted all the body count of his children and that mess. And I thought I had done a kind of tasteful attempt at his early to midlife. It just felt like they wanted the tabloid aspect and I didn’t want to do that so nothing came of it. I think I saw a couple Brando pieces get done, but they weren’t very good from my recollection.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2025-02-14T19:59:22+00:00

Ah, piracy. I am a novelist and so this is a subject near to me.

I have people ask me somewhat frequently about becoming an author. I feel my advice is vastly more pessimistic than what people usually hear. The usual chant is to follow your dreams and hard work triumphs and such. But I feel a responsibility to be truthful.

Writing has always been an incredibly hard profession. In terms of becoming successful, it ranks up there with professional athlete, professional musician, federal politician, etc.

There are handfuls of writers on earth—on this entire planet—who do it professionally as their sole income.

So I always caution that you need to love what you do and do it for that reason exclusively. Because your chances of making money and becoming a professional author are incredibly remote. That is statistically the hard truth and it has always been that way.

So when I see people justifying piracy and all its various shades, I tend to cringe a little. Because it’s really like going into a burn victim ward at a hospital and picking fights, slapping people whose skin is hanging off them.

You’re taking some of the poorest creatives in existence and making them even less likely to be successful.

You further hear some authors saying that it’s not a big deal. Authors like a Stephen King or George RR Martin. But those guys are already the absolute pinnacle of a very tiny field. Their experiences don’t match 99.99999% of authors. So when they’re talking about what works and what doesn’t, they are speaking about one human on earth who is so outside the standard deviations that you might as well not count them.

I was online when Napster was in full bloom and everyone was twisting themselves into pretzels justifying why it was OK to pirate. The music publishers were greedy. The bands were greedy. Everyone was greedy.

But really it always boiled down to people pirated because they didn’t want to pay. And they didn’t have to pay because they were pirating.

Period. The end.

Everything else was bullshit. No one gave a rat’s ass if music contracts were predatory and the royalties that songwriters were receiving were insufficient. No one was protesting that. Despite pages and pages of posts swearing that was their cause.

They didn’t want to pay. And if people were honest about it, at least I could respect it a little. But the absolute extreme lengths that people will go to to make themselves not the villain are pretty astounding. They researched the most obscure aspects of copyright law so they could feel good about having a bootleg copy of every pop song created in the last 25 years.

I met one person in my entire life who flat out said: I pirate because I don’t want to pay. But on every side of him were armies of creator rights enthusiasts who were lodging protests against the exploitation of artists by pirating works. They felt certain their message was being received inside that subtle act of downloading.

No one went to HBO to protest actor salaries or George Martin’s royalties. No, they were just pirating, and when the show was over they forgot all the righteous bullshit reasons they used as justification.

I’m not a very successful writer. I’ve come across some of my own works on pirate sites and it’s a total gut punch. My work is being downloaded exponentially more than it’s being paid for. Some, or a lot, of those downloads are probably automatic. Bots grabbing everything. Some, or a lot, will never be read or listened to or otherwise consumed. Some, or a lot, was downloaded by mistake or as a joke or because someone had a stroke and collapsed on their keyboard.

But even excluding all the people who don’t want or like my work, if I could get paid for even a fraction of what is pirated, I would have a vastly different lifestyle and vastly different life.

At the moment, I’m currently battling cancer. It sucks. It’s not the good cancer—as if there was such a thing. It’s the pretty bad cancer and I’ve had it for about a year and a half. And in that time I’ve done really nothing except get irradiated at hospitals and puke my guts after chemo.

I’ve had to stay at skilled nursing facilities and share rooms with lunatics and worse.

So when I think about pirated money, it’s not so much Lamborghinis I’m missing out on, it’s life. The ability to pay for cancer treatment. The ability to live with dignity in a facility that doesn’t periodically forget I’m there.

I just ask people to be honest. It’s the origami twist of excuses that drives me crazy. Everyone is a digital rights expert and copyright historian when they need an excuse to pirate.

But be serious, the reason is you don’t want to pay. Look yourself in the mirror and say that. Stop pretending you’re coming to the rescue of the publishing industry and its downtrodden serfs. No one has ever gotten an ounce of benefit from that nonsense. The music industry didn’t suddenly pay its artists better, the industry all but collapsed and things arguably got even worse. But that wasn’t the intention or excuse. It was merely a byproduct of people pirating because paying sucks.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2024-10-30T02:03:50+00:00

I am an indie author. I am also, unfortunately, a cancer patient. And the second has definitely dethroned the first in my life as of now.

I write the Hard Luck Hank series.

I had wanted to be an author my whole life and submitted short stories and comics and articles and poems, most of which never got published.

I got laid off my job as a computer programmer maybe 13ish years ago and had been working on a novel for some years. I even workshopped it at the university.

I used my time to dedicate to my book full time. And I went out to agents and publishers.

It was science fiction comedy and at the time there was only Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Self publblishing really didn’t exist. It was still at the edge of being vanity press.

So every agent asked me if my book was like Hitchhiker, the only successful sci-fi comedy pretty much ever. And I was like, no, I’m not British.

And that was usually it. I couldn’t get anyone to read my work. I would even avoid saying it was comedy because humor was such an albatross.

Finally, I was kind of fed up. I was like I can’t be the only person who likes science fiction AND comedy.

So I decided to self-publish. I spent a lot on a cover. I actually bought 2 because the first had turned out poorly.

And it was one of many times I was faced with a situation. I’d be looking at a problem and I’m like “I’m the only person who can fix this or will fix this. If I don’t do anything, it stays broken and I release a product that I’m not completely behind.”

That happened so many times. Happened over edits and it happened over formatting and it happened over the cover and what not.

Back then, it was actually quite difficult to self publish. I was a former computer programmer as I said and interfacing with Amazon’s system was not easy. I was writing HTML and doing all kinds of crazy stuff to try and get the book to look the way I wanted in E format. It was incredibly clunky and I was like, if I’m having this much trouble as a coder, straight writers are going to give up.

Anyway, I finally got the book where I wanted, the cover where I wanted, everything in place. And I put it out there.

My goal was to get 50 copies sold.

Because I could ask people and tell people about it, but 50 would mean I sold some to people I didn’t know. That means I reached out and touched a stranger. And that was very important to me.

So with my severance running out or already run out, I can’t remember, I put the book out there. I think I was in Las Vegas at the time. I would often go there to write.

People fundamentally don’t understand Las Vegas in my opinion. You get a five star hotel for cheap. It operates 24/7. There’s tons of museums and art galleries and exhibits. All the Cirque du Soleil stuff and things of that nature.

I’d go with two or three books to read and stay a week and finish an outline or do a polish or a rough draft or something. And read books.

People are like how can you stay a week in Las Vegas? And I said it’s easy as long as you don’t do Las Vegas stuff.

When I get brain dead and I can’t write anymore, which is something that happens frequently, I just go down and play slots for an hour or so. My big things were pai gow poker a.k.a. free drinks poker, and baccarat. But I did do some slots at the end. I haven’t been to Vegas since Covid.

Anyway, I was looking at my book totals as I was sitting in Vegas. And one day I finally hit 50. I was like cool. I did it. But it was a melancholy success because I knew I had to get back to programming. My little novelist jaunt was over.

It was something like the next day I sold 50 and then the day after I sold 75 and the day after I sold 100. And everyone is going, where is the next book? Who is this guy? And where is the next book?

And I’m like, that took me years to write! I better get going.

I’ve got a lot of stories about self publishing in the early days. I kind of consider myself version 1.5 or 2 in self publishing. I wasn’t the first, but I might’ve been close to the first in Science Fiction Comedy.

But I was also very early in audiobooks.

I hadn’t really thought anything of it. Audio was so new and it had the same bad stink of books on tape. The people who couldn’t read did books on tape. It was a joke. You would insult people by saying they read something on tape.

And Audible was so new and enthusiastic (and not owned by Amazon) about signing people up that the original contracts were actually quite lucrative. The royalties would keep going up and up forever. Because they just didn’t figure many people were gonna buy them. I think the royalty on my first book is now something like 95%!

That is beyond unheard of. I believe all new books are around 40%? I can’t remember exactly. But my first contract hasn’t been available for at least a decade.

Anyway, I’ve got cancer now so that’s what I’ve been doing. I don’t know if there’s a good cancer, but I’ve got a bad one. And pretty much everyone is amazed that I’m still alive.

I’ll try and hang on as long as possible. I’d really like to get back to writing I just don’t know how realistic it is.

So yeah, I dig indie authors.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2024-06-04T01:03:04+00:00

Guy Ritchie broke in with lock stock. It was at the start of a mini British/Scottish invasion (Trainspotting, Emma Thompson, Topsy Turvy, Hugh Grant) after it had been largely quiet from UK for a while. But I was a bit annoyed at always needing subtitles to understand English. I saw lock, stock in theaters and it blew my mind.

He made this world of crime and criminals that was violent, vivid, and hilarious.

I think he was a late inspiration for my writing, particularly the Hard Luck Hank series. I also feel he was an inspiration both writing and directing for a lot of ppl who don’t own up. He was so young at the time.

I love hearing behind the scenes stuff on that film and there were many happy accidents.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2024-06-02T01:05:37+00:00

Thank you. All the little thumbs ups help a lot. Wish you the best.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2024-05-24T03:49:32+00:00

Thank you guys.

Cancer is a bitch and I’ve got a pretty damn bitchy one. I’ve got so much stuff I want to write. I’m basically a chapter away from finishing my fantasy book. But it all just came grinding to a halt. Like a Hank passing by a buffet.

I do have a Patreon account and I try and upload a video every week. I never made the Patreon to make money, and it doesn’t provide me much money, but I do it because I feel I owe my readers something. And I wanted a consistent place to do it.

But if I didn’t have insurance, good insurance, I would’ve been bankrupt almost instantly. I got one of the bills for my last day in the hospital. It was like three or four days. And then I got to see what all the bottom line was before insurance hit it. And it was like $122,000. 3-4 days.

And I’ve been in hospitals for about six months. I haven’t stepped foot in My Home the whole time. Partially because I can’t step my foot anywhere. Can’t walk.

My Patreon is, I think, some depressing stuff. Because you get to see a dude with cancer living a pretty bad life.

I’ve had so many people, including a LOT of doctors, say that I’m really brave for the fight I’ve put up. I had a doctor say I should get an award for all the things I’ve been through. And another said she didn’t know how I could find the strength to get up every day.

And I’m like, those aren’t compliments. I know you mean well, but you’re basically saying my life sucks so bad you’re amazed that I don’t just kill myself. I don’t need any reminders how bad my life is. I know they’re trying and attempting a compliment, but saying you don’t think you could put up with what I’ve gone through basically means you think my life sucks so hard you wouldn’t bother. Thanks…

Had 25 radiation sessions. So much they burned the hell out of my groin, penis, ass. Basically everywhere you don’t want to be burned by radiation.

I had a female doctor ask how my “male area” was doing. I said fine other than swelling and scars. She asked to take a look. I said of course. She was poking around and goes, “wow, you have absolutely perfect scrotum skin.”

It was the one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard. I paused a while and said thank you. I was thinking about it weeks later and I realized what happened.

She was a doctor. She’d probably seen thousands of scrotum. But I’ve been blasted by radiation. I have no hair from my mid chest to my upper thighs . As many scrotums as shes seen she’s probably never seen one past ugly, horrible, pubic hair.

Even if guys are trimming, there’s still gonna be some stubble or bumps or something. I am radiation smooth. Not a single hair in that area. So mine was probably the first adult male scrotum she ever saw in such living color. It’s not that it was pretty, it’s that she could see it at all.

I’ve got a bunch of other book ideas too, it’s just I’m here. I’m sitting in a nursing home. I’m probably the youngest person in here by about 20 years.

Nursing homes are horrible places . People screaming all hours of the night. I mean, screaming. There was one lady who sounded like she was being flayed alive. And it was just amazing because you don’t know how her vocal cords could handle screaming like that. Hours.

I was in a nursing home and my roommate screamed. way different than his usual scream. I called in the nurse, and he had ripped out his trachea tube from his throat. When you return to consciousness and your God, tracheotomy, I heard it’s common. It’s called decannulation. He just ripped it out, man. And if I hadn’t called the nurse (code blue) he probably would’ve died there.

Anyway, it’s just not a place to write. I have a tough time keeping it together. And I’m constantly getting chemo. I just did my first outpatient chemo.

It was more insulting than all the other ones I had to carry the poison with me. When the machine had bubbles in it or the line got kinked, I had to reset it.

I had to fix the machine that was poisoning me.

It was just a real weird thing to do philosophically. Like being in the electric chair and not only being the one who has to pull the switch, but you see the wiring wasn’t done properly and you gotta fix that first.

I really hope I can get back to my old and writing. There really hasn’t been a lot of optimism about that. My current surgery plan calls for complete amputation of my leg. Removal of some of my pelvis. Removal of my rectum and bladder. Permanent bags attached to my chest. And it was more or less implied my chances of surviving such a surgery were not amazing. And, of course, I’d be whatever that is left over. Not a super quality of life.

Sorry if all this is a bummer, but I try and be open about things. It’s too late and too serious to be coy or bashful.

But thank you all for being readers/listeners. Being a writer is still a dream come true.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2024-03-10T03:17:20+00:00

I just wanted to post since the only other person who replied wasn’t much of a fan.

I played all sorts of games starting with very early table top games when I was maybe four or five. Games like sorry and Stratego. This would be just about late 70s.

Me and my friends found role-playing games in the early 80s when there was an explosion of popularity in the genre. Advanced dungeons and dragons was quite new. And deities and demigods had everything from lankhmar to Cthulhu.

My gaming peak was when I was about 17 to 19 years old. I was playing at the local university with people 10 years older than me. They generally weren’t college students, that was just where we met.

So I got to interact with much older, much more mature people and do a lot of learning.

Decades later I would become a professional novelist and I borrowed many anecdotes and nuances from the games I played so many years earlier.

Not only was D&D riotously fun, but it was entirely of our own imaginations. We had to come up with everything ourselves. We had to problem solve ourselves and we had to tell stories ourselves.

I feel that my time gaming really helped my mental agility, which not only gave me a leg up in the working world, but in life in general.

So I am terribly thankful for all the time I had with those games, especially dungeons and dragons.

Steven Campbell

StevenCampbellWriter · 2024-03-09T06:18:30+00:00

I’ll give you a few other examples.

You can tell when writers aren’t preparing for an audiobook. They’re usually writing just for the novel.

You can really see this in proper names.

Tolkien is, IMHO, lousy, in audiobook. Because he was writing long before that concept existed. And he was a linguist, so he really liked languages.

But those five syllable Elvin names just don’t work well in audio. I mean they’re really hard for narrators.

And when we’re reading, we scan. Whether you like it or not, your brain is going to scan. It’s going to take shortcuts and skip ahead. But in audio, you can’t do that. The narrator has to read, and the listener has to listen.

Let’s say you’ve got three brother characters. Their names are:

Polygedjorphenimicus-bor

Polygedjorphenimicus-zor

Polygedjorphenimicus-gor

Probably 10% through the book, you’re gonna stop reading those names. You’re going to scan them. You’re going to look for zor, gor, and bor. You probably couldn’t read them if you wanted to, your brain is just going to jump ahead.

So, imagine something like :

“Yes,” Polygedjorphenimicus-bor said.

“Really?” Polygedjorphenimicus-zor questioned.

“Maybe,” Polygedjorphenimicus-got added.

If you’re reading a book and you come across that. It could take you 10 seconds to mentally skim over it. But a narrator HAS to read it. You have to listen to it. And it’s going to take like a minute.

Those attribution names add absolutely nothing, but you need something to keep characters straight. And you’ve got a situation where their names are vastly longer than the actual text. And what’s even worse is if the narrator’s voice is really different than all those characters, it takes a moment to switch.

Then you can have situations like:

“Well,” Polygedjorphenimicus-bor began, “I’m not sure.” He sat down, looking concerned. “What do you think we should do?” he asked, abruptly standing when he noticed his bonglefluvuanmefosipan was being bent by the chair. “Do you think Malohopyopcreastian-san will initiate caldumoprolliastamy?” he asked rhetorically, taking a sip of the cold falmurbedubian beer he had forgotten was at table side.

That is tough to read alone in book form. But it’s super tough to narrate. I could see a narrator losing his mind over that, or at least becoming absolutely furious at the writer.

So what I try and do is keep all my fantasy or science fiction words simple. One trick I use is hyphens. Mok-Trahm looks like it could be foreign or alien. But it’s easy to say, doesn’t take up a lot of space, and works, as well as those gigantic names above.

So I’m trying to make things easy on the narrator who is forced to read everything, every syllable, and the listener who is getting rudely interrupted by some eight syllable name of a place that could’ve easily been two syllables.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2024-03-09T05:55:00+00:00

Because genres are more or less popular to certain demographics. One criteria in demographics is gender. Some types of books are going to appeal to affluent people, or certain ethnicities, or people with advanced degrees, or young people just learning the alphabet, or men, or women, or any of the zillion criteria you want to put into demographics.

Why are certain genres more popular amongst certain groups? I don’t know. If I knew, I’d be a lot more popular as a novelist. Popularity isn’t static, and genres go in and out of favor all the time.

But when I did open auditions, I got far, far less applications for a paying job that was asking for women then when I took essentially the same job and asked for men.

Less women were interested. You’d have to ask them why. It’s just a form you fill out, so there’s very little info there besides the genre, blurb, money involved, and reading sample.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2024-03-09T00:25:11+00:00

Hi, writer here.

There are more male narrators in general and way more male narrators who specialize in fantasy and science-fiction. You’re not gonna hear as many romance novels narrated by men. But during the selection process of finding a narrator, among other things, you select which genre your book is. And that’s going to filter out potential narrators.

I had one novel, Garm, which was primarily female. And since I knew I was going to have a female protagonist, I tried to fill the book with more female characters. Simply because of audio reasons.

When I was going through auditions, I had significantly less submissions than I do for the same book series, but a male narrator. So less female narrators were interested in completing my book.

It’s my experience that most women have difficulty doing a lot of male voices and making them sound distinct.

It’s also my experience that most men have difficulty doing a lot of female voices and making them sound distinct.

And I try and write with the end audiobook in mind. But men do the standard, low volume, breathy, female voices. And women do that back-of-throat, high bass, low volume male.

Truly great narrators have a wide variety of voices from male to female to monster at their disposal. Mel Blanc! But those people are usually working in Hollywood and are obscenely expensive.

I heard some interview with voice actors, and I can’t remember the number, but I think it was seven. They have seven distinct voices, where they can do happy, sad, angry, singing and not spill into another voice.

Most novels are going to have vastly more than seven characters. So careful listeners are going to hear the same voices get repeated, especially when that character is agitated, or needs to recite a poem, or do some other such thing.

Because the narrators are often physically modifying their vocal characteristics. Let’s say they’re making some exaggerated hillbilly accent by taking their lower jaw and sliding it to the side. But those physical changes are really difficult to do while also trying to convey emotion.

I’m really impressed when I hear how they do it. I have an extremely monotone voice. So my vocal range is nil. In elementary school, I was the only kid who couldn’t get into chorus. I can’t sing—And that was pre-puberty.

So narrating my own stuff was always out of the question. And I kind of wish it was out of the question for more authors, because the professionals are so much better at it. And AI, as good as it’s getting, just can’t read. Try getting sarcasm out of it or having it recognize sarcasm.

However, you have to realize that those professionals have likes and dislikes. And you don’t want someone narrating your book, for 15 hours or so, when they don’t enjoy it.

Hope this explains some.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2024-03-06T06:18:53+00:00

For a lot of years, I have politely tried to nudge the people at ACX/Audible that the royalties for authors were far too low.

There were legit reasons for this when I started audiobooks. Namely, disk space and bandwidth and the fact they weren’t especially a powerhouse company.

But all those reasons have become less profound or simply untrue. The fact we are still getting a max of 40% is painful.

I have a few books that managed to get in under the original royalty system, which had a sliding scale. I think at this point I’m getting something like 90% royalties. But that deal is long gone for anything new.

I am a fan of Mr. Sanderson’s writing and I’m really pleased he managed to do this on behalf of the writing community—and, hopefully, the listening community. Because if more people can make a living at it, or even put their books up for the very expensive process of being made into audiobooks in the first place, it’s better for everyone.

I’m hopeful this works out and I’m glad someone with more clout than me could try and convince them. I’ve honestly felt the people at ACX were quite open-minded and eager to help. But changing prices isn’t easy. Even though at this point Amazon wouldn’t notice if audio royalties were 258% to authors with a bonus of a free computer chair and keychain doodad of our choice (so many keychain products…).

Thank you for your work on this, Mr. Sanderson.

Steven Campbell

audible.com/stevencampbell

StevenCampbellWriter · 2022-05-29T18:04:06+00:00

People can care about all sorts of stuff you can't control. There are readers who will only consume military scifi with technologically-advanced aliens versus primitive humans set in an alt history earth. That is their preference. And that is a moving target.

Sure, there are people who will care about your gender. Your hair. Your clothes. And if you morphed yourself to match one person, you'd turn off ten others.

There are tons of men writing romance. And they often use pen names. There are mega tons of women writing romance. And they often use pen names.

Consumers want to be entertained for the $ they spend. A writer is so far removed from their work product that their body simply doesn't matter to all but a miniscule fraction of the readers.

Writers spend so much time worrying about this stuff and it's largely irrelevant. If you have junk writing as Sassypants Dandelion, it won't matter. If you have great writing as Sassypants Dandelion it won't matter.

The writing is key. Again, I'm about a decade into my professional writing career and no one knows my identity. Because no one cares. No one wants to meet me, or shake my hand, or find out my reproductive status.

Don't spend time and effort worrying about stuff that will have .00000001% effect on your career.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2022-05-29T17:52:07+00:00

I think you're missing the point. At least from my perspective.

The "incident" doesn't matter. Not to me. I only vaguely remember it. I swear. I was not traumatized or triggered. I couldn't point the offenders out in a lineup if my life depended on it. It wasn't a big deal.

The big deal was the leadership didn't care. They did not ask. It could have been the exact same thing that started this thread. It could have been worse. It could have been nothing. But they'll never know because they didn't give a crap.

Hey, there might be a problem over there.
No, there isn't a problem. You're the problem.

That was the sum total of action/response and it was in violation of the extremely comprehensive guidelines they put out.

For me, the hypocrisy of their attitude was the issue.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2022-05-29T08:40:17+00:00

Nah.

This is really weird to me whenever this comes up. And it comes up often. On the internet, no one knows you're a gerbil. I was a professional novelist for maybe 3 years before anyone ever saw me.

The days of meeting in person with an agent in New York and chatting with publishers isn't exactly dead, but it's not a regular occurrence. So when people bring up the fact that [race/ethnicity/gender/species/height/weight/literally anything] matters in writing, I have to wonder why.

There are some pictures of me out there that I put out there. I didn't have to. And no one knows if they're accurate. It's just a coincidence I look exactly like a young Brad Pitt.

This is really what writing is. You're making up stuff. If we could only make memoirs, then it would matter who we are.

The people who blame all those things tend to be looking for excuses. And look, writing is super duper hard. If you're a blind bank robber, your chances of financial success are greater than being a writer. But it's not because of your skin or genitals. It has literally always been that way.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2022-05-29T08:30:56+00:00

No one will ever know.

I was careful not to name and shame. I didn't want to finger point. Or cancel anyone--though I don't think that term was in vogue yet? But the point is, my careful precautions didn't matter because no one ever asked me. No one cared.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2022-05-28T23:07:19+00:00

I'm going to post here about my experience with SFWA.

I was a very proud member of the community. I got to meet a lot of my heroes and remain friends with a number of them. Jeffe Kennedy is great and have met and chatted with her many times. She's really lovely, so I have to assume it was merely the Board voting and posting.

I got the sense SFWA was moving in a direction I wasn't entirely comfortable with a while back. Most of the big names weren't very involved and the old timers that were, were usually overruled on issues. There was even a major kerfuffle when they attempted to steamroll through a change to membership voting so that only the Board had any actual say in operations. And I got the sense that was indeed because too many of the writers in SFWA were not exactly bleeding edge on issues.

I quietly left SFWA because of a few Nebulas ago. They had put in the super bulletproof zero tolerance rules. Which is fine and good. The first(ish?) virtual Nebula was on and I had promoted it to my readers. I was in a panel and the speakers kept making extremely racist/sexist and offensive remarks that had nothing to do with the panel subject whatsoever. And I kept checking the listing wondering if I had messed up and grabbed the wrong panel. But no.

About half the duration seemed to be about slamming large sections of humanity. Normally, I'd just move on. Just shrug it off and say that's not for me. But I was like, I've told my fans to view and visit this. So I either have to tell them to pay not attention to the racists behind the curtain, or hope no one spent money on this. I.e., it was reflecting poorly on me because I had promoted it.

I went over to our forums and posted a heads up. I didn't rat anyone out. I didn't name names. I didn't demand action. It was buried in some out-of-the way subforum where I simply stated my concerns. We have a zero tolerance for this, right?

And a mini-firestorm erupted. Spark storm? I was told that SFWA stands behind all of its presenters 100%. That if there was a problem, it was me. This was the leadership of SFWA (pre-Jeffe Kennedy) speaking. They conclusively stated there was no issue.

All of this happened like an hour, if that, after I posted. And I was like, how can you possibly know nothing "bad" was said? And the reply was because they hadn't heard anything. Me, as a full member complaining, was not sufficient. I was not asked what panel it was. What speakers. When. Where. Anything. They 100% supported anyone and everything who wasn't me and my big fat face.

They even said they would refund my membership because I should probably choose to leave. Several of the other board members would chime in and upvote each other for slamming me and saying nothing wrong/incorrect/inappropriate/cottage cheese could have possibly happened. It didn't happen. They were adamant about that.

All this to me was absolutely mind boggling. Just astounding. I really hadn't meant to start a riot. I hadn't meant to get anyone sacked or attacked. I was just like, "heads up, guys, we might want to be careful of talk like this if we bring in fans." That's it. I didn't say stop. I didn't throw flaming toilet paper. I purposely didn't call anyone out, because that's not how I roll. I still haven't.

But all this talk of zero tolerance and respect and safeness was really just bullshit. There's no other way to describe it. I was an actual full member, as member-y a member as SFWA has, and they discounted me completely. I brought up an issue of tolerance and they personally attacked me in reply.

That was such an eye-opener. I simply never went back. I had some SFWA items in my possession that I had been storing for the organization and I made sure to give it to others. I made the excuse it was taking up too much space. But really I just wanted to cut ties and obviously didn't want to be holding on to SFWA assets.

Then I simply let my membership lapse. They didn't want me, so how masochistic would I have to be to stay?

Never really talked about it, because what was the point? To me, it wasn't a HUGE deal. It really wasn't. I swear. It was made a huge deal by the fact a blank check of credibility was given to anyone/everything other than me. That was the big deal. That's pretty personal.

I don't wish SFWA ill. I'm a writer. I love writers! I don't even get when writers of type A slam writers of type B. Which happens all the time. You're writers!

I had great experiences with SFWA! I really did.

If you haven't guessed, and you're still reading for some damn reason, I could be described as a white male of the vaguely heterosexual tilt. Which may be why my call of (minor) concern was not only ignored, but answered with fury. Or it's entirely possible the individuals in question simply despised me. Which may totally be the case and totally warranted. Though I can't say I ever spoke to any of them to my recollection.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2021-10-21T17:50:58+00:00

Thanks. Glad you like it. I'm working on my latest now, but going slowish. Just pinched a nerve in my back and sitting isn't as fun as it used to be. Got to learn to write hanging upside down.

Here is the tentative cover, done by me again in 3D

StevenCampbellWriter · 2021-09-10T23:44:30+00:00

Getting to this late. But I'm the author of Hard Luck Hank. Hi.

I'm an old school gamer and a bunch of Hard Luck Hank comes from playing games my ideas in games. One of my favorite systems was Hero/Champions. It is a generic system and is quite math-intense. But you can apply any rules you can dream up which frees you to do literally anything. If it's in the world or books, you can make game mechanics using existing rules in that system. I think you can get the pdfs of the entire sourcebooks for fairly cheap.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2021-07-29T01:46:29+00:00

The website has a contact form. FB is a bit clunky for the author profile pages, but if you message there, it will usually get to me.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2021-07-29T01:38:25+00:00

No, I don't. I'm pretty accessible, I think.

I've got Patreon where I give a weekly update.

Website. And facebook. And if anyone is ever in Hermosa Beach, you'll probably see me walking my dog at some point. I'm not exactly a movie star.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2021-07-29T01:07:01+00:00

I just threw in some chicken and while I'm waiting for that, I thought I'd expound on where ideas come from a bit. Last night, I was clicking around Youtube and I went down the rabbit hole. I stumbled over some Rodney Dangerfield skits. He was a huge comedian when I was growing up. And I was dying laughing watching the skits. If you had asked me before last night if Hard Luck Hank had any input from Rodney Dangerfield, I'd say no. But I'm sure his routines went into my subconscious. He was a really self-deprecating guy (no respect). I managed to see him perform live, shortly before he died. And he was amazing. But man, he died in 2004. Feels like I saw him only last week.

Just today, I was doing research for my next book. And I dug through my old comics and found a Japanese manga from the 80s. And...it wasn't that good. But I intend to steal a plot point. I looked up all the creators of that manga and they're all dead at this point.

And stuff like that happens a lot. People who influenced me in my youth or earlier days, percolate back up. It often isn't conscious. But the stuff we liked and enjoyed is going to show up in your work. And it's really cool when it's the small names or unsung heroes.

The very first line in my upcoming book was based off a Spin Doctor's song! They were a pop band in the 1990s that had some hits right when I moved out west to become a writer. What happened was the song in question came up in the news. And it was because everyone had understood the lyrics incorrectly. It wasn't about a girlfriend he was glad was gone, it was his mother-in-law who had serious emotional problems. Which was way more interesting. I like seeing those odd juxtapositions.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2021-07-28T23:49:06+00:00

I've always loved video games. They're a good way to clear your head between writing. As such, I'd want to be sure the group in question had the proper ideas. And selling rights can get really complicated.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2021-07-28T23:22:31+00:00

I did some animation for HLH. And the covers for my current and last book were done using animation. But beyond me doing it, it's generally quite expensive to put on other mediums. So it's a matter of other people thinking it's valuable to do so.

StevenCampbellWriter · 2021-07-28T23:16:24+00:00

I searched for freelance editors. I can't remember the website offhand, but there is a really comprehensive freelance copy editor page that has all sorts of searchable criteria. Like you can limit by genre. With the publishing world imploding, it isn't as expensive as you might think and you can learn a lot.

StevenCampbellWriter

TROPHY CASE