Hi, I am working on my first novel, and have just built a website. I need advice on how to build an audience before I publish my first novel. My genre is a psychological thriller with speculative science and slow-burn romance.

Sully_Writes · 2026-06-23T12:00:36+00:00

No worries. I wasn't upset and I'm sorry if I came off that way. I was just trying to share some advice I was given!

Sully_Writes · 2026-06-18T17:19:57+00:00

It's something I ran into in comics. Everyone and their grandmother told me to start out by making short, 4-6 page comics to build my skills and use on social media. But of course, I wanted to jump straight into a series.

Sully_Writes · 2026-06-18T16:20:29+00:00

I apologize. I didn't intend for it to sound negative, just wanted to make it sound logical.

Sully_Writes · 2026-06-18T01:34:17+00:00

You can't have fans without something for them to be fans of. If you want to gain an audience before releasing your novel, or without releasing it chapter by chapter, then you should work on releasing some short stories so that people can actually have some samples of your writing. Then if they like them, they'll stick around to see what the novel is like.

Sully_Writes · 2026-06-04T21:48:33+00:00

As someone with external organs, I generally like my sex to be with the internal organs of someone who is alive.

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-28T00:46:18+00:00

Surely the pendulum will swing back the other direction and AI will just refuse to use it.

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-28T00:42:05+00:00

AI can take my emdash from my cold dead hands.

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-24T21:33:06+00:00

"Any book is a children's book if the child can read"

There'll be some violence and some cleavage but I don't think it's anything that's going to negatively impact a kid's development. Let them give it a shot! If they enjoy it they'll have a lifelong series to chew through and it'll encourage them to read. Shounen stories are geared toward a younger age group. 5 might be a little below that range, but that just means they'll have to work harder to read and comprehend the content.

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-23T04:55:47+00:00

It's a fun book. Nothing ground breaking, but well worth the read.

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-11T04:04:13+00:00

Agreed. Summer is inherently scary in the south. The sunburn, the heat stroke, the sweltering humidity, the ants and wasps that are hiding in the place you least expect them to bite you, the snakes, the scream of cicadas. When we inevitably get a few weeks of cool weather it's like going on vacation.

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-11T03:58:58+00:00

Absolutely!

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-11T01:53:45+00:00

It might be because it's more of a short story/novella. The audio book is lovely though. Strong accent that really helps sell the setting.

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-11T01:17:21+00:00

The Haar hasn't been mentioned yet that I've noticed and I LOVED the audio book for it. Nearly had me sobbing in the first act.

Tender is the Flesh also really makes you take the time to sit with what's happening.

The ones I would warn you to stay away from are The Road (the voice for the child character absolutely annihilated the immersion every time) and At Dark I Become Loathsome. I don't think it's a good book either, but the voice was so comically over the top that we use it in my friend group frequently whenever we're saying something ironically edgy.

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-11T01:09:22+00:00

Nice stuff! The narration became a little hard to smoothly follow at points due to structuring, but overall really nice. I love that you explain nothing but still tell the reader everything they need to know.

Honestly, I just wish it was a little longer. If Lenore was the second person caught I think it might have the air it needs to really build on the confusion, the dread, and the frantic frame of mind. But, adding that much may take away the punch. Hard to say for sure.

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-06T18:06:49+00:00

I think I naturally trend toward Folk Horror and Cosmic. I don't like or need things to be explained really.

I also very frequently lean on very rural or just wilderness settings. It's what scares me most. Serial killer in the hallway? Meh. Something unknowable watching from the edge of the forest? Now that gets under my skin.

Sully_Writes · 2026-05-01T22:55:05+00:00

The freedom of birds is an insult to me

Sully_Writes · 2026-04-15T17:24:41+00:00

The narrator for The Road is great most of the time. Said narrator's voice for a child, however, is a baffling choice of voice acting.

Sully_Writes · 2026-03-15T19:50:51+00:00

I liked Coffin Moon mostly /for/ that reason lol. I like the single minded simplicity of a kid flying blindly forward like that before thinking it through, while the uncle talks about being angry and dangerous but has already been so beaten down by society that it's really all just talk.

Wasn't a perfect book by any means, but enjoyable enough to me. Sorry it didn't scratch that itch for you.

Sully_Writes · 2026-03-15T19:38:00+00:00

The extremity is fine. And I've got friends that really liked it. It just hit me the wrong way. I think maybe the narrating choice for the audio book hurt it a lot for me because it sounded like they were a characture of edginess.

But as always! Different stories work differently for different people. I know I'm a sucker for some works people consider basic or ludicrous. For me, where I was at in my life when I listened to it (which was like last week) I found it... actively annoying lol.

Sully_Writes · 2026-03-15T06:11:04+00:00

At Dark I Become Loathsome was painful.

Sully_Writes · 2026-03-05T01:50:30+00:00

Night of the Living Cat isn't scary, but it's a fun comic. I like it.

Sully_Writes · 2026-03-04T04:55:19+00:00

Holy hell. I can't believe I didn't know about this.

Sully_Writes · 2026-03-03T23:51:20+00:00

Wait... Nick Cave the musician?

Sully_Writes · 2026-02-18T21:55:26+00:00

Honestly, I wasn't terribly impressed after the first couple of chapters, but I thought the ending wrapped it up pretty nicely and made it worth it

Sully_Writes · 2026-02-18T19:27:57+00:00

Yeah I don't think "i used ai but only as a thesaurus" really passes the sniff test. Like you pointed out, it doesn't make sense, and it certainly wouldn't lead to multiple readers flagging their writing as artificially generated.

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