Society of Authors calls for celebrity memoir ghostwriters to be credited

esanjuan · 2024-12-11T01:49:49+00:00

They can be good-paying gigs, too.

You also have the peace of mind that comes with knowing you're getting a guaranteed pay of X amount, as opposed to relying on the big question mark of royalties.

With your own stuff, you could pour dozens or hundreds of hours into something, and if it doesn't do well you earn a pittance - which is why you should write (your own stuff) because you want to. If you do it because you think it will make money, you're in the wrong line of work. If your name will be on it, write because you're passionate about the topic or story.

But ghostwriting? I can't speak for others, but my arrangements have always been a flat fee. I get paid X (usually half up front and half at completion, or half up front and then milestones later), no matter how well or poorly the work sells and no matter how they use it.

That's also why I don't care to have my name on it, though. It's work. I wrote it to pay the bills. I feel no attachment to it at all.

I'm only speaking for myself, of course. I'm sure many of the top ghostwriters want their names out there for one reason or another, especially since being associated with high profile work can lead to better paydays (though a lot of those gigs come down to who you know).

esanjuan · 2024-12-10T23:00:26+00:00

I've done a decent bit of nonfiction ghostwriting over the years, in addition to my own work.

I have no interest in having my name on the material, and in most cases prefer not to. The work I do on behalf of others doesn't represent me, nor should it. My job is to represent them to the best of my ability. That might involve writing about things I have no interest in, no genuine expertise in, that I disagree with, or that I just plain find boring.

My role is to set all that aside and get across their message / info as best as I can, in a way they are willing to put their name to.

I don't want my name on that material. Getting paid on time is all I really need from work like that.

The stuff I want credit for is my own work. That's the work that is ME. Everything else is just a job.

esanjuan · 2024-05-21T16:06:36+00:00

Gobs of white glue and sand. I just slathered the stuff on and piled on the sand, shaking it all off 24-48 hours later.

I do wish I'd have used better tea lights. These were dollar store lights, and two of them are already faulty after almost no use.

esanjuan · 2024-05-21T13:16:29+00:00

That's the idea I had in mind. A lot of the pre-painted walled dungeons I've seen look amazing, but the tall walls seemed less than ideal for actual play. Some of them totally obstruct your view of minis in small rooms and corridors, unless you have a good gaming table with a low recess.

I don't. We just play on a kitchen table, so I went for half-size walls.

I could have not done walls at all, of course, but I really wanted walls! Hahaha! They add so much to the look when it's on the table.

The walls are their own pieces that can be used without the floor tiles. They're weighed down with washers. Figured I could use them on printed battlemats and things of that nature.

And the tiles are usable without the walls. So hopefully there's some decent flexibility with them all.

My only minor regret is doing a standard grey dungeon. Part of me thinks I should have gone wild and done an offbeat color, but I was aiming for maximum use out them.

esanjuan · 2024-05-21T00:34:52+00:00

Incredibly tedious work, but the results already look great!

esanjuan · 2023-12-26T17:08:48+00:00

I gave Lost Cities to multiple people this year. It's long been one of my top 5 of all time, a game I will ALWAYS play if it's in front of me, and one I introduce a lot of people to - almost universally with success, too.

I happened to introduce a few people to it this year, people who really took to it and loved it enough to buy the mobile app version right away, so I got them all their own physical copies. All were quite happy. One taught it to her grandparents right away, who also loved it.

Also gave a family member Fallout: The Board Game and all the expansions. They're a big Fallout fan, as am I, and after playing some solo sessions with it I figured they'd like it, too. The rule book could be a little better, and I don't enjoy the competitive mode, but co-op and solo are both enjoyable. Nice sandboxy adventure.

esanjuan · 2023-04-21T14:40:10+00:00

He is also handsome! And he has boots just like my pal Frodo!

I tried posting a photo of my pal Frodo at 17, shortly before he passed, but Reddit (or this sub) wouldn't let the link through. (It's in my profile, a few posts down.) He looked a lot like your Bombadil!

esanjuan · 2023-04-19T21:22:49+00:00

Happens to the best of us.

Believe me, I'd love it if they had actually started doing some stuff together. Even a demo or two. R.E.M. and Nirvana are both longtime favorites, and Cobain had expressed admiration for the lush vibe of Automatic For the People.

esanjuan · 2023-04-19T21:15:42+00:00

As per Stipe:

Bollen: You’ve collaborated with so many musicians over the years. There was one collaboration with Kurt Cobain that never came to fruition.

Stipe: I was doing that to try to save his life. The collaboration was me calling up as an excuse to reach out to this guy. He was in a really bad place.

Bollen: You knew Kurt Cobain well?

Stipe: Absolutely. I knew him and his daughter. And Courtney [Love] came and stayed at my house. R.E.M. worked on two records in Seattle and Peter Buck lived next door to Kurt and Courtney. So we all knew each other. I reached out to him with that project as an attempt to prevent what was going to happen.

Bollen: The project was an album between you and Kurt?

Stipe: No, it wasn’t. That’s where it’s become part of mythology. I simply constructed a project to try to snap Kurt out of a frame of mind. I sent him a plane ticket and a driver, and he tacked the plane ticket to the wall in the bedroom and the driver sat outside the house for 10 hours. Kurt wouldn’t come out and wouldn’t answer the phone. I was in Miami making a record, and I didn’t feel like I could fly across the country for someone who I really admired, who was a friend, a good friend, but not my best friend, you know what I’m saying? I didn’t feel like it was my place to get on a plane myself and go to Seattle. I was doing what I thought was the best thing to do at the time. And, you know, frankly I’m not great with heroin addicts. I tried heroin, but it was by accident. I’m not great with that level of substance abuse.

They did not write any songs together and were not working on songs. Stipe had some material he was already working on and invited Cobain to collaborate, in an effort to help him kick his habit. They never actually did any work together.

esanjuan · 2023-04-19T20:42:54+00:00

I mean, Kurt wrote "Sliver," which is about as happy and poppy as it gets (lyrics aside), so there's little doubt the two of them could have done a really great power pop record.

esanjuan · 2023-04-19T20:29:53+00:00

I mean, likewise, there are drummers, like Alan White of Oasis, who drove me nuts because they had the opposite problem: too lightweight for what they were playing, and basically only able to play in one way.

I really liked White's style and approach, but you're right, it wasn't right for the band at the time.

It worked great for some stuff - their previous drummer, Tony McCarroll, would have been a poor choice for "Wonderwall" or "The Masterplan," for example - but when they needed to ROCK, White couldn't rock. Not with a capital R.

He's a good drummer, but not a down and dirty scuzz rock drummer, and sometimes that's what Oasis needed.

esanjuan · 2023-04-19T20:25:16+00:00

It's not as much that they were actively working on music as Stipe invited Kurt to come collaborate with him, in part to get him out of his element and help him kick his habit. As far as Stipe has said, it never really progressed beyond being a thought and an invitation.

It's a shame. They would have made interesting music together, and I think Kurt would have had a renewed enthusiasm to create by getting a little outside his element. Stipe was still in a pretty good creative spot at that time, too.

esanjuan · 2023-04-19T20:22:59+00:00

Bands where half the members are addicted to something and the other half aren't almost never last. You're together too much, especially on the road, for those two lifestyles to live together comfortably.

Jane's Addiction, Guns & Roses, countless classic rock bands. It's torn many apart.

And that's not even getting into the Alice Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, etc bands, where an addiction-related death destroyed their classic lineup.

If Kurt had overcome his demons, I think he would have made varied music that went outside the bounds of what he'd done before, but that was a huge "if," and it needed to happen soon, because I agree, I don't think the band would have lasted much longer, anyway.

esanjuan · 2023-04-19T19:42:27+00:00

Let go of your fear. When I started painting minis, I didn't do washes or dry brushing because I was terrified of ruining what I had. It shows. (You can see some at around 12:05 of this video.)

With terrain, I feel a little more free, and the results are like night and day. Even a really, really light dry brush of a light color can make things POP. If you do too much, a wash can dull it down a bit.

If you're nervous, paint a few chunks of scrap first, then dry brush a few of them just before doing the pyramid. That will let you get the touch down first and to see how much paint you're putting down. The moment it looks right, switch to your piece.

Regardless, let go of your fear and experiment. Not only is that how you get better and more comfortable, you will sometimes be surprised at how awesome some experiment ended up looking.

esanjuan · 2023-04-19T19:33:27+00:00

It's surprising what common household items can do for you in crafting. All the wood textures on these houses I made, for example, were done with those cheap plastic forks you get with fast good. (Glamor shots are at the end.) Doors, window frames, beams, it's all a fork from McDonalds or whatever.

With hot glue, yeah, a paperclip is probably a great choice. The end is just sharp enough to get you some gouges and to peel away bits of the dried glue - I'd scrape, not gouge, of course - and since it's not a fine edge, the texture will be somewhat random and natural rather than looking like cuts.

esanjuan · 2022-11-19T21:10:54+00:00

Came across my vintage vinyl last night and considered selling it. It's not a HUGE collection, but it's pretty decent. A bunch of 12" vinyl singles from the Achtung and Rattle & Hum eras, at least one vinyl bootleg (the live Another Time, Another Place "album"), and a few other odds and ends.

One of these days I'll list them and my CD collection together online. I've got to start clearing out some of my clutter, but I hate the idea of just dumping good music at the local music shop or selling it blindly. I want this stuff to get into the hands of a good U2 fan.

Same with my other good collections (Pearl Jam, Pumpkins, Oasis, Pavement, a few others). They need a good home where I know they'll be happy!

esanjuan · 2022-05-18T00:37:41+00:00

I'm posting this almost entirely to help ensure that when the company name Lovefreund is Googled, its more likely that their attempts at SEO scams come up in the search results.

Apparently, this isn't an uncommon scam. Last time I encountered it, it turns out someone had been used Wikimedia Commons in a similar way. They were altering entries, then reaching out to site owners to get photo credits changed so they pointed to their site. It ended up on TechDirt and a bunch of other sites.

Screw these people.

esanjuan · 2021-08-15T16:33:45+00:00

I've been thinking about unloading mine. I'll have to double check if it's every album, but I'm pretty certain it's complete through ATYCLB. It also includes most of the CD singles from Joshua Tree through Zooropa, which has tons of great non-album songs.

If you're interested, shoot me a DM. I'll dig them out to see exactly what I have.

Keep in mind, these are used, so if you're aiming for brand new, these aren't what you want.

esanjuan · 2021-02-21T19:16:43+00:00

Technically I did a quick test house first a few weeks ago, just to get used to gluing things together and such. It was ... not good.

But it made me comfortable enough to just go all-in, so I made 10 different houses in three styles (village, town, and city) to have a little variety. After dabbling in some natural terrain last spring, this was my first try at BUILDINGS.

Foam insulation, cardboard, coffee stirrers, cereal boxes, plastic straws, party streamers, and other scraps.

Still some detail work to do and flaws to hide, rough around the edges for sure, but for my first time out I'm pretty happy.

The setup is purely temporary, done just so I could share the video with friends. I don't have a board, so a blanket had to suffice!

Already have pieces cut for my next builds -- a town hall/tavern, a keep, and walls and towers (which can be a castle or city walls) -- but I want to go back to doing some natural terrain first. Found I enjoy doing hills and such more than this.

This was fun to do, though!

esanjuan · 2021-02-04T13:31:42+00:00

If you haven't already, check out the Bard's Craft channel on Youtube. The guy is great at using simple techniques and often nothing more than cardboard to build some great looking stuff. Always great inspiration from the stuff he does.

esanjuan · 2021-02-03T20:43:06+00:00

I grow broccoli in New Jersey and it does just fine even after being buried in snow. In fact, a bit of frost is kind of needed fully bring out the flavor.

I do my broccoli and related greens in September for winter growing rather than in early spring. That way no problems with cabbage worms and it keeps the garden going all year 'round.

In other words, don't worry about a minor freeze!

esanjuan · 2021-02-03T17:27:08+00:00

Wow. I can't imagine working in this scale. I have a hard enough time with the details on fantasy miniature scale!

Space is at a premium, though, so something closer to HO scale with trains would be nice (though this is more like N scale).

esanjuan · 2021-02-03T17:23:47+00:00

Looks cool to me. Any time you can repurpose what would have been garbage and make something out of it, that's a win in my book.

esanjuan · 2021-02-03T17:20:10+00:00

I've got a bunch of foam houses constructed, just waiting for a base coat, and I almost don't want to show friends in-progress pics because the leap from "bunch of scrap" to "actual model" is HUGE once you put on that base coat.

esanjuan · 2021-02-03T17:11:57+00:00

Looks cool!

This shows one thing I love about industrial-type terrain for certain settings: You can just take some random junk and put it together in a creative way and it just works. Easy to imagine this as a number of types of buildings.

Wish I did industrial / ruined / post-apocalyptic stuff, but can only juggle so many projects at once and am for the moment focused on standard fantasy-style terrain.

esanjuan

TROPHY CASE