Pretending to write

I finally gave my new collapsible book stand a test and I couldn't figure out how to get one of the parts to keep from collapsing. Just wasted like 30 minutes of my life trying to look up other collapsible stands until I ended up back on the store listing for the one I got and... oops. Turns out there's one extra step that I overlooked. In hindsight, it's so obviously another moveable part to.

Anyway, the stand now works beautifully and I love it. Just a shame that the book I'm currently reading's a paperback, so I'm afraid I'll crease the spine if I use it with the stand ^_^; Ah well. Should be safe to use while I'm more in the middle of the book, and I can definitely employ it for the next hardcover I pick up.

It's my own fault for (1) forgetting to keep track of when Red released to order it promptly and (2) not properly researching which all books comprised the final arc and waiting for Red's release before reading Black and White, but picking up the final book over a year after reading the previous one is jarring. I just remembered the first book ended with no deaths because of what an outlier for the series that is and forgot that the second book ended in the middle of a big battle. I probably should have gone back and re-read, since these aren't beefy books. I'm back in the swing of it now, but it was pretty off-putting to pick up in the middle of a fight that I'm expected to remember the details of.

Which has me thinking: That kind of cliffhanger definitely works way better between chapters than at the end of a book... unless, y'know, the next book's already out.

I was out and about when I read the ending to the first half of Restart, and I still remember being so desperate to know what happened next while unable to immediately open up the next book that I was anxiously pacing until I was able to go home and pick up where the first left off. But that wasn't an option when I read White. I had to wait, and this mid-clash cliffhanger that would definitely have me unable to pause between chapters just... doesn't work as well when you're left in suspense long enough to forget that's where you got left.

(Granted, Restart is the best arc, to the point that I've re-read it quite a few times, so part of that difference in suspense might also be how much more I liked the Restart cast compared to the Black, White, and Red cast.)

Like, in a pre-computer time I get it. You'd have to count manually, and publishers/agents know the general average word counts you can fit on a page with a given typeset, but like...

We live in a post-computer world. It's baffling to me when I get query instructions saying to report my word count by multiplying my total pages by X in accordance with such and such formatting guidelines rather than just going by the very precise word count my writing software provides. I can only assume this is one of those nonsenses where the publishing industry just insists on doing things as they've done them rather than adapting to new technology, but it would be so easy to just... include the word count in Amazon listings or whatever.

It's even more annoying to me as a reader than as a writer, because I know publishers are messing with font size and line spacing to make books 'feel' the right length, and you can get a 500 page book that's actually longer than a 700 page book, but the publisher for the first picked a small font and 1.0 line spacing to save on paper while the publisher for the latter used a bigger font and 1.75 spacing so that the reader would feel like they're a super reader who reads big, long books.

Mostly this annoys me in the moment because I'm setting up my storygraph annual reading goals today, and I always set the page goals to be roughly akin to [book count goal]x[lower range page count for a YA fantasy] but also I'm so aware now of how non-indicative page counts are for actual book length, and it feels pointless.

Okay. I read them both.

I wouldn't have known that The Conqueror's Shadow existed except that I read Shadow of the Conqueror and, while looking up the reviews/comments of other people who thought 'twas bad, saw someone claiming it was plagiarizing the other book.

My verdict on if 'twas: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They're both about a former conqueror who's gone to live in some remote area after things fell apart, and any other similarities beyond that feel like pretty logical directions to take that premise. An enemy who's trying to replicate something the original conqueror did is a pretty thematically appropriate threat to have them thwart, and having to face people they directly wronged or deal with the mistrust their past actions sowed just makes sense. You could make some broad stroke comparisons on those grounds, but the way that everything plays out is pretty different. Even the whole "villain is modeling themselves after the hero's past self" thing is a stretch of a comparison, because TCS's whole inciting incident is an explicit imitator warlord deliberately harassing Corvis to draw him out of retirement, and SotC's inciting incident is Daylen failing to off himself through the powers of plot armor and then deciding to play vigilante until randomly stumbling into a plot to reinstate some old ideals of his somewhere like 75% of the way through the book.

If anything was stolen, it was just the broad premise of "former conqueror who's since gone to live a quiet life goes on a new adventure." Otherwise, I think the stories are about as reasonably different as they could be for having that shared premise.

Weird about the names tho.

That being said, reading has been the primary thing I did the last couple... weeks, actually. For reasons, I actually had five books to finish in the past two weeks, including one I had to start within that time span. (Two I had to start, if you count the one I didn't wanna read and then got to DNF because the family book group decided to cancel it in favor of another.) So now I'm on such a reading high that I kinda... wanna just start the next book, rather than wait until midnight.

Bah! I'll read a fanfic or something. I don't count fanfics in the book tracker, so it's fine if I'm in the middle of one of those when the year changes over.

"Why the locals all did not flee was not only a good question, it was the only question."

I don't know if Michael Sullivan counts in the same way, since he has some trad deals and his original series got a trad re-release that saw some level of editing, and he's definitely at the success level where he can pay for all the editing and ancillary services to compete with trad in terms of professionalism. But like... his stuff was pretty polished.

The last indie I otherwise read had, among other glaring issues, inconsistent name spellings mid-page in the first chapter. Now this one's got a sentence with words missing. I've seen glaring typos slip into trad books too and even loved a book that retconned a major character's name, but those all at least got at least half a book in, if not a few installments, before missing a spot of polish.