John C.A. Manley's Blog

Stephen King on a "goodish length" for a novel

Stephen King, in his book On Writing, reveals what he thinks is a "goodish" (note: not ghoulish) length for a novel:

"I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book—something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh."

I know exactly what he means about getting "happily lost" in a long book — one that might also take three months to read (not just to write).

Pulling off 180,000-word novels is no easy feat. Stephen King explains that, "The biggest aid to regular (Trollopian?) production is working in a serene atmosphere. It’s difficult for even the most naturally productive writer to work in an environment where alarms and excursions are the rule rather than the exception."

In his book, King shares two other secrets to his horrific productivity. You can discover them by buying On Writing, or waiting until tomorrow, when I'll share them with you.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. In yesterday's post, I shared how my first novel, Much Ado About Corona, hit 150,000 words. And rather than all those words putting people to sleep, there are actually multiple Amazon reviews testifying that the lengthy tale kept them up late at night. Give the free preview a try and see if you suffer the same fate.

P.P.S. Of course, if 150,000 words sounds like a literary marathon — don't worry, my second novel, All the Humans Are Sleeping, is a lean 65,000 words — so lean many readers report reading it in a single day. Preview or buy it at AlltheHumansAreSleeping.com (audiobook available!).

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.

60,000 unexpected words

In yesterday's post (about the "soft stuff") I quoted award-winning author, Alexander Boldizar, on the importance of long-form fiction. 

In other words, big novels.

Not necessarily epic 500,000-word fantasy novels. But books in the 90,000 to 150,000 word range. My first novel, Much Ado About Corona — for a completely biased example — ended up being 150,000 words (500 pages).

It wasn't intentional. After thirteen rewrites, it was only a little past 90,000 words — the most popular length for a novel. But rather than my beta readers asking me to abridge, cut and butcher — they were asking for more content to be added. More hero's journey character development for Vince. More scenes with the villain (Constable "Corona" Mackenzie) going from mild-mannered cop to COVID psychopath. More scenes with Raj, the reluctant hero who'd rather just get the shot than see his anti-vax friends shot for real. 

Oh, and then there was the extra "Moonbeam" chapter that was so much fun to write and read...

So, I ended up going back to work on the manuscript for another eight months, adding about 50 new chapters — 60,000 words. I was a bit concerned people would find it too long. Instead, readers complained it was still too short.

For example, one reviewer gave it four stars instead of five on Amazon, saying, "My only complaint is that the story ended up being incomplete, to be continued in Book 2 (which has not yet been published -- oh no!!)."

Fret not. Book two is half-done. But you can help warpspeed its arrival by leaving your own review on the Amazon nearest you (and on GoodReads ). The more reviews you leave, the more books I sell — for as Frank Herbert used to say, "Money to a writer is time to write."

John C.A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.

"the soft stuff that is really important"

Blazing Reader,

Here's another quote from the August issue of Locus Magazine, where award-winning novelist Alexander Boldizar talks about "the soft stuff that is really important":

"My son loves reading non-fiction but doesn't read a lot of fiction. I've told him, 'With non-fiction you're learning hard stuff, but you're not learning the soft stuff that is really important.' I do think our world is, to some extent, moving away from long-form fiction, and I think that's a huge loss in being able to understand each other."

Reading a long novel is like having a long relationship. It's not a half-hour sitcom; it's not even a three-hour epic movie. It's something you come back to each day, and dive a little deeper — because the soft stuff is buried deep.

You can find out more about Boldizar and his Locus award-winning novel, The Man Who Saw Seconds, at Boldizar.com.

John C.A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.

Rump: The (Fairly) True Tale of Rumpelstiltskin

My grandfather caught my mother smoking at age 12. He was pretty steamed (even though he smoked like a chimney and boozed like a pirate). But his outrage was a sparkler compared to the volcano that erupted when he caught her reading Rumpelstiltskin. 

He went full berserk — think Big Bad Wolf after too many litres of vodka.

It was nothing personal against Rumpelstiltskin. My grandfather despised fairy tales like I despise disco music. Rumpelstiltskin just happened to be the particular fairy tale he caught my mother reading.

Recently, my wife Ina cracked open a modern spin of Rumpelstiltskin and held our kids and me captive until she finished reading it aloud. It's a middle school-aged novel by Liesl Shurtliff called Rump: The (Fairly) True Tale of Rumpelstiltskin.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to hear this forbidden story until I read that Shurtliff graduated from Brigham Young University. Two of my favourite fantasy authors also hail from BYU: Orson Scott Card and Brandon Sanderson.

Her retelling ended up delivering a witty tale with a solid moral. The moral being: don't underestimate your own self-worth and agree to do more for less. A great lesson if your kids grow up to be freelancers.

Rump is a story of self-inflicted enslavement, which can be summed up in this line from the book:

“Maybe destiny isn't something that just happens. Maybe destiny is something you do. Maybe destiny is like a seed and it grows.”

The characters were delightful (including Red from Little Red Riding Hood) and the plot has enough unexpected twists to satisfy M. Night Shyamalan. I highly recommend it as a book adults will enjoy reading to their kids, with solid morals, a little magic and laughs that will have you cackling in the same way the witches in the tale did not.

Winner of the 2017 Arizona Grand Canyon Reader Award, you can purchase a copy or find out more about Liesl Shurtliff's (fairly) true fairy tale at LieslShurtliff.com.

John C.A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.

TrumpRx: Making the clincally insane appear mundane

Call me cynical, but Donald Trump's latest move removes any glimmer of hope that he, deep down, has some good intentions for America. 

Jason Christoff expressed it well in his recent post:

"...just yesterday, September 30th, Donald Trump partnered with Pfizer to brand a new website 'TRUMPrx', so Americans can more readily access poison Rx meds designed to destroy them, mind control them to greater degrees and inflict the perfect amount of brain damage... so that US citizens can't recognize that their constitution is being ripped right down the middle.

"This new announcement between Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Trump also mentions more vaccines for Americans. Estimates place that Pfizer's COVID vaccines alone have killed nearly 500,000 US citizens already. So yes, the CEO of a company that just killed at least 500,000 Americans over the past 4 years, gets a new website adorned with the name of the same President, who started off the killing in Operation Warp Speed. It's all about making the clinically insane look sane and mundane."

Jason's article however, takes a refreshing twist, advising readers not to waste fuel dissecting the latest con job of the day so that "you have enough left in the tank to attend to your family, grow organic food, store that organic food properly, start or grow your business, learn a second language, invest your profits properly in the current economic environment, protect your assets (your house and your savings), stay healthy, overcome your addictions, etc."

You can read the full article over at JasonChristoff.com.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. Jason forgot to add "read good books" to his list of rabbit hole alternatives.

 

The "inside out" advantage of novels over movies

In the August issue of Locus Magazine, award-winning novelist Alexander Boldizar made this astute observation about the "inside out" advantage of novels over movies:

"In fiction, you can enter a character from the inside, and you can understand their motivations in a way that just isn't possible in a movie format. I was thinking a lot about that distinction between movies and novels as an art form: that incredible power of fiction to see people's worldviews and life philosophies and histories and identity, and everything else that makes up a human being, and really see it from the inside out. You never match that in a movie."

I 100% agree with everything Boldizar said here, except his semantic framework. Movies are a form of fiction, just like novels. I think he should have opened up by saying, "In novels, you can enter a character from the inside..."

But, considering Boldizar speaks six languages, I wouldn't dare critique his linguistic prowess. Born in Czechoslovakia, he escaped during the Cold War and now lives in Canada, where he has mastered English to the point that he won the 2025 Locus Award for best science fiction, the Mark Twain Award for satire, and the Somerset and PEN/Nob Hill prizes for literary fiction.

He's also a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and holds a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. So I'm not going to argue semantics with a polygot who could sue me in six languages while locking me in a choke hold.

You can find out more about Boldizar and his inside out fiction at Boldizar.com.

John C.A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.

Blueskyers call for the assassination of JK Rowling

Blazing Reader,

Before Charlie Kirk's (possibly faked) assassination, I'd never heard of Bluesky. It's a social media alternative to X. However, it seems poorly named. It should be called Darksky. Here's one example of why:

"everyone is like [shoot] Ben Shapiro next or Joe regan (sic) or whatever yeah that'd be cool but how about [shooting] JK Rowling next"

Apparently, Bluesky is run by a genie who grants three assassination wishes.

That's not an isolated comment. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of posts inciting murder of public figures. I don't understand how this hasn't triggered a massive number of police investigations and arrests. It's one thing to say they are glad Kirk is dead; it's another to call for the murder of others who share his ideas.

Chase Hughes, author of The Behavior Ops Manual, argues that the Democrat versus Republican psyop — which has gone into overdrive since Charlie Kirk's death — foments a dehumanizing view of "the other side." In a YouTube presentation, Charlie Kirk’s Death Exposed the Biggest Scam in History, he says:

"Because once you're locked into tribal thinking, you're going to swallow anything, you're going to believe any lie about the other side, you're going to cheer when other people suffer, you'll excuse things that you would never excuse in your own neighbourhood and it was one of your neighbours."

He argues this has been done intentionally so that you never turn your attention to the puppet masters.

"You share more in common with someone across the [political] aisle than with a billionaire donor or media executive pretending to speak for you. I don't think they want you to see that. They need you divided. They have to have you blind and full of rage because a united, sane, connected public is the one thing they fear."

You can watch his full presentation on his The Behavior Panel YouTube channel.

John C.A. Manley

PS And if you missed it, here's my previous post on Charlie Kirk's death where he argued the same point as Hughes: Charlie Kirk on why people believe the "other side is so evil that they lose their humanity"

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.

A nerd, a geek and a satanist walked into a medieval tavern...

Blazing Reader,

When you do the right thing and get the vaccine, you'll be welcome back.

That was a notice placed on the front page of a gaming shop's website, back in 2021. I found the site (can't remember where it was — somewhere in the USA) when researching Dungeons and Dragons (for the chapters in Much Ado About Corona about the illegal meet-ups in the basement of Gary Gygax's comic shop during lockdown).

That notice made my blood boil like a goblin's head in a sorcerer's cauldron.

I always saw DnDers (people who play Dungeons and Dragons) as being archaic and counter-culture. Requiring members to get injected with experimental lipid nanoparticles doesn't fit in with the whole medieval times ambiance.

If anything, aren't people play role-playing games and people in the freedom movement both marginalized and misunderstood?

Here's how AJ explains it in chapter 24:

“When something gets taboo, people keep their heads low. When it comes to role-playing games, you’re either labelled anerd, a geek or a satanist.”

“Yeah,” I said, “my folks thought it was too occult.”

“What did they mean by occult?”

“You know, supernatural stuff.”

“Like walking on water, then turning the water into wine?”

“Well, Dad would say wizards and stuff are pagan.”

“Pagan?” asked AJ.

“It means, supernatural stuff that isn’t Catholic.”

AJ shrugged. “You can construct any character you want. A medieval monk is hardly unheard of. Most of the ridicule comesfrom people who don’t know anything about RPGs.”

“RPGs?”

“Role-playing games,” clarified AJ. “Please, pay attention.”

A nerd, a geek or a satanist. Just like if you refuse a vaccine, you may get labelled an anti-vaxxer, a science-denier or a flat-earther.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. I've no idea how many DnDers are taking vaccines (instead of rolling for immunity), but if you have any gamers in your circle of friends and family, please forward this post to them (or, even better, buy them a copy of Much Ado About Corona for Christmas).

P.P.S. If you missed it, here's part one of my DnD blazing blog post trilogy: Four kids almost caught playing Dungeons n' Dragons "illegally" during lockdown

FDA approved "magic potion served in the skull of a goblin"?

In chapter 24 of Much Ado About Corona, AJ describes Dungeons and Dragons as "magic potion served in the skull of a goblin." (I wonder if it can get FDA approval?)

Of course, not everyone shares his adoration for the classic role-playing game.

In my last post, I asked readers to email in how much they loved (or hated) those Dungeons and Dragons chapters in Much Ado About Corona.

Turned out more people liked them than I suspected. The average rating is 7.83 out of 10. (Of course, those who despised that fantasy segue in the novel may have been too polite to respond.)

A subscriber who gave it 6 out of 10 said: "I knew some people would love the inclusion of a game they were familiar with. I did like the idea of people gathering for any reason when their overlords told them not to."

Whilst a bold subscriber gave it 8.5, saying: "I recall being a little wary of the D and D chapters initially, wondering if it was a good idea to work into the novel... However, after reading those chapters and rereading them, they really grew on me; I also think they were successful in terms of comic relief and character interaction/development. I can't imagine the book without them at this point."

I knew nothing about the game until I started researching those chapters. My appreciation grew quickly, which is reflected in Roger Gygax's defence, when he explains why he kept the dice rolling in the basement of his comic book shop, during lockdown:

“Vince, these role-playing games, they aren’t just for fun, you gotta understand. They teach math, logic, problem-solving, critical thinking, risk assessment. Kids work together as a team. They get to see the consequences of their actions play out in a safe way. They learn how to discern right from wrong.” Then he pulled back his Spiderman mask, revealing his wrinkled face. “They learn how to be a hero without needing any superpowers.”

I hope Much Ado About Corona reflected some of DnD's heroism and magic. If nothing else, the "Dungeon Before COVID" chapters took the edge off an otherwise traumatic story of oppression masquerading as public health.

If you haven't laughed, gasped and stayed up late reading the world's best-selling novel about the COVID scamdemic, you can get a copy here.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. There's another reason I was so keen on adding the Dungeons n' Dragons chapters — and it makes my blood boil like a dragon's tail in a witch's cauldron. Coming next post.

P.P.S. If you missed it, here's my previous post about the "Dungeon Before COVID" chapters: Four kids almost caught playing Dungeons n' Dragons "illegally" during lockdown

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.

Kids caught playing Dungeons n' Dragons "illegally" during lockdown...

When I finished writing the twelfth draft of Much Ado About Corona (back in 2021), I sent copies to about 35 beta readers. This was back when the novel was only about 100,000 words. One of the reasons the final draft ended up being so much longer (150,000 words) was that the beta readers said the novel didn't have enough kids in it.

That's one of the main reasons I added the "Dungeon Before COVID" chapters — where Vince discovers a bunch of kids (and a few adults) meeting to play Dungeons and Dragons in secret, in the basement of the local comicbook shop, during a province-wide ban on indoor gatherings.

Interestingly, these four chapters had the most mixed reviews. Some readers raved about them, others despised them.

For example, Dr. Éva Székely, a retired psychologist who grew up under a communist regime in Eastern Europe, loved the DnD chapters. She said it reminded her of her childhood, when she and her friends would escape into role-playing games.

In contrast, another woman who grew up in Germany (after World War II) said those silly dice-rolling chapters had no place in such an otherwise well-crafted novel.

Polarity is the price of art, I guess.

What about you? Did you love the "Dungeon Before COVID" chapters? Let's take a survey! On a scale of one to ten, how did you like them (1 = they should be burned in a livestream bonfire, 10 = they should be engraved in stone and displayed in the Louvre)? Let me know by sending me an email.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. If you are one of the 6+ billion people on Earth who haven't yet read Much Ado About Corona, purchase a copy, quickly read up to chapter 27 and cast your vote.

P.P.S Dr. Éva Székely calls Much Ado About Corona "a fascinating, entertaining, and sometimes very sad story, full of irony and subtle humour." Who are you to argue with a retired psychologist who survived a communist regime? Check out the free sample now.

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.