Richard Roberts's Blog, page 7

The Thread To Complain!

I got WAY more requests than my publisher wanted, which was around 20.  I sent off copies to the names I recognized or found most interesting.  Any of you who feel slighted or sad you were left out, this is the thread to tell me who you were on the list and say pretty please!

As for you who made the first cut, good luck.  I can't even open those files, and I'm hoping there wasn't some bizarre mixup and my publisher didn't send me porn.

No Promises, But This Is SOMEBODY'S Lucky Day

So, my publisher says they're about to send me the ARC (aaaaaalmost but not quite finished) version of the third book.  When they do, they are encouraging me to give it away, yes, for free, to some of my fans.  I'm still trying to figure out how to decide that, since I thought they'd be worried about piracy, but apparently they super want reviews up on the first day.  ARC does mean 'Advanced Review Copy', by the way.  So, uh... thoughts?  And yes, 'ME ME ME PLEASE' is a thought coherent and worth adding to this debate.

EDIT - Okay, people!  I now have an online survey form thingy that should work.  Send your requests to this simple and demeaning questionnaire and hopefully I can get a copy to you.  Remember, you pay me back by posting a review ASAP when the book officially comes out!  I would appreciate you erasing these copies when you're done reading.  Book piracy is a thing.

Woah, Really Cool Fan Mail

Okay, so, if you think you guys are having trouble waiting, I am going to freak out from having a whole month to go before you all really get to know Marcia and Claudia and Cassie, and meet the rest of the Tinsley family, and Irene, and Jacky, and... well, I've become deeply invested in my characters, is what I'm saying.  They're not complete until you all know them, too.

But, while I wait, I got this message on Goodreads from a writer named Andrew Seiple.  I've never gotten anything like this before, and it really moved me.  I asked, and he's fine if I share it.  So from here forward, His Letter:




Good afternoon, Richard. Or do you prefer Rich?

I just wanted to tell you thank you. But now I suppose I should tell you why...

A few years ago I was kicking around an idea. A roleplaying game I'd been planning had collapsed, due to time constraints, and I was left with a superheroic world that I'd painstakingly constructed and a whole slew of characters. Including one villain, which I was pretty sure would make an awesome protagonist.

And the idea occured to me... well, why not write about her? And the rest of it? There's enough material there for ten or twenty books.

It would mean writing "for realsies." Hitherto then, all my efforts had been for private roleplaying game sessions, and fanfiction. But this seemed like a way to step up my game, maybe get read by more than just a few friends and some forum buddies.

I was on the fence about it for a while. Tried a few false starts. Never could quite find the right way to build up... it was frustrating. I had the characters, I had the setting, but I just couldn't get it to gel.

And what's more, it really didn't look like there was much of a market for original superhero fiction that didn't involve a visual medium. True, "Soon I will be Invincible" had done moderately well back in the day, but that was more due to its uniqueness, I thought. There had been a few stabs at other superhero fiction, but most that weren't backed by established universes and characters and companies flopped.

Could I make this fly? Would it be worth the effort? I agonized over it for days.

Then, right at my moment of doubt, you went and released the first Inscrutable Machine book.

That was the first Kindle e-book I ever bought, I kid you not. And not only was it beautifully written and a fun ride, it was doing great!

It seemed like a sign. So I buckled down, and tried various techniques, and researched writing...

And I wrote Dire:Born, as well as a few pieces of shorter fiction which I quietly put out there, and experimented with to pave the way for my Dire's first book. It took a long time, and things didn't end up coming out in the order I expected, but c'est la vie.

Dire:Born launched on Black Friday, 2015, and it's been doing pretty well. Not set-the-world-on fire well, but well enough for a no-name indie self-publisher's first book. Reviews are good, my friends and family are pleased, and I know that the sequels are going to be well-recieved. It will take me time to build the world of words and images I see in my head and get it to published paper, but I know I'll get there now. And by the end of it, it'll be pretty damn epic so long as I focus on doing my best throughout.

I know how to do this, now. There's things I need to learn like marketing, mailing lists, and websites, but the foundation has been laid, and I never would have taken those first steps if you hadn't published a superfun supervillain book when you did.

Wanna know another funny thing?

I expected a post-Christmas slump in sales, but the opposite happened! It's been steady sales throughout, and a ton of KU reads. I poked around a bit, trying to figure out why...

And then I noticed, in my book's Amazon listing among the also-boughts, there's the third Inscrutable Machine book, right THERE.

Richard, man, you couldn't have helped me more if you planned it. Here's to that "Supervillain" keyword! May it ever grow in usage.

So.

That's why I want to thank you.

Oh, and also for "Sweet Dreams are Made of Teeth." That book was freaking awesome. But anyway...

Thanks man.

You rock.

P.S: I'd love to send you an autographed copy of Dire:Born, if you want one. On the house, naturally. Your call, and I'll not be slighted if you decline.

Pre-Order UUUUUP!!!

It's that time!  And thank goodness.  My sales are pathetic.  A year with nothing published will do that to you.

Here is the Amazon link to pre-order Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen!  I think I'll wait until the official cover is up to put it on my sidebar.

You folks love to speculate, so to feed your curious little minds, here's the cover blurb:

What would middle school be like if half your classmates had super powers? It's time for Penny Akk to find out. Her latest (failed) attempt to become a superhero has inspired the rest of the kids in her school to reveal their own powers.

Now, all of her relationships are changing. She has a not-at-all-secret admirer, who wants to be Penny's partner almost as much as she wants to be Penny's rival. The meanest girl in school has gained super powers and lost her mind. Can Penny help her find a better one? Can she help an aging supervillain connect with his daughter, and mend the broken hearts of two of the most powerful people in the world? And in all this, where will she find time for her own supervillainous fun, or even more dangerous, to start dating?

It's going to be a long, strange semester.

Not The Actual Cover!

I will share a little bitty thing I find funny.  My publisher really wants to run with that January 10th date to start pre-orders, but isn't sure the cover art will be ready.  So... they made up a placeholder image to put on the Amazon page until they can put up the real cover.

Behold, not the cover of the exciting third issue of the Inscrutable Machine!


I think we'll make the Feb 8th full release.  Edits are all done, I wrote the ad copy, formatting the text to be all pretty doesn't take TOO long, and I've seen the WIP on the cover, so that shouldn't be more than a few days.  I bet if they pushed, my publisher could release the full book on Jan 10th, but my books are a big deal for them.  I think they want to get a lot of background sales prep done.

One Final Taste

Or maybe semi-final.  I have two teasers lined up, but the Chinatown trip is SO fun, I'm not sure if I should spoil it.

But... somebody wanted another teaser, to tide him/her/it/they/uh through the last painful month until the release.  I give you... GERTY GOAT'S FAMILY FARM.  A sweet and heartwarming slice of life scene for Penny, with no excitement.

I needed a certain kind of restaurant for kids, and I asked my most prolific fan artist for ideas.  Welcome to an entire scene based off of this picture:

THE ANNOUNCEMENT

Woo!  Editing is OVER!  Complete!  Finished!  Oh, thank you, Tesla.

Book three of the Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain series will be released on February 8th, with preorders expected to be up by January 10th.

Now that I've gotten a range of feedback, I feel confident you'll love it.  I think this crowd in particular will be interested in Claudia and Marcia's arcs.  A whole lot of stuff you thought I've forgotten comes back in this book.

Puppeteers

I generally like to let you folks speculate, but I'm spotting some confusion in the speculative threads.  Let me provide a quick history of the Puppeteer invasion!  All of this is deliberately contained in book two, but I went to no effort to make it clear, either.

Ca. 1900CE, the Puppeteers found our solar system through the teleport gate network.  The Earth contained at least one intelligent species, and the Puppeteers felt that it was their moral duty to uplift humanity from barbarism into their definition of civilization.  The best way to do this was gently, through undetected genetic manipulation, and they created two intelligent biotools to oversee this process:  Harvey and his unnamed partner.

Those two made contact with some scientists, mad and otherwise, on Earth.  They formed a partnership, the Red Panacea Clinic, and took advantage of the teleport gates to make a base in the asteroid belt that had direct access to Earth.  They began designing a non-catastrophic method of altering humanity to no longer value themselves as individuals, and instead focus on valuing all life as a whole.

It didn't go well.  Both Harvey and his partner were damaged, rendered insane by Puppeteer standards.  Harvey became obsessed with one particular experimental subject, treasuring the elements of her identity that would cease to exist if she were civilized.  His partner became obsessed with the mad science bioweapon development hobby he learned from their human contacts.  They arranged (metaphorically) to have our solar system lost in the paperwork of the Puppeteer civilization, so they would never have to finish their job.

Fast forward about a hundred years.  The teleport gates have been used for two major refugee escapes from Earth, one just before each World War.  Harvey managed to cover those up.  Humans go poking at the gate on Kalyke, and the Puppeteers notice.  They are reminded of the existence of humanity, and determine that the gentle, subtle attempt at civilizing humanity has failed.  Harvey is recalled to Kalyke to monitor the gate, which is about all his damaged self is good for, while more direct action is taken.

The Puppeteers invade the Jupiter colonies, with the intention of moving on to Earth.  As Harvey honestly reported, they do not have anything they consider weapons, and they do not deliberately kill any humans in the invasion.  Humans are instead infected with clumsy biotools that forcibly civilize each individual, rather than the gentle evolution the Puppeteers would have preferred.  The Jupiter colonists not only did not want to join Puppeteer civilization, they fought back violently.  They were completely outmatched.  Io Alpha was lost first, and then Europa Station.  The Jupiter colonists learned to fear 'meat puppets', Puppeteer-civilized humans who considered their own lives expendable if they could be used to spread civilization to more of humanity.

This all happened very quickly.  Weeks, a couple of months, tops.  Almost immediately after the Puppeteers invaded, the Conqueror Orbs followed.  They have a serious feud with the entire Puppeteer civilization, and one of their strongest programmed priorities is wiping out Puppeteer biotech wherever they find it.  Puppeteers have no 'weapons', but they are capable of violence, if it benefits life in general.  Their biotools and civilized humans attacked the Conqueror Orbs in suicidal rushes.  Io Alpha was destroyed.  Europa Station was hit by Conquerors and destroyed before the successful Puppeteer attack against it had even finished.

Remmy was one of the civilians evacuated both times those stations fell, by the way.  Her father did not make it out of Europa alive.

The Conquerors won the three way fight against humans and Puppeteers.  While they hate the Puppeteers, their priorities are a little weird by human standards.  After destroying all active Puppeteer forces, they did not bother to scour the nonsentient, automatic biotools left on the otherwise lifeless stations.  Those tools cleaned up the bodies and went into hibernation.  The Conquerors put a guard on the teleport gate so that the Puppeteers could not use it, but did not destroy the installation that had grown around it.

No, after stopping the Puppeteer invasion, the next Conqueror priority was to subdue the heavily armed and thriving intelligent life form on Earth.  They relocated the Orb of the Heavens to the Moon, and started to invade the Earth.  Thanks to the presence of large numbers of super powered individuals in the human population, that invasion failed.

Neither the Puppeteers, nor the Conquerors, noticed that there was life in the gas giant Jupiter, weird balloonlike tentacled beings who were powerful telepaths.  Harvey only noticed when the Jovians found a super powered telepathic human they could make contact with, because the Jovians immediately took her over and used her as a relay for their own powers.  As far as Harvey is concerned, telepathy is just a kind of biotool control signal.  Increasingly desperate to find some way to free Juliet, he sent a signal from the Red Panacea Clinic to the human the Jovians had taken over.  He was willing to risk just about anything at that point.

Instead, three tweens playing super powered hooky showed up, rescued Juliet, and gave the Jovians access to the kind of biotools that the Puppeteers had used to forcibly civilize humans.  You've seen the rest!

I hope this was interesting and helps with your speculations.

(Footnote:  The things that kept hatching and attacking Penny and her friends on Io Alpha were, indeed, cleaning tools.  They were set to absorb all biological material, and as such intended to eat any human, living or dead, that they encountered.  The Puppeteers would find that a tragic, repulsive accident, and would have tried to reprogram the cleaners not to, if they had been around.  They want to alter humans, not kill them.  Harvey was unable to reprogram the cleaners because Juno's presence nearby interfered with his signal.)

I Guess A Teaser Would Be Pointless

Book three, tentatively titled Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis, secretly subtitled The World Will Be Saved By Tech Support, but actually in my soul titled No One Wants To Hide Their Super Powers, is done.  It is written.  I have shipped it off to my beta readers.

No, you cannot be a beta reader, although I think it's super sweet some of you want to be.  It has to be people I know well enough to really understand their reactions and what those reactions mean.

If you have any questions or want any spoilers about it, let me know.  All I'm sure of from early reactions is that people really, really want to see a thirteen year old girl suplex a 6'10" metal supervillain.

FNAF4 - I Finally Figured Something Out

Another post where gaming nerd and writing nerd intertwine!

I have previously written about how impressed I was by Five Nights At Freddy's 2, and the story it revealed, and how that story was developed and displayed.

Five Nights At Freddy's 4, though, is a bit of a puzzle, to me and to the fandom in general.  Today I saw someone replaying it, and now that I've seen the rest of the game I put things together.  My own personal life experiences gave me insight into it.  It's been a bit of a revelation, and I have to share it somewhere, so I'm throwing it at you people.

The little boy who is the protagonist of FNAF4 is physically and emotionally abused by someone who lives in his home, presumably an older brother.  This becomes very clear towards the end of the game, especially when said brother and friends stuff the kid into an animatronic's mouth and it kills/maims the poor boy.

But at the beginning of the game, this wasn't clear yet.  I didn't have the perspective to know what I was seeing.  Now I understand that the cutscenes are all about abuse.  The first day just seemed weird.  There's talk about him locking himself in his room, but he tries to get out and can't, and cries.

What happened is, his older brother locked him in, and told his parents that he's throwing a tantrum.  On two of the days, his brother jumps out at him wearing a Foxy animatronic head.  The child is terrified of big, clunky animatronics, and people in suits that can pass for them.  His older brother uses this to terrorize him, including abandoning him at Freddy Fazbear's so the child can stew in terror.  The child isn't afraid of the characters.  He has Freddy toys and loves them.  He's afraid of animatronics, and if you think about it, that's not a very surprising or unreasonable fear for a small child!

So, putting all that together was nice, but it wasn't the big thing.  Once I knew all that, it let me answer one of the biggest questions in the Five Nights At Freddy's series:

What the Hell is going on in the FNAF4 gameplay?  What is this supposed to represent?  It's not believable that horrible nightmare versions of the animatronics are attacking the kid at night.  Are these nightmares?  Visions from the afterlife?

Nope.  FNAF4 is a physically abused child simulator.  I have been there.  I try to talk around the abuse issues of my childhood, because people would get the wrong impression and think my parents (good, loving people, who I like and am grateful to) abused me.  I certainly don't feel like dragging out all the details to the public.

But suffice it to say, I spent the years of the boy in this game in a household with a physical abuser, as the primary victim.  I can tell you that the game perfectly, beautifully represents what this feels like.  Your parents are gone, and you know, you KNOW, he's coming to get you.  If you can see it coming, you can hold it off for a little while.  Nothing is safe, the abuser is a giant monster, and you can be attacked from any direction at any time.  In this child's case, the abuser is a distorted vaguely cartoony death robot, who prefers to leap out at him from surprise rather than attacking directly.  He's, like, five.  That's what this looks like to him.

(I have no proof, but it would fit a lot of things together if the older brother worked at Fazbear's.)

This is grim stuff, but they're grim games and the final cutscene of FNAF4 is one of the most grim things in any game.  I'm incredibly relieved to have solved a mystery and that I now understand the last, weirdest entry.  With any luck, at least someone who reads my blog will also understand and be satisfied.