Introduction

Welcome to the website for indie fantasy writer W. Brondt Kamffer. I am glad you have taken a few moments out of your busy day to read the ramblings of a complete stranger (or your older brother, as it were).

Hopefully this blog (snobbishly titled a Journal) will be more consistent than some out there in the world, and certainly more consistent than my own pathetic attempts in the past at keeping one going. In the hopes of not disappointing, I shall begin by aiming low, and therefore I can rejoice whenever I exceed expectations! For starters, I am going to pledge to a weekly update. More would be great for all interested, but I think that anything less is just asking for people to ignore me.

Now, what is this all about? Obviously, this Journal will be a news feed for up and coming projects, publications, and…and…other things that are up and coming. Additionally, as I am an avid reader, I suppose I am perfectly within my rights to run my mouth here about books I am reading, what I like and don't like, and so on. Finally, should anyone out there take the time to review the books I write, I will be sure to post those here as well.

And that's that. Perhaps a brief introduction as to why I am publishing independently rather than going through one of the big New York houses is in order here:

I have been shopping The Wars of Gods and Men around for an agent for a few months now, and I have been getting nowhere. Agents are pretty unanimous in not quite being able to qualify its genre (apparently, people stopped combining "tragedy" with "comedy" shortly after Shakespeare died). Whether this is just a rouse on the part of agents (everyone e-pulishing these days seems to have been labeled "unclassifiable" at some time or another) or testimony to my poor summation skills in a query letter, I am not sure.

I have read a lot on various websites, Joe Konrath's blog most notably (but others too with more modest success), about the burgeoning e-book market, and I decided that at the end of the day, it makes sense to go with the way of the future rather than continue to cling to the hopes of being published traditionally. My stepdad has a wonderful saying, which I will share here: "Never plan your life by someone else's efficiency." In short, if an agent called me today and said, "Let's see the manuscript," and assuming everything was smooth sailing from that point on, it would still take about two years before the book hit store shelves. While that is the way the old system works, it's not particularly appealing for a prolific chap such as myself.

In short, the decision is not motivated out of any grudge against the "establishment," but rather by a desire to be read now, to sink or float by my own efforts and not by another's decisions, and to stop using the process as an excuse for not putting my novels out into the world.