For Whoever Is Interested - My New Author's Page!

[DigiTamer Rikun]

Yeah, I had something like that happen with my previous laptop. Sorry to hear about that man, but glad the damage is at least fixable.

 

[TMS]

Earlier today I finished the second story in my upcoming collection, currently titled The Silent Garden and Darker Places. An experienced writer could have had the whole book done by now, of course, but there is hope. My productivity has greatly increased the last few weeks. The first draft of "The Fear," the collection's first story, ran to almost 9,000 words and took me four months. The second, titular story's first draft, finished today, wound up over 1,500 words longer, but only took me three months. Hopefully I can get the third story out in record time, but first I'm going to revise "The Fear" and let a few people test-read it.

Not much else to tell other than that - though I would like to point people towards the updated Digimon Tactics thread - but my last post here was in May and I felt like it was time for another.

 

[TMS]

For someone with no regular job and little in the way of a social life I've been keeping rather busy the past month or two. I've been watching the anime for the Tri leadup, preparing a Call of Cthulhu campaign that I hope to run for some friends pretty soon, and have been trying to increase the output of my professional writing (fan fiction I've fallen a little behind on, though, since I didn't write any during the week my brother was home for spring break). Currently I have five drafts of stories for my next collection complete, with four of them ready to be test-read by friends and family members. Would anyone here be interested in reading a draft or two and giving me feedback? I have "The Fear," "The Silent Garden," "Home Video," and "Collecting in Darkness" ready for inspection.

 

[Lhikan634]

I might be able to help, depending on several factors (primarily length of the work and when you'd need it back). I have final projects at grad school going on now so will be busy until the end of the semester apart from mental breaks.

Just a warning, I'd likely be a more grammar-intensive editor and apparently can leave about as much red as an English professor. But I could focus on other areas as desired should I be able to help out.

 

[TMS]

It's more feedback on the substance of the story I'm looking for. Grammar and punctuation I occasionally take liberties with to make things read as I want them to. But regardless, I'd be happy to have you take a look. Which stories were you interested in reading? And could you PM me your email address?

 

[TMS]

Not much is new with me since the last time I posted, though I'm getting close to publishing my second collection of short stories. Possibly due to the resulting excitement, I've been making more use of my Twitter account than previously, so if you want more social media crap coming at you now would be the time to follow me: https://twitter.com/TMSmithAuthor (and maybe like my Facebook page while you're at it: https://www.facebook.com/taylor.m.smith.author )

Also as a result of my book nearing completion, I've been looking for people willing to read through my drafts and give me a sense of what they think and some feedback. Anyone care to apply? I've got five drafts ready to be looked at, with a sixth hopefully on the way. Read as few or as many as you feel inclined to.

 

[Takatofan1986]

I wouldn't mind reading it

 

[TMS]

Glad to hear that! Would you mind PMing me your email address?

 

[TMS]

Well, this is a big day for me. My second collection of fantasy/horror short stories, The Silent Garden & Darker Places, is now available as an Amazon e-book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BLYR3UI

It's sort of a more cerebral horror (as opposed to blood and guts), if you're interested in that sort of thing. For a limited time, you can download it for free (and I still get paid for each page you read). Please review if you like it (or if you don't; I can't stop you). You can also check out my first collection, Odd Lodgings: Stories of the Preternatura, which can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IZWQCKW

Sorry for the shameless plug, but this is kind of a big deal for me.

 

[TMS]

Just a heads up, this is the last day my book will be available for free download, so if you've been hesitating to get it I'd recommend acting now.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BLYR3UI

 

[TMS]

Well, I have a pretty major update this time. Since it's impossible for me to make a living from writing fiction at this stage of my career (and, frankly, at my current rate of production), I've been looking for a job the past few months and have managed to find one as an assistant mail carrier with the post office. It's not the ideal job, and will probably be hard, but it pays well, and if something better ever comes along in future I can make the switch. Tomorrow I go in for orientation. Not sure what happens after that, but once I start working my schedule will change drastically. I'll be on much earlier hours, for one thing, and will have considerably less free time. Because I'm basically a substitute for regular mail carriers, my work schedule will be a little unpredictable (I was told to expect to work between 36 hours and 56 hours a week; I'm hoping it's closer to the former). Not sure what effect this will have on my creative efforts. I may be too exhausted to put much effort into them, or time constraints may lead me to better manage the time I do have.

 

[Vande]

Ah sorry to hear that TMS. Hopefully you'll be able to write in the future etc. If you have to use public transport to get to work, remember that is time to work on ideas/write things down.

 

[NekoHaruko]

I wish you the best of luck, tms. It's great you atleast got your foot in the door!

 

[TMS]

This weekend marks a sort of milestone for me, since I've just "sold" my first story to the Manor House podcast, which will eventually produce a reading of it. I say sold in quotation marks because the story, "Worm Hollow," was previously self-published in my second collection, I won't actually be getting paid anything for it unless Manor House eventually publishes it in a book. Even so, it's nice to get some exposure, and to have a publisher judge something of mine worthy of publication.

 

[TMS]

Well, time marches on. Can't believe it's been over half a year since my last post in this thread. Life goes too damn fast.
...Anyway, I've got three announcements to make here that some forum members might find interesting to a greater or lesser degree.

First off, before too long I hope to self-publish a print-on-demand paperback through CreateSpace. It'll be titled Collecting in Darkness & Other Stories, and will contain all of the stories from my two previous e-books, along with another of those prefaces I apparently love writing. I thought about maybe including some new stories in it as well, but I decided against it, since it'll be harder to sell them to other publishers if I self-publish them first. I don't expect the book will sell very many copies, but it will be nice to have a book on my shelves (and a few other people's shelves) with my name on it. Right now I'm trying to figure out what a good cover design would be. Naturally I'll link to the book once it's published.

Secondly, although we haven't yet shared our progress on the forum, Frankie (DHxF25) and I have continued working on the Digimon Tactics CCG. I don't want to spoil too much at the moment, but before long we'll be posting info in the main Tactics thread about our cool new card templates (sharing some of the cards we've put together) and our newly settled plans regarding the game's future.

And, finally, today I was offered the position of admin on Wikimon, and I decided to accept. It's a commitment; hopefully it doesn't take up too much of my time, but I'm happy to help, and it should facilitate things as far as my attack descriptions project goes. The user who had started screwing up the attack descriptions the past few days was banned yesterday, so things should be calming down a little. I think, to avoid future argument and confusion, that I'll look into citing sources for the attack descriptions instead of just for the attack names. That way if anyone doubts the descriptions or wants to dispute them they can use YouTube or whatever to see for themselves what the attacks look like.

And... that about covers it. Thanks for reading. Any comments/questions about anything are welcome.

 

[Jay Ukyou]

Wikimon admin? Sweet! Let me know if you ever need some obscure Japanese translated.

I can't wait to see the Tactics and Collecting in Darkness stuff come to fruition!

 

[Lhikan634]

Awesome to hear, on all 3 points. If possible, I'd like to have a way of following what attack descriptions are validated and which are ruled as being fake. I've still been partnering with the German Digimon Wiki, and it's become quite evident that the original authors made up a ton of BS in this area as well. Some sort of compendium (that I think you mentioned elsewhere? That or a failed attempt at Inception…) would prove useful to what I'm doing as well.

 

[TMS]

As far as the attack thing goes, it should be easier for me to keep things accurate now that I'm a Wikimon admin. Thanks to Ainz, we now have a new template that will let us switch between various attack descriptions (you can see it here with Dead or Alive), and we're going to start sourcing the descriptions as well as the attack names. I'm going to start over on my going down the list of Digimon and verifying that their attack descriptions are accurate and complete, making use of that new template. Before I do that, however, I'd like to finish figuring out what the original Korean names for all of the attacks were in the Korean MMOs, and seeing what Japanese attack names they match up with. I'm working on that for Digimon RPG, and will be doing Digimon Masters after that. Once I have that list it'll facilitate things and prevent us from making mistakes when it comes to attack identification.

To give an example of what I mean by a mistake, Renamon in RPG and Masters has an attack called Touhakken in the English version, which is the name of one of Renamon's Japanese attacks, so previously I had assumed that "Touhakken" was, well, Touhakken. Then I look into the Korean version and find that the attack was actually supposed to be the attack whose Japanese name is Kohenkyo.

 

[TMS]

Well, guys, it's here! My first printed book, Collecting in Darkness & Other Stories, is now available to order. It contains all of the stories from my first two e-books, with a number of typographical errors fixed and a new preface. You can order it through either CreateSpace or Amazon. It's the same price both places, but the royalty I get is twice as large if you buy from CreateSpace, so please order it there if you can. It seems to have an issue with placing orders on phones, but if you have a desktop/laptop computer that's not a problem.

Here are the links!

https://www.createspace.com/6926902
https://www.amazon.com/Collecting-Darkness-Other-Stories-Taylor/dp/1543056520/

 

[TMS]

Seems it's been over six years since my last post in this thread. As you might imagine, a lot has changed for me over that period. Various plans I mentioned earlier fell by the wayside (but occasionally resurface), and various new plans were made. I professionally published a story, became an uncle, and am currently working on getting my master's degree in library and information science, so that I can get a full-time job that's meaningful to me, instead of the part-time retail job I've been working for the past seven years.

Today I have an exciting announcement to make: I have an author's website now! Well, sort of. Actually it's a creator's page on a site called Gumroad.

https://tmsauthor.gumroad.com/

Since I don't expect to ever be able to make a living from writing, I've decided to go ahead and make all my stories available for download at $0.99 each. Currently it's just the contents of Collecting in Darkness & Other Stories and "The Stop," which I recently revised and published today for the first time, but I'm hoping to get most or all of my other finished drafts put in shape and published before my classes start again in late September.

If you're a fan of fantasy and/or horror fiction, I urge you to check out the site and try some of my stories for the price of a candy bar. I'd love to hear any thoughts or criticism you may have. As a matter of fact, I now have a Discord server dedicated to my fictional works (both present and future), most of the current members of which are people I met through With the Will and whom you may know. You can find a link to it in my newly updated forum signature!