will Playing Magic the Gathering make me a better writer?

So just recently i've started getting into MTG and i'm surprised given my level of love of this kind of thing i've never really thought of it before. I mean i love skyrim and fantasy games, i love fantasy TV and books so why not card games. Now i've yet to go to my first real world battle but will be this friday, but i've been smashing the 'Magic duels" game online.

So we'll see, will expose to all these creature, spells and gods make me a better writer? or will it just rob me of sleep and money for better cards. time will tell.

Take the Darkness - Needs reviews!!

Hi All,

Just a quick one, My second book 'Take the Darkness and Give us the Light' has been out for around a month or maybe two. It's doing well in sales and the reviews, thank god, don't mention spelling and grammar, so paying those editors and proofreaders was well worth it! It only have seven reviews currently and i need at least 15 to get some good Amazon love.

If you've read the first and want the second one, just shoot me an email and i'll send you a copy for your kindle. If you don't have kindle you could get the kindle app for your computer. If you can then give me an honest review in excahnge that would be great.

Also a quick sorry to the people who have sent me comments on here i haven't seen, just tweet me, or facebook, i see that more often.

email: xjuliousbx at gmail.com
twitter: @juliusx_x
facebook: www.facebook.com/juliusschenkaus

The free tool all self published authors should get - Bit.ly

 As most of you know, being self published means ,lots and lots of pimping your own work, often your'll find your doing heaps of promo and even paying for things and then wondering if it's worth you time or money, imagine you had an easy way to track it.

Bit.ly www.bitly.com

is a free website that shortens your big ugly links, into small sexy ones. I guess it was originally for tweeter. Anyway if you sign up, free, they will let you track your links. So if you're going to spend a few hours doing facebook promo, you can create and name and link and see how many click have resulted from it/ Yesterday, i did this to some facebook groups and got ten clicks, so it was good, if you wanted to go further, you could do one per group.

Best for Paid promo.

Most of us are happy to shell out some cash if it results in sales but we have no really way of knowing. You might see a bump in sales on a day but it could be from anything. Recently i paid $19 for a promo from 'Book tweeters' it's to their group of around 500k followers. Now twitter, normally sucks for promo, but they are running it on friday, and i'll be able to see what the direct result is., Also if i get 100 clicks and only 10 sales, i'll know my sales page needs some work!

If you don't have bitly get it, your probably using it anyway.

A rant about pop fantasy and the ruination of monsters

Lately i've been doing heaps and heaps of promo on facebook. There are lots of groups for people who want to find new books by indy authors. The problem with the fact everyone can write a book, is everyone now does. While there is some great stuff out in the world, there are some titles that are so bad it's crazy. I used to think things like twilight we're good because they're making fantasy more accessible, but they aren't. They are just making fantasy into pop and lame.

No i'm not trying to say i'm some great writer here, all i'm saying is i have some respect for the people who actually came up with these ideas in the first place, not the a-holes who have turned them into commercial fodder.

Here's one I read recently, i'll just say the idea, not details, I'm not that mean. But i'll write it in their style.

'He was just after some easy money, he was the kind of good looking bad boy who normal got whatever, and whoever he wanted. But he wasn't expecting when he went to the werewolf party that he would end up hooking up with the male alpha, or that he'd get pregnant!

no shit, that is actually a story line from a real book!

The problem with this stuff is that people actually read it and now when someone thinks of vampires they think of this shit, werewolves, shape shifters, they have taken and fucked up. All these cool creatures and once original ideas. You think Bram Stoker would like twilight? he'd be pissed off that they stole his monster and made it a heartthrob with glitter skin.

In short, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I could write a hack book in a week about some vampire/werewolf bad boy and his love for a non-nonsense business women and sell it, but I would be selling my soul.

If you want to writer romance, write romance. If you want to write erotica, write erotica. But in the name of the dark one, please leave monsters alone. Vampires don't fall in love. They don't have hearts that pump blood, they can't have sex, as mentioned they don't get erections due to no blood pumping! They kill people, that's what they like, they don't go to high school. If you we're 300 years old would you go back to high school, it was shit the first time, let alone the 50th time.

Once the classic monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, they we're things to be feared. Now if you want to create something scary, you actually have to create something of your own. Once you do just pray you don't get famous, cause some idiot will come along and ruin it.

Can writers be mates and should they be?

I've always thought of myself as someone who doesn't like other writers. i even used to say to myself and other people things like 'I don't play well with others' the main reason was when i was trying to do my first book, like four years ago, i went to some meet up groups for writers and they we're just so shit.

The idea of reading a story to a group of 20 people and them telling you their thoughts is fucking horrible. So i just got on with doing my own thing. I now have people who read my stuff and give it reviews and things. I don't really have fans, they never actually email me or stuff, but i think their are some people who want to read what i write. Anyway point is i'm confident to call myself a 'writer' now i have written a couple of books.

So i'm calling myself a writer, i've done pretty well on kindle and my lovely girl, vicky, says her mate caz (caroline peckham) is coming to stay for a few weeks. Caz is one of vicky's best mates and i'm told she also a fantasy writer. She even has a book on Amazon. So i'm thinking we're not going to get along at all.

The thing is caz and me are now mates and i think having a writer buddy, at a similar level to you can be very good. We're both at the stage of having books out and hitting promo hard. We talk endlessly about sales numbers, promo and all that stuff. I add her to facebook groups, she adds me. I promo her and she helps me. It's good because when she does well, i'm happy for her and a bit jealous, so i push myself harder.

I think writers can be mates and should be, but you need to be at the same level of the creative process. I wrote my first book four years ago, now i can write a new one with no plan and no real internal struggle, so i can't help newbies very well. I remember having the thoughts, oh it's going to be shit, just do it anyway. Now i still think that, but i don't care. My new book might be shit compared to George. r.r but it'll be good compared to 90% of everything on kindle.

If you're a writer, get a promo pal, it's more fun than doing it alone and if they get famous before you, they will hopefully drag you along with them.

If my shit is too dark for you or you feel like some YA action, read caz's book.

doing blogs

So i'm going to start doing some blog posts cause i have shitloads of writing time everyday, and my mate craig atkinson is doing that and he reckons it's good for the soul. So here is my first one, i don't think my daily life is that interesting, all i do is write, smoke, drink coffee and check my kindle dashbaord eight times, but i do have thoughts that are probably worth expressing.