In this week's episode, I take a look back at the movies and streaming shows I watched in Summer 2025.

This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Serpent, Book #1 in the Ghost Armor series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store:

FALLSERPENT50

The coupon code is valid through September 15, 2025 (please note the shorter expiration date). So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 267 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September 5, 2025 and today I'm doing a review roundup of the movies and streaming shows I saw in Summer 2025. Before we do that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing and audiobook projects.

First up, this week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Serpent, Book One in the Ghost Armor series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store. That is FALLSERPENT50. This coupon code will be valid through September 15th, 2025 (exactly one week). So if you need a new audiobook to listen to as we head into fall, we have got you covered.

Now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. I am pleased to report that the rough draft of Blade of Flames, which will be the first book in my new Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series is finished. The rough draft came at about 90,000 words long, which was what I was aiming for. Next up, I will be writing a short story set as sort of a bonus in that plot line called Thunder Hammer and that will be the backstory of one of the characters in Blade of Flames. And when Blade of Flames comes out (which will hopefully be later this September), newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Thunder Hammer. So this is an excellent time to subscribe to my newsletter.

I am also 8,000 words into Cloak of Worlds. At long last, I am coming back to the Cloak Mage series after nearly a year's absence. Longtime listeners will know the reason was that I had five unfinished series and I wanted to spend the summer of 2025 finishing the unfinished ones and focusing up so I will only have three ongoing series at any given time. I'm hoping Blade of Flames will come out before the end of September and Cloak of Worlds before the end of October, and after that I will be able to return to the Rivah series at long last.

In audiobook news, recording is finished on Shield of Power. That will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills and hopefully once it gets through processing and quality assurance and everything, it should be showing up on the various audiobook stores before too much longer. Hollis McCarthy is about halfway through the recording of Ghost in the Siege, which was, as you know, the last book in the Ghost Armor series that just came out. And if all goes well, the audiobook should be coming out probably in October once everything is done with recording and quality assurance and all that. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects.

00:02:34 Main Topic: Summer 2025 Movie/TV Roundup

So without further ado, let's head into our main topic. The end of summer is nigh, which means this time for my summer movie review roundup. As is usual for the summer, I saw a lot of movies, so this will be one of the longer episodes. For some reason I ended up watching a bunch of westerns. As always, the movies are ranked from least favorite to most favorite. The grades of course are totally subjective and based on nothing more than my own opinions, impressions, and interpretations. Now on to the movies.

First up is the Austin Powers trilogy, the three movies of which came out in 1997, 1999, and 2002. The Austin Powers movies came out just as the Internet really got going in terms of mass adoption, which is likewise why so many Austin Powers and Dr. Evil memes are embedded in online culture. Despite that, I had never really seen any of them all the way through. They've been on in the background on TBS or whatever quite a bit when I visited people, but I've never seen them all. But I happened upon a DVD of the trilogy for $0.25 (USD), so I decided for 25 cents I would give it a go.

I would say the movies were funny, albeit not particularly good. Obviously the Austin Powers movies are a parody of the James Bond movies. The movies kind of watch like an extended series of Saturday Night Live skits, only loosely connected, like the skit is what if Dr. Evil had a son named Scott who wasn't impressed with him or another skit was what if a British agent from the ‘60s arrives in the ‘90s and experiences culture clash? What if Dr. Evil didn't understand the concept of inflation and demanded only a million dollars from the United Nations? What if Dr. Evil was actually Austin's brother and they went to school together at Spy Academy? Michael Caine was pretty great as Austin's father. Overall, funny but fairly incoherent.

Overall grade: C-

Next up is Horrible Bosses, a very dark and very raunchy comedy from about 14 years ago. It came out in 2011. Interestingly, this movie reflects what I think is one of the major crises of the contemporary era, frequent failures of leadership at all levels of society. In the movie Nick, Dale, and Kurt are lifelong friends living in LA and all three of them have truly horrible bosses in their place of employment, ranging from a sociopathic finance director, the company founder's cokehead son, and a boorish dentist with a tendency to sexual harassment. At the bar, they fantasize about killing their horrible bosses and then mutually decide to do something about it. Obviously, they'd all be prime suspects in the murder of their own bosses, but if they killed each other's bosses, that would allow them to establish airtight alibis.

However, since Nick, Dale and Kurt are not as bright as they think they are, it all goes hilariously wrong very quickly. Bob Hope has a hilarious cameo. If the best “crude comedies” I've seen are Anchorman, Zoolander, Tropic Thunder, and Dodgeball, and the worst one was MacGruber, I'd say Horrible Bosses lands about in the middle.

Overall grade: C

Next up is Cowboys and Aliens, which came out in 2011. Now I almost saw this in 2011 when it came out, but I was too busy to go to the theater in July of 2011, so I finally saw it here in 2025 and I would say this was almost a great movie, like the performances were great, the concept was great, the scenery was great, the special effects were great, and the story was packed full of really interesting ideas, but somehow they just didn't coalesce. I'm not entirely sure why. I think upon reflection, it was that the movie is just too overcrowded with too many characters and too many subplots.

Anyway, Daniel Craig portrays a man who wakes up with no memory in the Old West, with a mysterious bracelet locked around his wrist. He makes his way to the town of Atonement, and promptly gets arrested because he is apparently a notorious outlaw (which he doesn’t remember). While he is locked in jail, space aliens attack the town. The aliens, for unknown reasons, abduct many of the townspeople, and Daniel Craig’s character, who is named Jake even if he doesn’t remember it, must lead the town’s effort to recover their abducted citizens.

Harrison’s Ford has an excellent performance as this awful cattle baron who nonetheless has virtues of courage and fortitude that you can’t help but admire. An excellent performance.

That said, the movie was just too packed, and I thought it would work better as a novel. After I watched the movie, it turned out that it was indeed based off a graphic novel. Novels and graphic novels allow for a far more complex story than a movie, and I don’t think this movie quite managed to handle the transition from a graphic novel to a film.

Overall grade: C

Next up is Heads of State, which came out in 2025. This was kind of a stupid movie. However, the fundamental question of any movie, shouted to the audience by Russell Crow in Gladiator is, “are you not entertained?!?” I was thoroughly entertained watching this, so entertained I actually watched it twice. Not everything has to be Shakespeare or a profound meditation on the unresolvable conflicts inherent within human nature. Anyway, John Cena plays Will Derringer, newly elected President of the United States. Idris Elba plays Sam Clark, who has now been the UK Prime Minister for the last six years.

Derringer was an action star who parleyed his celebrity into elected office (in the same way Arnold Schwarzenegger did), while Clarke is an army veteran who worked his way up through the UK’s political system. Needless to say, the cheerful Derringer and the grim Clarke take an immediate dislike to each other. However, they’ll have to team up when Air Force One is shot down, stranding them in eastern Europe. They’ll have to make their way home while evading their enemies to unravel the conspiracy that threatens world peace. So half action thriller, half buddy road trip comedy. The premise really doesn’t work if you think about it too much for more than thirty seconds, but the movie was funny and I enjoyed it. Jack Quaid really stole his scenes as a crazy but hyper-competent CIA officer.

Overall grade: C+

Next up, Captain America: Brave New World, which came out in 2025 and I think this movie ended up on the good side of middling.

You can definitely tell it went through a lot of reshoots and retooling, and I suspect the various film industry strikes hit it like a freight train. But we ended up with a reasonably solid superhero thriller. Sam Wilson is now Captain America. He’s not superhuman the way Steve Rogers was and doesn’t have magic powers or anything, so he kind of fights like the Mandalorian – a very capable fighter who relies on excellent armor. Meanwhile, in the grand American political tradition of failing upward, Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, who spent years persecuting The Hulk and whose meddling caused the Avengers to disband right before Thanos attacked, has now been elected President. To Wilson’s surprise, Ross reaches out and wants him to restart the Avengers. But Ross (as we know) did a lot of shady black ops stuff for years, and one of his projects is coming back to haunt him. Wilson finds himself in the middle of a shadowy conspiracy, and it’s up to him to figure out what’s going on before it’s too late. I was amused that lifelong government apparatchik Ross wanted to restart the Avengers, because when the Avengers had their biggest victory in Avengers: Endgame, they were essentially unsanctioned vigilantes bankrolled by a rogue tech billionaire. Overall grade: B-

Next up is Ironheart, which came out in 2025. I'd say Ironheart was about 40% very weird and 60% quite good. It's sort of like the modern version of Dr. Faustus.

The show got some flak on the Internet from the crossfire between the usual culture war people, but the key to understanding it is to realize that Riri Williams AKA Ironheart is in fact an antihero who’s tottering on the edge of becoming a full-blown supervillain. Like Tony Stark, she’s a once-in-a-generation scientific talent, but while she doesn’t have Stark’s alcohol problems, she’s emotionally unstable, immature, ruthless, indifferent to collateral damage and consequences, and suffering from severe PTSD after her best friend and stepfather were killed in a drive-by shooting. This volatile mix gets her thrown out of MIT after her experiments cause too much destruction, and she has to go home to Chicago. To get the funds to keep working on her Iron Man armor, she turns to crime, and falls in with a gang of high-end thieves led by a mysterious figure named Hood. It turns out that Hood has actual magic powers, which both disturbs and fascinates Riri. However, Hood got his magic in a pact with a mysterious dark force. When a job goes bad, Riri gains the enmity of Hood and has to go on the run. It also turns out Hood’s dark master has become very interested in Riri, which might be a lot more dangerous for everyone in the long run. Overall, I’d say this is about in the same vein as Agatha All Along, an interesting show constructed around a very morally questionable protagonist. Overall grade: B

Next up is A Minecraft movie, which came out in 2024. I have to admit, I've never actually played Minecraft, so I know very little about the game and its ecosystem, only what I've generally absorbed by glancing at the news.

That said, I think the movie held together quite well, and wasn’t deserving of the general disdain it got in the press. (No doubt the $950 million box office compensated for any hurt feelings.) One of the many downsides of rapid technological change in the last fifty years is that the Boomers and Gen X and the Millennials and Gen Z and Gen Alpha have had such radically different formative experiences in childhood that it’s harder to relate to each other. Growing up in the 1980s was a wildly different experience than growing up in the 2010s, and growing up in the 2010s was an even more wildly different experience than growing up in the 1960s. Smartphones and social media were dominant in 2020, barely starting in 2010, and implausible science fiction in 2000 and earlier, and so it was like the different generations grew up on different planets, because in some sense they actually did. (A five-year-old relative of mine just started school, and the descriptions of his school compared to what I remember of school really do sound like different planets entirely.) The Minecraft game and A Minecraft Movie might be one of those generation-locked experiences. Anyway, this has gotten very deep digression for what was essentially a portal-based LitRPG movie. A group of people experiencing various life difficulties in a rural Idaho town get sucked into the Minecraft world through a magic portal. There they must combine forces and learn to work together to master the Minecraft world to save it from an evil sorceress. As always, the fundamental question of any movie is the one that Russell Crowe’s character shouted to the audience in Gladiator back in 2000. “Are you not entertained?” I admit I was entertained when watching A Minecraft Movie since it was funny and I recognized a lot of the video game mechanics, even though I’ve never actually played Minecraft. Like, Castlevania II had a night/day cycle the way Minecraft does, and Castlevania II was forty years ago. But that was another digression! I did enjoy A Minecraft Movie. It was kind of crazy, but it committed to the craziness and maintained a consistent creative vision, and I was entertained. Though I did think it was impressive how Jack Black’s agent managed to insist that he sing several different times. Overall grade: B

Next up is Back to School, which came out in 1986 and this is one of the better ‘80s comedies I've seen.

Rodney Dangerfield plays Thornton Melon, who never went to college and is the wealthy owner of a chain of plus-sized clothing stores. His son Jason is attending Great Lakes University, and after Thornton’s unfaithful gold-digging wife leaves him (Thornton is mostly relieved by this development), he decides to go visit his son. He quickly discovers that Jason is flailing at college, and decides to enroll to help out his son. Wacky adventures ensue! I quite enjoyed this. The fictional “Great Lakes University” was largely shot at UW-Madison in Wisconsin, which I found amusing because I spent a lot of time at UW-Madison several decades ago as a temporary IT employee. I liked seeing the characters walk past a place where I’d eat lunch outside when the day was nice, that kind of thing. Also, I’m very familiar with how the sausage gets made in higher ed. There’s a scene where the dean is asking why Thornton is qualified to enter college, and then it cuts to the dean cheerfully overseeing the groundbreaking of the new Thornton Melon Hall which Thornton just donated, and I laughed so hard I almost hurt myself, because that is exactly how higher ed works. The movie had some pointless nudity, but it was only a few seconds and no doubt gets cut in network broadcasts. Overall grade: B Next up is Whiskey Galore, which came out in 1949 and this is a comedy set in Scotland during World War II. The villagers living on an isolated island have no whiskey due to wartime rationing. However, when a government ship carrying 50,000 cases of whiskey runs aground near the island, wacky hijinks ensue. I have to admit the first half of the movie was very slow and deliberate, gradually setting up all the pieces for later. Then, once the shipwreck happens, things pick up and the movie gets much funnier. Definitely worth watching both as a good comedy movie and an artifact of its time. A modicum of historical knowledge is required – if you don’t know what the Home Guard is, you might have to do some Googling to understand the context of some of the scenes. Regrettably, the version I watched did not have captioning, so I had to pay really close attention to understand what the characters were saying, because some of the accents were very strong. Overall grade: B

Next up is Happy Gilmore 2, which came out in 2025.

This was dumb and overstuffed with celebrity cameos but thoroughly hilarious and I say this even though it uses one of my least favorite story tropes, namely “hero of previous movie is now a middle age loser.” However, the movie leads into it for comedy.

When Happy Gilmore accidentally kills his wife with a line drive, he spirals into alcoholism and despair. But his five children still love him, and when his talented daughter needs tuition for school, Happy attempts to shake off his despair and go back to golf to win the money. But Happy soon stumbles onto a sinister conspiracy led by an evil CEO to transform the game of golf into his own personal profit center. Happy must team up with his old nemesis Shooter McGavin to save golf itself from the evil CEO. Amusingly, as I’ve said before, the best Adam Sandler movies are almost medieval. In medieval fables, it was common for a clever peasant to outwit pompous lords, corrupt priests, and greedy merchants. The best Adam Sandler protagonist remains an everyman who outwits the modern equivalent of pompous lords and corrupt priests, in this case an evil CEO. Overall grade: B+

Next up is Superman, which came out in 2025 and I thought this was pretty good and very funny at times.

I think it caught the essential nature of Superman. Like, Superman should be a Lawful Good character. If he was a Dungeons and Dragons character, he would be a paladin. People on the Internet tend to take the characterization of superheroes seriously to perhaps an unhealthy degree, but it seems the best characterization of Superman is as an earnest, slightly dorky Boy Scout who goes around doing good deeds. The contrast of that good-hearted earnestness with his godlike abilities that would allow him to easily conquer and rule the world is what makes for an interesting character. I also appreciated how the movie dispensed with the overused trope of the Origin Story and just got down to business. In this movie, Lex Luthor is obsessed with destroying Superman and is willing to use both super-advanced technology and engineered geopolitical conflict to do it. Superman, because he’s essentially a decent person, doesn’t comprehend just how depraved Luthor is, and how far Luthor is willing to go out of petty spite. (Ironically, a billionaire willing to destroy the world out of petty spite is alas, quite realistic). Guy Gardener (“Jerkish Green Lantern”) and the extremely competent and the extremely exasperated Mr. Terrific definitely stole all their scenes. The director of the movie, James Gunn, was quite famously fired from Disney in 2018 for offensive jokes he had made on Twitter back when he was an edgy young filmmaker with an alcohol problem. I suppose Mr. Gunn can rest content knowing that Superman made more money than any Marvel movie released this year. Overall grade: A-

Next up is Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which came out in 1988. This was a very strange movie, but nonetheless, one with an ambitious premise, strong performances, and a strong artistic vision. It’s set in post WWII Los Angeles, and “toons” (basically cartoon characters) live and work alongside humans. Private eye Eddie Valiant hates toons since one of them killed his brother five years ago. However, he’s hired by the head of a studio who’s having trouble with one of his toon actors, Roger Rabbit. Roger’s worried his wife Jessica is having an affair, and Valiant obtains pictures of Jessica playing patty cake (not a euphemism, they actually were playing patty cake) with another man.

Roger has an emotional breakdown, and soon the other man winds up dead, and Roger insists he’s innocent. Valiant and Roger find themselves sucked into a dangerous conspiracy overseen by a ruthless mastermind. This movie was such an interesting cultural artifact. It perfectly follows the structure of a ‘40s film noir movie, but with cartoons, and the dissonance between film noir and the cheerfulness of the toons was embraced and used as a frequently source of comedy. In fact, when the grim and dour Valiant uses the toons’ comedy techniques as a tactical improvisation in a moment of mortal peril, it’s both hilarious and awesome. Christopher Lloyd’s performance as the villainous Judge Doom was amazing. (I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that he’s villainous, because his character is named Judge Doom and he’s literally wearing a black hat.) Like, his performance perfectly captures something monstrous that is trying very hard to pretend to be human and not quite getting it right. And the amount of work it must have taken to make this movie staggers the mind. Nowadays, having live actors interact with cartoon characters is expensive, but not unduly so. It’s a frequent technique. You see it all the time in commercials when a housewife is smiling at an animated roll of paper towels or something, and Marvel’s essentially been doing it for years. But this was 1988! Computer animation was still a ways off. They had to shoot the movie on analog film, and then hand-draw all the animation and successfully match it to the live film. It wouldn’t have worked without the performance of Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant, who plays everything perfectly straight in the same way Michael Caine did in A Muppet Christmas Carol. So kind of a strange movie, but definitely worth watching. And it has both Disney and Warner Brothers animated characters in the same movie, which is something we will never, ever see again. Overall grade: A Next up is K-Pop Demon Hunters, which came out in 2025. Like Who framed Roger Rabbit?, this is a very strange movie, but nonetheless with a clear and focused artistic vision. It is a cultural artifact that provides a fascinating look into a world of which I have no knowledge or interest, namely K-pop bands and their dueling fandoms.

Anyway, the plot is that for millennia, female Korean musicians have used the magic of their voices to keep the demons locked away in a demon world. The current incarnation is a three-woman K-Pop group called Huntrix, and they are on the verge of sealing away the demons forever. Naturally, the Demon King doesn’t like this, so one of his cleverer minions comes up with a plan. They’ll start a Demon K-Pop Boy Band! Disguised as humans, the demon K-Pop group will win away Huntrix’s fans, allowing them to breach the barrier and devour the world. However, one of the Huntrix musicians is half-demon, and she starts falling for the lead demon in the boy band, who is handsome and of course has a dark and troubled past. Essentially a musical K-drama follows. I have to admit I know practically nothing about K-Pop groups and their dueling fandoms, other than the fact that they exist. However, this was an interesting movie to watch. The animation was excellent, it did have a focused vision, and there were some funny bits. Overall grade: A

Next up is Clarkson's Farm Season Four, which came out in 2025.

A long time ago in the ‘90s, I watched the episode of Frasier where Frasier and Niles attempt to open a restaurant and it all goes horribly (yet hilariously) wrong. At the time, I had no money, but I promised myself that I would never invest in a restaurant. Nothing I have seen or learned in the subsequent thirty years has ever changed that decision. Season 4 of Clarkson’s Farm is basically Jeremy Clarkson, like Frasier and Niles, attempting to open a restaurant, specifically a British pub. On paper it’s a good idea, since Clarkson can provide the pub with food produced from his own farm and other local farmers. However, it’s an enormous logistical nightmare, and Clarkson must deal with miles of red tape, contractors, and a ballooning budget, all while trying to keep his farm from going under. An excellent and entertaining documentary into the difficulties of both the farming life and food service. I still don’t want to own a restaurant! Overall grade: A Next up is Tombstone, which came out in 1993. The Western genre of fiction is interesting because it’s limited to such a very specific period of time and geographical region. Like the “Wild West” period that characterizes the Western genre really only lasted as a historical period from about 1865 to roughly 1890. The Western genre was at its most popular in movies from the 1940s and the 1960s, and I wonder if it declined because cultural and demographic changes made it unpopular to romanticize the Old West the way someone like Walt Disney did at Disneyland with “Frontierland.” Of course, the genre lives on in different forms in grittier Western movies, neo-Westerns like Yellowstone and Longmire, and a lot of the genre’s conventions apply really well to science fiction. Everyone talks about Firefly being the first Space Western, but The Mandalorian was much more successful and was basically a Western in space (albeit with occasional visits from Space Wizards). Anyway! After that long-winded introduction, let’s talk about Tombstone. When Val Kilmer died earlier this year, the news articles mentioned Tombstone as among his best work, so I decided to give it a watch. The plot centers around Wyatt Earp, played by Kurt Russell, who has decided to give up his career in law enforcement and move to Tombstone, Arizona, a silver mining boomtown, in hopes of making his fortune. However, Tombstone is mostly controlled by the Cowboys outlaw gang, and Earp is inevitably drawn into conflict with them. With the help of his brothers and Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer’s character), Earp sets out to bring some law and order to Tombstone, whether the Cowboys like it or not. Holliday is in the process of dying from tuberculosis, which makes him a formidable fighter since he knows getting shot will be a less painful and protracted death than the one his illness will bring him. Kilmer plays him as a dissolute, scheming warrior-poet who nonetheless is a very loyal friend. Definitely a classic of the Western genre, and so worth watching. Overall grade: A Next up is Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, the eighth Mission Impossible movie. Of the eight movies, I think the sixth one was the best one, but this one comes in at a close second. It continues on from Dead Reckoning. Ethan Hunt now possesses the key that will unlock the source code of the Entity, the malicious AI (think ChatGPT, but even more obviously evil) that is actively maneuvering the world’s nuclear powers into destroying each other so the Entity can rule the remnants of humanity. Unfortunately, the Entity’s source code is sitting in a wrecked Russian nuclear sub at the bottom of the Bering Sea. Even more unfortunately, the Entity knows that Hunt has the key and is trying to stop him, even as the Entity’s former minion and Hunt’s bitter enemy Gabriel seeks to seize control of the Entity for himself. A sense of apocalyptic doom hangs over the movie, which works well to build tension. Once again, the world is doomed, unless Ethan Hunt and his allies can save the day. The tension works extremely well during the movie’s underwater sequence, and the final airborne duel between Hunt and Gabriel. I don’t know if they’re going to make any more Mission Impossible movies after this (they are insanely expensive), but if this is the end, it is a satisfying conclusion for the character of Ethan Hunt and the Impossible Mission Force. Overall grade: A Next up is Deep Cover, which came out in 2025. This is described as a comedy thriller, and I didn’t know what to expect when I watched it, but I really enjoyed it. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Kat, a struggling comedy improv teacher living in London. Her best students are Marlon (played by Orlando Bloom), a dedicated character actor who wants to portray gritty realism but keeps getting cast in tacky commercials, and Hugh (played by Nick Mohammed), an awkward IT worker with no social skills whatsoever. One day, the three of them are recruited by Detective Sergeant Billings (played by Sean Bean) of the Metropolitan Police. The Met wants to use improv comedians to do undercover work for minor busts with drug dealers. Since it plays 200 pounds a pop, the trio agrees. Of course, things rapidly spiral out of control, because Kat, Marlon, and Hugh are actually a lot better at improv than they think, and soon they find themselves negotiating with the chief criminals of the London underworld. What follows is a movie that is both very tense and very funny. Kat, Marlon, and Hugh are in way over their heads, and will have to do the best improv of their lives to escape a very grisly fate. Whether Sean Bean dies or not (as is tradition), you will just have to watch the movie and find out. Overall grade: A

Next up is Puss in Boots: The Final Wish, which came out in 2022. I don’t personally know much about the history of Disney as a corporation, and I don’t much care, but I do have several relatives who are very interested in the history of the Disney corporation, and therefore I have picked up some by osmosis. Apparently Disney CEO Michael Eisner forcing out Jeffrey Katzenberg in the 1990s was a very serious mistake, because Katzenberg went on to co-found DreamWorks, which has been Disney’s consistent rival for animation for the last thirty years. That’s like “CIA Regime Change Blowback” levels of creating your own enemy. Anyway, historical ironies aside, Puss in Boots: The Final Wish was a funny and surprisingly thoughtful animated movie. Puss in Boots is a legendary outlaw and folk hero, but he has used up eight of his nine lives. An ominous bounty hunter who looks like a humanoid wolf begins pursuing him, and the Wolf is able to shrug off the best of Puss In Boots’ attacks. Panicked, Puss hides in a retirement home for elderly cats, but then hears rumors of the magical Last Wish. Hoping to use it to get his lives back, Puss In Boots sets off on the quest. It was amusing how Little Jack Horner and Goldilocks and the Three Bears were rival criminal gangs seeking the Last Wish. Overall grade: A Next up is Chicken People, which came out in 2016. A good documentary film gives you a glimpse into an alien world that you would otherwise never visit. In this example, I have absolutely no interest in competitive chicken breeding and will only raise chickens in my backyard if society ever collapses to the level that it becomes necessary for survival. That said, this was a very interesting look into the work of competitive chicken breeding. Apparently, there is an official “American Standard of Perfection” for individual chicken breeds, and the winner of the yearly chicken competition gets the title “Super Grand Champion.” Not Grand Champion, Super Grand Champion! That looks impressive on a resume. It is interesting how chicken breeding is in some sense an elaborate Skinner Box – like you can deliberately set out to breed chickens with the desirable traits on the American Standard of Perfection, but until the chickens are hatched and grow up, you don’t know how they’re going to turn out, so you need to try again and again and again… Overall grade: A Next up is The Mask of Zoro, which came out in 1998. I saw this in the theatre when it came out 27 years ago, but that was 27 years ago, and I don’t have much of a memory of it, save that I liked it. So when I had the chance to watch it again, I did! Anthony Hopkins plays Diego de la Vega, who has the secret identity of Zorro in the final days before Mexico breaks away from the Spanish Empire. With Mexico on the verge of getting its independence, Diego decides to hang up his sword and mask and focus on his beloved wife and daughter. Unfortunately, the military governor Don Montero realizes Diego is Zorro, so has him arrested, kills his wife, and steals his baby daughter to raise as his own. Twenty years later, a bandit named Alejandro loses his brother and best friends to a brutal cavalry commander. It turns out that Montero is returning to California from Spain, and plans to seize control of California as an independent republic (which, of course, will be ruled by him). In the chaos, Diego escapes from prison and encounters a drunken Alejandro, and stops him from a futile attack upon the cavalry commander. He then proposes a pact – Diego will train Alejandro as the next Zorro, and together they can take vengeance upon the men who wronged them. This was a good movie. It was good to see that my taste in movies 27 years ago wasn’t terrible. It manages to cram an entire epic plot into only 2 hours and 20 minutes. In some ways it was like a throwback to a ‘40s movie but with modern (for the ‘90s) production values, and some very good swordfights. Overall grade: A

Next up is Wick is Pain, which came out in 2025. I’ve seen all four John Wick movies and enjoyed them thoroughly, though I’ve never gotten around to any of the spinoffs. Wick is Pain is a documentary about how John Wick went from a doomed indie movie with a $6.5 million hole in its budget to one of the most popular action series of the last few decades. Apparently Keanu Reeves made an offhand joke about how “Wick is pain” and that became the mantra of the cast and crew, because making an action movie that intense really was a painful experience. Definitely worth watching if you enjoyed the John Wick movies or moviemaking in general. Overall grade: A

The last movie I saw this summer was Game Night, which came out in 2016. It was a hilarious, if occasionally dark comedy action thriller. Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams play Max and Annie Davis, a married couple who are very competitive and enjoy playing games of all kinds. Jason has an unresolved conflict with his brother Brooks, and one night Brooks invites them over for game night, which Max resents. Halfway through the evening, Brooks is kidnapped, with Max and Annie assume is part of the game. However, Brooks really is involved in something shady. Hilarity ensues, and it’s up to Max and Annie to rescue Brooks and stay alive in the process. This was really funny, though a bit dark in places. That said, Max and Annie have a loving and supportive marriage, so it was nice to see something like that portrayed on the screen. Though this also leads to some hilarity, like when Annie accidentally shoots Max in the arm. No spoilers, but the punchline to that particular sequence was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Overall grade: A So no A+ movie this time around, but I still saw a bunch of solid movies I enjoyed.

One final note, I have to admit, I've really come to respect Adam Sandler as an entertainer, even if his movies and comedy are not always to my taste. He makes what he wants, makes a lot of money, ensures that his friends get paid, and then occasionally takes on a serious role in someone else's movie when he wants to flex some acting muscles. I am not surprised that nearly everyone who's in the original Happy Gilmore who was still alive wanted to come back for Happy Gilmore 2.

So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show enjoyable and perhaps a guide to some good movies to watch. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, I look at what goes into a successful theme park, and compare it to the process of creating a compelling story.

This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragontiarna series at my Payhip store:

FALLDRAGON25

The coupon code is valid through September 8, 2025 (please note the shorter expiration date). So if you need a new ebook this fall, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 266 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller and today is August 29th, 2025, and today we are considering if theme parks are like writing. Before we get into this topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week and then a progress update on my current writing projects.

This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragontiarna series at my Payhip store, and that coupon code is FALLDRAGON25. And as always, we'll have the coupon code and links in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is only valid through September 8, 2025. That's only one week, so if you want to use it, act now. And if you need a new ebook for fall, we have got you covered.

Now an update on my current writing projects. I am 63,000 words into Blade of Flames, the first book in my new epic fantasy Blades of Ruin series, and I think 63,000 words puts me about almost two thirds of the way through. I think the book will end up being between 90,000 and 100,000 words, so hopefully we are on track to have that out before the end of September. I'm also 5,000 words into Cloak of Worlds, which will be the 13th book in the Cloak Mage series. And if all goes well, I think that will probably be out in October, towards the end of October, maybe a Halloween book.

In audiobook news, recording is still underway for Shield of Power (that will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills); we're coming up on the end of that, so should have some good news on that before too much longer. Recording is underway for Ghost in the Siege, and that will be excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. So that is where I am at with my current writing and audiobook projects. Some good progress this week.

00:01:53 Main Topic: What Epic Universe Can Teach Us About Creating Memorable Characters

Now on to our main topic this week: are theme parks like writing and what theme parks can teach us about creating memorable characters and settings. I have to admit, this is an unusual topic for me because I am not really a theme park person. I have several family members who are interested in the history of Disney Corporation, so I've picked up some through osmosis, but that's essentially it. This topic was suggested by my podcast transcriptionist, and it was an interesting idea, so I thought we would go with it. I don't really know all that much about theme parks. As I mentioned, I'm not really in the target audience and I'm not in the sort of demographic where I would watch, for example, someone's four hour live stream through the latest Disney attraction or whatever.

Though I did watch the video that Jenny Nicholson put out last summer about her experience with the Star Wars “hotel”, and I think that was interesting as a piece of essentially documentary journalism depicting a tale of sort of corporate greed and cost cutting and how that can lead to inevitable failure. But that is a bit of a tangent from our main topic, which is whether or not writers can learn anything from theme parks.

I did pick up enough through osmosis from the history of Disney to know that in the early days before the Disney Corporation became as sort of corporatized and cost cutting as is now, that when they built a new attraction, the attraction had to be able to tell a story, like there was some sort of a story that needed to be told or an essential narrative that needed to be followed through the layout of the attraction so the guests, if they were paying attention, would be told a story.

So apparently the big news in the theme park universe this year is that Universal opened a new theme park called Universal Epic Universe in Florida in May 2025. The park is built on a central hub, which then divides out into five intellectual property based lands like Super Nintendo World with all of the Mario characters. What's interesting is that two of the five lands in the theme park are directly based on content that began as book series, the How to Train Your Island- Isle of Berk (which was originally written by Cressida Cowell) and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and the Ministry of Magic, which was originally written by J.K. Rowling. One other land, The Dark Universe, draws heavily on the Frankenstein story, which was originally written by Mary Shelley (among other creatures like Dracula, who as a character originated in Bram Stoker's novel in the 19th century).

Now, what does this have to do with writing? I mean, for most writers, the idea of becoming popular enough that people build theme parks based on your characters is probably a bit unrealistic as a career goal. However, I think there are lessons that can be learned there for writers about holding the interest and compelling readers. All three of the intellectual properties we discussed previously were more often known for their movie adaptations than the books they were originally based upon. But we can learn what makes memorable characters and settings in the book series and how a theme park would draw upon a beloved book series to generate ticket, merchandise, and food sales. I think it is both fair to say and a profound understatement that books, movies, and theme parks are wildly different kinds of art forms. However, the fundamental principles of storytelling, of world building do seem to apply across all three. So let's take a look at some of those principles.

Part I: Creating Fictional Worlds Memorably

People like distinct and creative worlds that make them feel immersed in something beyond mundane reality, even if that reality is not safe, easy, or pleasant. In all three stories that inspire these theme parks, the main character faces something that no one has before. Harry Potter readers can imagine that they're an owl delivery letter away from arriving at a new school full of friends, magic, and danger. How to Train Your Dragon lets readers soar through the air while rescuing a lovable dragon from a dark fate. Dragon riders are considered to be a special group of people in this world.

Frankenstein allows us to imagine a world where humans are powerful enough to have power over life and death itself, though in the grand tradition of science fiction and horror, this always goes horribly wrong. After all, creating an artificial life form did not end particularly well for Victor Frankenstein in the first book. And where this comes into theme parks is that readers want to find a way to be included in the fictional world.

In Harry Potter, readers can imagine which house they're sorted into based on personality traits. By choosing a house in the Hogwarts school or magic wands whose components reflect their personalities, they feel more included in the story because they know where they would belong in it. Many, many, many young adult series since then have tried to include some sort of factions or special lands or organizations in their stories for this reason, but it never seems to land quite as well as it did in the Harry Potter series. Though to be honest, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry seems like it would be immediately shut down if any sort of educational authority or ministry of education or department of education ever investigated it because it (laughs) is not a well-run school.

In How to Train Your Dragon, dangerous dragons are not only faced, they're befriended and protected. Something frightening becomes a chance to feel powerful and help others. And readers often enjoy reading about dark creatures or villains like Frankenstein's monster because it makes the real world seem more secure or stable by comparison or because they feel like misfits or outcasts and can sympathize with these characters.

Now, for writers, specific world building details often are very distinct things that readers remember, sometimes even more than the plot. For myself, that's worked advantageously with several of my different settings where some of the distinct details of the Cloak Games settings or the Half-Elven Thief settings stick in people's minds. For the examples we're talking about here, some readers might remember a biting textbook, a flying broomstick, or what's on the Hogwarts banquet table more than they remember the plots of the individual Harry Potter movies or books.

Now for the theme parks, Universal Studios capitalizes on this and makes money by creating merchandise and food items from those moments in the books, and they give visitors an opportunity to buy a nice cold glass of Butterbeer or a t-shirt from their Hogwarts house. And that feels more special than buying a pair of, for example, Mickey Mouse ears because they have a preexisting connection with Harry Potter, and though it's extremely unlikely that any of us will end up owning a theme park, as writers, don't be afraid of adding details like that, very specific details like that to the world building because it does help create a distinctive atmosphere and help the readers connect with the story.

Part II: Investing Audiences in Your Characters

Now onto part two, investing audiences in your characters. It's a good idea to find a way to make the readers root for your characters. Harry Potter and Toothless the dragon both begin as scrawny, unloved, and unimpressive, but they rise in the face of danger to become brave and important.

When characters team up in a structured way, such as Dumbledore's Army or the creation of the Berk Training Academy, it gives the readers a chance to imagine how they could join the main characters and be part of the group.

It's also important to remember a character doesn't have to be likable to be memorable, though obviously this often works better for villains. For example, Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter is a very memorable character, even though she's totally unsympathetic and unlikable because she represents a sort of bureaucratic, pettiness, and evil that we inevitably all have to deal with at some point in our lives, whether in school or dealing with various bureaucracies (whether government or corporate) as we get older.

Frankenstein's creature likewise isn't always likable, though he is sympathetic because he didn't ask to be created. His creator mistreated him. He tried to fit into human society and totally failed. So while he does many morally reprehensible things like for example, murdering Victor Frankenstein's bride to be, nonetheless he retains an element of sympathy because if he's a monster, it’s because Victor Frankenstein created him to be a monster. Even when his decisions aren't ideal or are quite bad, his loneliness and curiosity are still deeply relatable.

Part III: Adapting To Grow With Your Audience

Now, Part III, adapting to grow with your audience/adding new characters to an existing world or an interconnected series. Don't be afraid to age up your characters and change them across a series. In Harry Potter and How to Train Your Dragons, the characters age through series and face new and more complex challenges. Watching characters change is a great way to make them feel more lifelike and give them new complexities.

I was reminded of that very recently with the publication of Ghost in the Siege, where I believe that is the 34th novel with Caina as the main character. Obviously she has changed and grown quite a bit since that first book all those years ago and some part of the plot was Caina coming to terms with how much she's changed and how much she's changed as a result of what she's had to do to save people she cares about, which is kind of an interesting comparison to the fact that I found it a bit challenging to write the book just because Caina has changed so much from her original start in trying to find a way to write that while remaining true to the character. Given how well the book has been received (thanks, everyone!), I think I might have landed on the mark for that one.

If you want to continue in the world and write another series in the world, it's usually a good idea to include some carryover characters between the series. I've done that a lot with Frostborn, Sevenfold Sword, Dragontiarna, Dragonskull, and Shield War, where some characters continue over between the series. In the theme park, for example, in the Dark Universe, Dr. Victoria Frankenstein continues the work of her ancestor, Victor Frankenstein. That can also help to remind readers why they like the series so much by bringing back favorite characters. Returning to favorite locations in the series is a way to keep fans engaged, as long as it makes sense or fits the story.

Give your books emotionally satisfying, not necessarily happy conclusions. Give them a chance to say goodbye to characters in places they've come to care about. Remember, the ending doesn't have to be happy. It doesn't have to be sad. It can be a bit of both. But what is important above all else is that the ending provides emotional resolution to the emotional conflicts and stakes raised within the story. Anything else and the readers will feel cheated.

And now the conclusion. Fortunately, your readers won't have to wait in line for two hours to experience your characters the way that Epic Universe visitors must. But it's a testament to strong writing that people are willing to pay very large sums of money to do that, especially in Florida where the heat and the extreme humidity are constant, especially in summer. It's proof that well-developed settings, memorable characters, and immersive plots are important to readers and go a long way.

Although you and I will probably not ever be theme park owners and I do not plan to ever go to Florida and go to Epic Universe, you can learn from how they build and maintain the relationship between their intellectual properties and their paying guests. Remember that you want compelling characters, a good story, and a satisfying conclusion. So that is it for this week.

Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In the much-delayed final episode of our series on mindset for writers, we take a look at when writers should change course, and talk about the importance of mental flexibility.

This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store:

AUGUSTFROST

The coupon code is valid through September 8, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 265 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August 22nd, 2025, and today we are considering when a writer should change course. This is a new episode. It's the third and final one in the mindset series that I had hoped to finish in June, but it was a very busy summer, and so I ran quite a few reruns of old episodes over the summer, but today I have time to record a full length episode, so we're going to do that and wrap up this series on mindset that we've been doing this summer. We will also do Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing and audiobook projects.

First up is Coupon of the Week and this week's coupon will get you 25% off ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store, and that code is AUGUSTFROST. As always, the coupon code and the store links will be available in the show notes for this episode, and this coupon code will be valid through September 8th, 2025. So if you need a new ebook to read as we wrap up summer and head into fall, we have got you covered.

Now let's do an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report to that Ghost in the Siege, the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series, is out. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. And with that, my Super Summer of Finishing Things is finally complete because I have finished the Shield War series, the Stealth and Spells trilogy, and now the Ghost Armor series.

So now that those three series are done, what is next? Right now my main project is Blade of Flames, the first book in a new epic fantasy series that will be set in the Kingdom of Owyllain from my Sevenfold Sword series and I am 29,000 words into that.

My secondary project right now is Cloak of Worlds, the 13th book in the Cloak Mage series, and I am 1,000 words into that. So hopefully we will have Blade of Flames come out towards the end of September and Cloak of Worlds come out towards the end of October, if all goes well. So my plan now that I have only three unfinished series is that the Blades of Ruin series (of which Blade Flames is the first one) will be my flagship series, and I'll do one of those every other month and then the month in between I will alternate between writing a Cloak Mage book and a Half-Elven Thief book.

I will continue that schedule until one of those series is completed and then I will start a new one because what I learned through 2024 and the first two thirds here of 2025 is that having five unfinished series at the same time is too many. It's hard to keep up in my head and it makes for a really long wait for the readers between the individual entries in the series. So I'm going to stick to just three from now on and as I said, I'll have a flagship series and then two that I will alternate back and forth between in the months between the releases for the flagship series. So that is probably what I'll be doing for the rest of 2025 and hopefully most of 2026, if all goes well. In audiobook news, recording is underway for Shield of Power, which will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills. I've been listening to some chapters from that. Work has just started by Hollis McCarthy on recording Ghost in the Siege, so that will hopefully be an audiobook before too much longer. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects.

00:03:29 Main Topic: Mindset Series: Changing Course

And now to our main topic, the final episode in our mindset series and we talk about changing course. In previous episodes on this topic, I've talked about some of the practical ways to help with distractions, procrastinating, and managing time wasters. In this episode, I'm going to focus on things that derail writers from a mindset perspective. Today we're going to wrap up this series by talking about mental flexibility, knowing when to change course, and how to make those types of decisions without spiraling out. First, we'll discuss a few reasons why mental flexibility is an important attribute to possess and then provide you with five examples of times it has been important for me in my writing career.

First, why is having mental flexibility and the ability to change course important? With how fast things change in publishing, you have to be willing to change strategies or discard a strategy that's not working for you. An example is that many people who are familiar with Amazon ads swear by using Amazon keyword ads. After much experimentation, I concluded they weren't very helpful for fiction. The reason for that is I found that for most books that are sold off Amazon, people will sit down and type, for example, “Brandon Sanderson latest book” or “J.D. Robb latest book” or “Stephen King latest book” and so on. If you bid high enough, you can get top of search for those where if you pay $2 a click or $2 for the bid and someone types in “Stephen King latest book”, you can get your book to appear at the top of the page with the ad. However, in practice, what actually happens is the person who sat down to look for “Stephen King latest book” isn't looking for your book, he's looking for Stephen King's latest book. So he or she will simply scroll past the ad result with your book and then click on Stephen King's book.

The only way I found that keyword advertising works for fiction is if you write towards very specific tropes and are willing to pay a lot of money for those clicks. For example, you write a romance that's a “slow burn, no spice, enemies to lovers romance”, and there are people who search for exactly those tropes, and if you use keyword ads to bid for that, you could get it, but it's very expensive and it's very difficult to turn a profit. Because of my experiments with this, I saw that although many people say keyword ads are essential, I didn't cling to that piece of advice and switched my Amazon ad focus to having a few more category ads and Audible ads for each title, and that has been pretty nearly profitable most of the time, certainly more profitable than just relying on keyword ads would be.

I should note the one exception for that would be that keywords ads do work very well for nonfiction where, for example, my Linux Command Line book, I can pretty easily run ads to it for search terms like “Linux Command Line” or “Linux Command Prompt.” And because people are looking for a nonfiction book on that topic without looking for a specific author, that can work. In keyword ads, I found that for fiction, people are looking for a specific author and want that specific author, whereas for nonfiction, they're looking for the topic and don't care so much about the author, so long as the book has good reviews and looks like the author knows what he or she is talking about.

Another reason to be mentally flexible is that something new might actually make things easier for you. I used to work in IT support, and so I fairly often encountered someone who stubbornly clings to the way they learn something. I knew numerous people who memorized a specific way to do a task on their computer and then just stuck to that and avoided doing anything easier, such as, for example, not learning to use keyboard shortcuts. And as you know, if you do a lot of office work, learning keyboard shortcuts like Control + C for copy, Control + V for paste, or Control + Z to undo can save you a whole lot of time over compared to very laboriously clicking through the menus with your mouse. People like that very frequently resist a learning curve in favor of a slower approach because it's working for them, but then they lose out on a faster and easier way to do something. Change is not always good, but sometimes change can be good.

And the thing about indie publishing is that change is constant. In a field where change is constant like indie publishing, you can't cling to something that first worked when you started out. Trying new software, learning new skills, and keeping up with changes in ebook platforms is something self-published writers must do. Another reason to retain mental flexibility is you might be missing out on a source of revenue. If you're not willing to change sales strategies when the market changes, you might be missing out on potential readers.

For example, as people are tightening their budgets in these times of economic uncertainty, they might be less likely to buy individual books and focus their book spending on a subscription like Kindle Unlimited or Kobo Plus. If you don't have content on those platforms for readers, you're missing out on readers who have shifted their spending. For myself, I only have some of my books on Kindle Unlimited because of the exclusivity requirement, but everything I have on Kobo should be available through Kobo Plus, and typically on any given month on Kobo, at least 60% of my revenue tends to come from Kobo Plus instead of Kobo direct book sales. So that was a place where it was necessary to have the mental flexibility to make a pivot.

Another good reason to be mentally flexible is that you might be missing out on something important that the data is showing you. One of the big advantages of being self-published is having access to complex and real-time data instead of having to wait for biannual royalty statements that don't provide information. There are some criticisms that can be leveled at Amazon for how much data they show authors. However, this is light years ahead of the kind of sales data that comes out of traditional publishing for writers where royalty statements were often quite arcane and difficult to understand by design, so the publishers could get away with paying the authors as little as possible. And because you have access to this data, you have basis for solid information, solid decision-making.

For example, if one of my series is starting very strong in the UK in its first week of release, I can shift some of my ad spending to UK specific ads. Looking at sales and ad data gives you an opportunity to respond and change your approach. And sales data, even more than reviews, tells you if a book, series, or genre is working for you or if it's time to try something new. It's important not to fall prey to what's called the sunk cost fallacy, where you throw even more time and money on something that isn't profitable in hope of recouping the money that you've already spent. Sometimes it's wise to know when to cut your losses and run. It's probably a better use of your time to focus on the next book or series. Data can tell you which book or series that readers are most excited to see from you.

Now that we've talked about the various good reasons that mental flexibility is important, I thought it'd be helpful to show you five times that I've had to use mental flexibility and change course over the course of my career as a writer.

#1: Self-publishing. For all that I’ve been a proponent of self-publishing for the last 14 years, that wasn't always the case. I started out with the goal in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s of being traditionally published. Demonsouled actually was traditionally published along with some short stories. However, for a variety of reasons that I've talked about before, this turned out to be a dead end. Traditional publishing at that time was not interested in fantasy series like mine. I felt like traditional publishing was a dead end, and then I changed my efforts to blogging on computer-based topics. I'm still quite proud of the fact that in 2010, I made a good bit of money from Google Ad Sense off my tech blog, a feat which was difficult then and would probably be impossible now.

Then I started to hear about self-publishing through Amazon, which at the time was a very new phenomenon. I started hearing about that in 2009/2010, thereabouts, and I initially wasn't very impressed and I wasn't very impressed with the idea of ebooks altogether. At the time, I had a huge collection of paper books and well, I don't have as many now. I still do have a fair bit of paper books, but at the time, I didn't think that ebooks could be a substitute for traditional paper books.

Then at the end of 2010, in fact, the week after Thanksgiving, I bought my first Kindle, a third generation Kindle that was famously called the Kindle Keyboard because they had that little keyboard at the bottom, and I was very impressed with the device. I thought there has got to be a way to make money off this. As I started reading various writers groups, I came across Kindle Direct Publishing, and finally in April of 2011, I decided to give it a go and republished Demonsouled through it, and that's where it all began for me.

#2: Learning new skills and adapting. I think one of the biggest parts of why I've been fortunate enough to be able to do this for as long as I have is the willingness to take the time and effort to learn or try something new. I've had to teach myself how to format ebooks in several different programs, how to start first the LLC and then a S Corp, which finally involved realizing I couldn't do it myself and hiring people familiar with the appropriate documentation to do it for me, how to hire narrators and proof audio, how to file 1099s for narrators (that was a whole experience, lemme tell you), how to create a direct sales platform on Payhip, how to create my own book covers in Photoshop, how to make various 3D images myself for those book covers, how to maintain and update my website, how to do Amazon ads, how to do BookBub ads, how to do Facebook ads.

So in the past 14 years I've been doing this, I think it's fair to say I've acquired quite a few new skills along the way. Each time I weighed out if not having this skill was holding me back. For example, creating my own covers became an absolute necessity for me after a while because even the most experienced cover designers could not create covers at the pace I published. Well, they could, but it's more accurate to say that the cover designers, the really good cover designers, the ones I wanted to hire, worked so far out in advance that you had to book them nine months to maybe a year in advance. And I eventually came to find that very rigid and constraining to my writing process. A couple of my books have titles that are totally unrelated to what the book is about, just because I had to pick the title like nine months, twelve months out in advance.

And while they were very good covers, I did find it a little bit constraining that I had to try and keep the book at least close to what the cover was. If I hadn't changed course and learned how to do it myself, it would've limited how many books I could publish in a year, and likely it would've cost me many thousands a year in lost revenue. Therefore, having the mental flexibility to learn new things is a major skill in self-publishing.

And the thing I'm contemplating learning right now is something with video, because short form video seems to be a good way that many authors are connecting with their readers and their audience. It’s just that I don't personally use short form video a lot, so I'm wondering if it'd be worth the effort to learn. I think it'd probably be worth the effort to learn, but I haven't decided on how to do that and need to do some more reading, which is another aspect of mental flexibility.

#3: Changing pricing strategies. Permafree pricing book for free on ebook platforms was not as common of a strategy when I first started self-publishing in 2011. I mean, people were doing it, but not as many as now. At the time (and to this day, in fact), many people were outraged that thought of giving out an ebook for free and opine that it would devalue their work. The argument was that if you take a year to write a book and then people should at least be willing to pay as much as they would for, for example, a fancy Starbucks coffee. However, this overlooks the reality of economics where that something is only as valuable as people are willing to pay for it. And that in fact is, a good way to get people to pay for your remaining books is if they read the first one for free and then they like it enough that suddenly the remainder of the books in the series will have value for them and hopefully they will buy it.

But back in 2011, I decided to give permafree a try because I had series instead of standalones, and it has been one of the most significant ways that people have found my work. If I listened to the sort of old school traditional thinking about pricing ebooks, I would've missed out on this opportunity.

#4: Doubling down on audio. At one point, towards the end of, actually towards the middle of 2023, I was considering and had almost decided to give up on producing my own audiobooks due to the significant expense and how much time having to proof them was taking away from my writing. Instead, I thought about ways to make the workload easier. I hired someone to proof the audiobooks for me and then found ways to promote them through deals on platforms like BookBub and Chirp. I started to create more Amazon ads for them and focus on making audiobook anthologies because these are very attractive to people trying to get the most out of their Audible credit each month. Although it's still mainly a tax deduction for me at this point in terms of business value, I would've lost out on a growing revenue source and a big piece of the publishing market if I had given up on audiobooks.

#5: And fifth and finally, as I've talked about before, the Stealth and Spells series. This series really challenged me because I had a very specific plan for a multi-book series (I was thinking like seven or eight books originally) and enjoyed writing the first one. However, there were a few problems with it that forced me to take a hard look at the series and change my original plans quite drastically. The series was originally called Sevenfold Sword Online, which confused fans of the original Sevenfold Sword series. I made the choice to change the title to Stealth and Spells Online to make the separation clearer, even though it's a pain to change titles, and that came with some confusion of its own. I also changed the covers to resemble some of the other LitRPG books because it was originally closer in look to some of my epic fantasy covers.

These changes did help, but I had to take a cold hard look at the data. Sales and ad data clearly showed that it was time to cut my losses and focus on more profitable series. So I changed my series plans to wrap everything up in the third and final book rather than a multi-book series as I had originally planned and based on reader reception to the third book, I think it went pretty well.

Ultimately, you can only plan so much as a writer, and you have to accept that those plans might need to change. One of the best gifts you can give yourself as a writer is the ability to be mentally flexible and not stick with plans, books, or attitudes that aren't working for you. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this mindset series and found it useful to your own situation.

So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pul Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes athttps://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, we take a look back at Episode 205, where I talk about finishing my SILENT ORDER science fiction series. I also provide an update on current writing and audiobook projects.

This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobooks in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store:

SUMMERAUDIO50

The coupon code is valid through September 1, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we’ve got you covered!

Last week's episode talked about finishing my STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE LitRPG trilogy, and in this week's episode we respond to some of the insightful reader comments the prevoius episode generated. We also discuss the mechanics of putting series numbers on book covers.

Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week!

This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store:

DRAGONSUMMER25

The coupon code is valid through August 25, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 262 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August 8, 2025, and today we are looking at reader comments on my LitRPG trilogy. We will also take a look at why sometimes books do not have the series order number on their front cover. Before we get into that, we'll have Coupon of the Week and then an update on my current writing progress.

First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is DRAGONSUMMER25. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through August 25th, 2025. So if you need a new ebook to read this summer, we have got you covered.

And now for a progress update on my current writing projects. I am 83,000 words into the rough draft of Ghost in the Siege, which is the sixth and final book in the Ghost Armor series. I think maybe one or two more good sessions and I will have the rough draft done and then I'll write a bonus short story that newsletter subscribers will get for free when the book comes out and then start editing. I'm also 9,000 words into Blade of Flames, which will be the first book in my new epic fantasy series after I finish Ghost in the Siege and my Super Summer of Finishing Things.

In audiobook news, Brad Wills is currently recording Shield of Power, so we should have some updates on that soon. In addition, the distribution problems I was having with Shield of Battle and Ghost in the Corruption should be cleared up. So all those books should be turning up on all the usual audiobook stores before too much longer. Before, they should have all been available on Audible, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, and Kobo, but they should be showing up on all the other available stores before too much longer now. And of course I should mention that those audiobooks are available on my Payhip store and you can get them anytime (regardless of distribution troubles). So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.

00:02:07 Question about Series Numbering

And now let's take a look at a question about series numbering. A librarian acquaintance recently asked (with no small exasperation), why can't the series number be in the book title, on the spine, and on the cover? Well, as with so many things, the answer boils down to “it depends”, specifically, it depends on the publisher and the author (but only if the author is indie).

For my books, they always have the series number on the cover. A random example- Orc Hoard, the fourth book in my Half-Elven Thief series, has plainly at the top of the cover “Half-Elven Thief Number Four”. Whether or not the series number will be on the cover depends on the publisher (or the writer, if the writer is indie).

For myself, since I make my own covers, it is a trivial amount of extra work to make sure the series number is also on the cover. A small publisher or an indie author hiring a cover designer has to specifically ask for the series number on the cover, and they don't always think to do that. In terms of the spine of the print edition, it depends whether or not it is included with cover design. Typically for a print book, you need to make a wraparound PDF cover or you can use the automated tools with a platform like KDP Print to create it.

The trouble is that space can be at a premium on a book spine and after you have the book title and the author name, there might not be adequate room left for the series number. For example, a title like Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest takes up a lot of real estate on the spine and combine that with the author name of Jonathan Moeller, and we really don't exactly have much space left to work with.

However, for ebooks, there's really no good reason for them not to be arranged in series order on the store because all the online platforms now have good series management tools, which is admittedly a relatively new development. For a long time Amazon and the other self-publishing platforms didn't have any series metadata management tools, so we had to take things into our own hands. That's why for a long time you'd see books with titles like Frostborn: The Iron Tower (Frostborn #5), because there was no other way in the metadata to indicate that the book was part of a series.

Obviously this was a problem. So eventually all the self-publishing platforms added series manager tools. So now it's fairly easy to add ebooks to a series, so on the storefront they should show up in the proper series order. But for tradpub print books, I expect traditional publishers are not terribly invested in providing series numbers on the spines of print books because it is a layer of from their perspective, unnecessary work with no return on investment.

Remember, most publishers are owned by big international conglomerates these days, and from the corporate owner's perspective, the publisher's existence boils down to a cell in a spreadsheet. So a series will only get new cover art (potentially numbers on the cover) if doing so might make “number go up” in that particular spreadsheet cell. A series is most likely to get numbers on its cover and its spine if it's one, finished and two, popular enough to be re-released with new covers.

So the “too long, didn't read” answer: it depends if the publisher or the indie author has the resources to add numbers to the cover.

00:05:01 Main Topic of the Week: Comments on my LitRPG Trilogy

Now onto our main topic this week, reader comments on my LitRPG trilogy. You might remember last week I did an episode and a blog post about the experience of finishing up my LitRPG trilogy and some of the misjudgments I made during the process and how I was grateful for the people who did enjoy it. And this inspired many interesting and insightful comments on the topic. So I thought I would read through some of the comments and share my own thoughts on them.

Our first comment is from LEJ who says: “The big problem with virtual reality type LitRPG books is that virtual reality fights have no real stakes or consequences, or if they do, they're being arbitrarily assigned. This makes them dull no matter how well the fight scene is written. The second problem is character. In epic fantasy, the party members are developed characters and the reader learns who they are through the “show, not tell” guideline of writing. The characters are a group of people who have come together to put their lives on the line to do the plot is about. In a virtual reality game book, the party members are fake personas playing a game. There's no way to be sure who they really are and they're not invested. In books and in real life, people who go through grave peril together often forge powerful friendships. A gaming group is a lousy stand in for an actual epic fantasy questing party because they're not facing actual danger together.”

That's an interesting comment and that was something I thought about during the outlining of Stealth and Spells, how essentially so much of the book is about a man sitting in a chair playing in a game, which is inherently not suspenseful. So that's why in Stealth and Spells, I designed it so that the game itself was dangerous and the reason the main character was playing the game so much was to try and find proof that the game was dangerous.

But I think LEJ makes a good larger point about how why LitRPGs with virtual reality MMORPGs aren't as popular as the other subgenres, just because the stakes are so low essentially when you're playing a game. I was playing Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord the other night and had a total party kill, but so what? Just spin out new characters and start the game again. But that doesn't make for a good narrative tension in the story.

Our next comment is from Justin who says: “There are some VR LitRPG books out, but they are a niche market. As LEJ noted (above), there's no real consequences and the character development is minimal. The successful ones (for measures of success) go heavy on humor. I like Stealth and Spells, but I like science fiction and had no problem with the premise. So another attempt at widening your audience has fallen flat. Sorry about that. The mystery market that you tried before is even worse now with AI pastiches flooding Kindle. You could try the superhero section, but there's lot of competition and the big boys have been stinking up that particular room, so I wouldn't recommend it. Well, at least you're a successful writer, able to apply your craft full time. That puts you in the top 1%. Getting any further requires either incredible luck or selling your soul. I look forward to Ghost in the Siege!”

Thanks, Justin. I'm glad you liked the Stealth and Spells trilogy. It is true that I'm very fortunate to be able to do what I do in terms of writing full-time. I should mention I'm not hugely worried about AI books partly because they're generally not very good and partly because you can't legally copyright them. Though we should mention that historically writers often have a difficult time when they try to change a genre. Even 150 years ago, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle decided he wanted to write a historical fiction instead of Sherlock Holmes, so he killed off Sherlock Holmes and wrote historical fiction, which didn't go hugely over well with the public, and eventually he succumbed both to popular demand and large sums of money to start writing Sherlock Holmes again.

Our next comment is from Joe who says: “I have never read a LitRPG book before. I read it because I enjoy your writing. I know I am in the minority, but it turned out to be my favorite series. Even though it shouldn't, it amazes me that Half-Elven Thief has done so much better. I guess I just dance to the beat of my own drummer.”

Well, I suppose everyone dances to the beat of their own drummer in the end. I do think it's important for writers to remember, especially long-term writers like myself, that every book you've written is somebody's favorite book regardless of your personal opinion about it. Like for example, I think in all honesty, Tower of Endless Worlds is one of my weaker series. I was trying to do something in terms of urban fantasy that I don't think I had the writing skills to do until I started writing Cloak Games fourteen years later. But there are several people for whom Tower of Endless Worlds is their favorite book of all the ones I've written. So it's good to always keep that in mind and not trash one's own work unnecessarily because you are then trashing somebody's favorite book, which is just impolite.

In terms of Half-Elven Thief doing better, I think that is because I really narrowed in better on the market for that than I did with Stealth and Spells. We've already talked about how Isekai, portal fantasy, progression fantasy, and System Apocalypse are much more popular genres than virtual reality LitRPG, but with Half-Elven Thief, I think I really narrowed into what the market wants and what my own particular skillset is for writing stories. So it worked pretty well. I'm very happy about that.

Our next comment is from Geoff, who said: “Just went through and finished it and I absolutely loved it. It's a shame it only ended up being three when you had plans for more, but you ended it really well and made it feel like it was always meant to be ended that way. Really love that big reveal at the end about Calliande and Ridmark.”

Thanks, Geoff. I'm very glad you liked the ending. I admit I thought really hard for a really long time about how to properly finish the series with just one book. I typically, as part of my exercise program, do an hour a day on the treadmill in the morning with variable rate cardio and I was thinking about Stealth and Spells a lot while I was doing that, so I'm very grateful that you appreciated the ending.

Our next comment is from Keith who says: “I'm so glad you finished the series. I have avidly read pretty much everything you published almost as soon as you publish it (except the Ghost series finally lost me a year or two ago), and I was starting to wonder if you're going to continue this series. I'm sure I enjoyed Stealth and Spells a bit more because of my own experience with MMORPG games as an adult, no less from 1997 to about 2012 and still dabbled now and then. It was very entertaining reading the series about a game set in Ridmark’s world that I've been so immersed in for the past few years. It's unfortunate that there won't be more Stealth and Spells to read, but I enjoyed the way the series ended as a trilogy, even though you say it was originally supposed to be more books.”

Thanks, Keith. I am glad you enjoyed the ending. I suppose one of my weaknesses as I set out to write this trilogy was that I've never actually seriously played MMORPG. It was just when things like World of Warcraft and its various successors and imitators became popular it was a time in my life when I was both pretty broke and pretty busy, so I couldn't afford to play an MMORPG and even if I could have afforded to play an MMORPG, I wouldn't have had the time to do so.

I think that lacking that experience may have been one of the reasons I had a bit of trouble sort of connecting the series to a wider market. That said, I have tried an MMORPG recently, Elder Scrolls Online. I enjoyed it, but the big problem with that, and the reason I didn't keep playing was that you can't pause it. I think it's fair to say that I'm a pretty busy guy and sometimes I need to pause the game right now and attend to things, but the inability to do that was just a huge deal breaker for me, so I just never really continued with it, though I did have fun with the parts I played and think it's a good game.

Randy says: “I still maintain it's a great SF series and a great setting, but it does have a great ending, even if the hero never gets an encrypted message from Wire again.”

Thanks, Randy. If I ever do return to this setting, it won't be as a LitRPG. It'll be just as a straight science fiction thriller adventure like Silent Order because while I don't particularly want to write another LitRPG series, I would like to write another science fiction series at some point. But as I've mentioned on earlier episodes, I've decided it's probably for the best to limit myself to three ongoing series at any one time, just for keeping the complexity level manageable. So once I finish one of my ongoing series (which currently would be Blades of Ruin, Half-Elven Thief, and Cloak Mage), then I might consider slotting a sci-fi one in as well.

Our next comment is from Mike who says: “Thank you for sharing your thoughts on it. I really enjoyed the series and I'm glad you finished it. I always find it frustrating when an author leaves the story unfinished, but I understand it's a tough balance. At the end of the day, writing needs to be sustainable and that often means the books have to be profitable. So thank you for seeing it through.”

Thanks Mike. I'm glad you enjoyed the ending. In terms of sustainability, Half-Elven Thief by itself across its entire lifetime has sold more than all three books of Stealth and Spells Online put together (which I am very grateful for). And the Half-Elven Thief series and the, let's see, three sequels for it I wrote in 2024 combined, did well enough to pay for my health insurance for that year, which is trust me, no small thing, for which I'm very grateful. But like I said before, I think Half-Elven Thief dialed into the market a bit better than I did with Stealth and Spells Online.

Our next comment comes from Alon who says. “If you try again, you can consider progression fantasy; it is somewhere between regular and LitRPG. The best ones are Dungeon Crawler Carl and Mother of Learning.”

Well, if you want to try some progression fantasy, there are some examples for you. I admit I've only read the first book of Dungeon Crawler Carl. I thought it was pretty good, if definitely a bit on the darker side.

William says: “I think LitRPG/Isekai literature and other media is best understood as a specific kind of fantasy in the literal sense that happens to use fantasy aesthetics because the people in Japan who started writing it all grew up playing Dragon Quest as kids do and still do. Yet the core of said fantasy has nothing to do with the cultural nostalgia that drives a fantasy genre we know and love, but instead reflects a desire for a non-complex world where everything follows easily understood and quantifiable rules, which the authors and the readers found in video games. Anyway, I enjoyed Stealth and Spells Online as a sci-fi thriller. It reminded me of the MMOPG subplot in Tad William’s Outland novels.”

Thanks, William. I'm glad you enjoyed the series. And I think that's a good point about the lack of ambiguity in some LitRPG, because Stealth and Spells has quite a bit of ambiguity to it at times, where the protagonist is trying to figure out if he can trust Hardcase19. He's trying to figure out who is controlling the Calliande NPC and he's trying to determine if he can trust that person or persons as well. So there's a lot of ambiguity in there that I think I probably picked up from how many mystery novels I enjoy and that might clash with the more popular tropes in LitRPG.

Jesse says: “I'm glad you gave us a proper ending and I enjoyed discovering the identity of the Calliande/Ridmark NPCs. Honestly, the bit I will miss is you taking cracks at yourself (“failed historian”, “author secure in the knowledge he would never have to visualize it”), which was hysterical. Well done, sir.”

Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed the series and like I said before, I really didn't want to leave it unfinished because for a variety of reasons, it is very bad in the fantasy genre to leave things unfinished.

Our next comment is from Jason who says: “Thank you for finishing the series. As you say, it was more of a science fiction thriller than a LitRPG. Nonetheless, I did enjoy it. LitRPGs have the roots in manga with their audience being teens and young adults who play video games and have kind of wish fulfillment of applying their game experience to a quasi-real world, usually like Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody (a very long web novel, pretty bad anime, ongoing light novels and manga), combined with the cheat/administrator system to break the world in the main character's favor. Often such stories include female characters who throw themselves at the male lead for no discernible reason to be met with obliviousness, terror, or indifference. Fortunately, as authors have gotten older and married their portrayals, male characters and love interests have become more mature as well. The herbivore (a male character with no interest in women) main character still shows up, but not as often.”

Thanks, Jason. I am glad you enjoyed the series and I was thinking about that to the extent that the basis that LitRPG has a strong basis in wish fulfillment and sort of retreating from reality. And I'm more interested in stories where the protagonist tends to actively protagonize and then engage with and grapple with reality. So maybe that was why I chose to write a VR based LitRPG instead of one of the other genres.

And our last comment is from Michael who says: “I'm saddened that it wasn't more popular, but your reasoning makes sense to me. I tried to get into LitRPG years ago when it first appeared, but struggled to find any of the stories interesting despite loving MMORPGs and games in general. It all seemed to be about the kind of dreams that a stereotypical 14-year-old boy might have- being able to hyperfocus on min/maxing statistics, being powerful, being able to forget about the prosaic real world, being a ruler of a village/kingdom, et cetera (oh, and having lots of attractive women adore you). In any case, thanks for finishing the series. I thought it went from strength to strength and Final Quest was really good.”

Thanks, Michael. I'm glad you enjoyed the books. And I have joked several times that maybe what I really needed to do to make Stealth and Spells Online popular was to add a harem of anime monster girls for the protagonist. But that ties into what we were talking about earlier where a lot of LitRPG is about sort of a flight from reality, which I should mention, there's nothing wrong with that in literature, but I'm more interested in writing the kind of stories where the protagonist has to grapple in some way with reality.

So that is all the comments we are going to talk about on the show. I'd like to thank everybody who first, read and enjoyed the Stealth and Spells Online books, and second, took the time to share their thoughts about it. It was a really interesting discussion, I thought. So thank you again for reading Stealth and Spells Online.

So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we'll see you all next week.

In this week's episode, I take a look back at the challenges of finishing my STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE LitRPG trilogy.

This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobooks in the Malison series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store:

MALISONSUMMER50

The coupon code is valid through August 18, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 262 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August 1, 2025, and today we are looking at how I finished my LitRPG trilogy at long last. Before we get into that, we will have Coupon of the Week, a progress update on my current writing and audiobook projects, and Question of the Week.

First up is Coupon of the Week. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobooks in the Malison series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: MALISONSUMMER50. And as always, we will include the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store in the show notes. And this coupon code is valid through August 18th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we have got you covered.

Now let's take a look at where I'm at with my current writing projects. As I mentioned in previous episodes, Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, the final book in the Stealth and Spells Online trilogy, is finished. You can get that at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. It is doing slightly better than the previous two in the trilogy, which makes it the bestselling book in the trilogy so far. So thank you all for that.

My next main project is Ghost in the Siege, which will be the sixth and final book in the Ghost Armor series. I am 53,000 words into that as of this recording, which puts me about halfway through, give or take. I'm also 6,000 words into Blade of Flames, which will be the first book in my new epic fantasy series that I will begin once Ghost in the Siege is out.

In audiobook news, Shield of Power--recording for it is underway. That will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills and hopefully that will be out in probably towards the end of September sometime, if all goes well.

00:01:49 Question of the Week

Now let's move on to Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question: what is your favorite book you've read in 2025 so far? No wrong answers, obviously. The inspiration for this question was that June 30th was the halfway point of the year, which naturally inspires both reflection and some mandatory bookkeeping.

Mary says: Witch Hat Atelier Volume 13 by Kamome Shirahama (which I probably mispronounced). After having read the rest of the series, of course.

Juana says: Hidden Nature by Nora Roberts.

Jonathan T. says: The Genesis Enigma: Why the Bible is Scientifically Accurate. This book is like my favorite nonfiction book so far of the year, while my favorite in the fiction category is likely Hardy Boys Casefiles: Dead On Target.

Roger says: Just finished the latest in the Magelands Series, The Lost Ascendant. Really good, but a long series-even longer than yours, Jonathan.

Gary says: It wasn't published in 2025 (I'm tragically behind the times) but Murtaugh by Christopher Paolini.

Lynda says: Sunset by Sharon Sala.

Denny says: Not sure if Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives: Wind and Truth counts. It was released in December of 2024, but it's the newest book I've read.

John K. says: My favorite book so far is by new indie author, J.L. Odom, By Blood By Salt. It's in line with apparently my favorite genre of MC called (I can’t tell if this is disparaging or not) “competency porn” where the main character is well, uber competent.

For myself, I think my favorite book of the year so far for 2025 would be The Icarus Coda by Timothy Zahn, which wraps up his excellent Icarus sci-fi mystery series after 25 years. So I definitely recommend you check out the Icarus series if you get a chance and if you're looking for other interesting things to read, apparently we have a few recommendations for you as well.

00:03:29 Main Topic: How I Finally Finished the Stealth and Spells Online Trilogy

Now let's move on to our main topic this week. How I finally finished the Stealth and Spells Online trilogy with the last book, Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest. I'm very grateful to everyone who read the trilogy and enjoyed it. All told, it took about 10 months to write Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, from September of 2024 to July 2025, when I finally published it. So that's a lot longer than it takes for me to usually write a book. So what took so long?

Well, a lot of things went wrong. Let's look back. Towards the end of 2022, I decided I wanted to try something a little different, so I settled on LitRPG, which seemed promising because it's pretty popular. For the story, I had an idea of a software developer who was fired from a virtual reality MMORPG once he realized it was dangerous and how he starts playing the game to uncover the proof he needs of the corporation's evil plans.

I also had why I thought would be a clever idea. The game would be based on my Frostborn books. Like, it’s set 700 years in the future and some interstellar scout discovered the Frostborn books on a wrecked colony ship, and then the evil corporation built the game around them. I decided the game would be called Sevenfold Sword Online, which meant it was the logical name for the series.

So I wrote Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation and published it in February of 2023. And alas, it didn't do particularly well. A couple of problems became immediately apparent.

First, and perhaps foremost, the title was causing confusion. People assumed it was connected to my Sevenfold Sword series and was in some way a sequel to that series, which it wasn't. Second, people were confused and wondered if the Ridmark Arban and Calliande Arban NPCs in the game were the actual characters from the Frostborn, Sevenfold Sword, and Dragontiarna books. They weren't. But in comedy, there's a saying that if you have to explain the joke you've already lost. I suppose a parallel conclusion would be that if you have to explain the characters are NPCs in the game world based on your books 700 years in the future, then the concept of the book is probably a bit too abstract.

Second, the book didn't really appeal to a majority of my regular readers who prefer epic fantasy from me. Case in point- when I published Half-Elven Thief in December 2023, in its first month it did 66% of what Stealth and Spells Online: Creation has done in the entire three and a half years it has been available, and I'm recording this on August 1st, 2025. So in its first month, Half-Elven Thief did two thirds of what Creation did the entire three and a half years it’s been published. In its lifetime, Half-Elven Thief has sold 250% more than Stealth and Spells Online: Creation, and it's been out for ten and a half fewer months than Creation. Clearly, the majority of my regular readers prefer epic fantasy over LitRPG.

Despite these setbacks, I continued onward and published Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling in February of 2024. It did slightly worse than Creation. So for the rest of 2024, I on and off tried a bunch of things to improve how the series fared. To avoid confusion, I changed the title from Sevenfold Sword Online to Stealth and Spells Online, which it currently is. I redid the cover art, I changed the description, all the usual things for improving a series, and none of it ever really worked. I could never quite turn a profit when advertising the book. During these experiments, I realized I had fundamentally misread the LitRPG market because the three most popular kinds of LitRPG are:

1. Portal fantasy, when the protagonist falls through a portal and ends up in another world that runs on MMORPG style rules for whatever reason.

2. Isekai. The character dies and is reborn in a world that runs on MMORPG style rules. You'll see this in books with titles like I Died and was Reborn as a Level One Healer, something like that.

3. System Apocalypse. The world ends and is recreated as a living MMORPG, usually overseen by an all powerful “game system” (hence the name). The system can be created by gods or incomprehensibly powerful space aliens and is often malevolent. Dungeon Crawler Carl, where Earth is destroyed and remade into an MMORPG system as part of a sadistic alien game show is probably the most well-known example of this particular subgenre.

The problem is that Stealth and Spells Online fits into none of these popular subgenres. I joke that I tried to write a LitRPG, but it ended up as a sci-fi thriller. I mean “software developer fighting sinister corporation’s evil plans” is a sci-fi cyberpunk story, not a LitRPG. So I was trying to tell a story ill-suited for that particular genre, like attempting to write a cozy contemporary mystery in the format of an epic Arthurian fantasy quest. Like that idea could potentially work, but it probably wouldn't. With that realization, I had three choices about how to proceed.

1. Leave Stealth and Spells Online unfinished and never speak of it again. 2. Unpublish Stealth and Spells Online and never speak of it again. 3. Find a way to finish Stealth and Spells Online in a satisfactory fashion with a single book because I didn't want to write a long series that sold poorly.

I disliked Options One and Two, partly for reasons of professional pride and partly because it's bad to get a reputation in the fantasy genre for leaving series unfinished. You don't want to leave readers hanging longer than is necessary. The tricky part for Option Three was I had originally planned Stealth and Spells Online to be like seven or eight books, and I was only two books into what I had outlined for the story.

An additional, potentially major real life problem was that the Stealth and Spells Online books sold badly enough to seriously tank book sales in the month they were released. Like both February 2023 and February 2024 were some of my weakest sales months in the past decade. So that meant I needed an outline for the final book that would discard all the planned subplots and focus entirely on the main plot. I also needed to write the book as a side project and not a main project because I knew it probably would not sell well. Ideally, it would come out in the same month as a much stronger seller like one of the Shield War books.

So in October of 2024, I started chipping away at what would become Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest at 500 words a day. I would write 250 words before going to the gym in the morning and then 250 more words after dinner.

During the normal workday, my main focus was on whatever book in the Shield War, Ghost Armor, Cloak Mage, and Half-Elven Thief series I was writing at the time. (As I've said before, having five unfinished series at the time is way too many, which is why I spent summer 2025 trying to get that number down.) But I did my 250 words in the morning and my 250 words after dinner almost every day. I just kept chipping away at it.

Finally, in July of 2025, I was very nearly to the end of the book. After I published Shield of Power, I decided I was far enough along to make Final Quest my main project. Turns out I actually was pretty far along, since I only needed to write 3,000 more words to finish the book. Two rounds of editing and some new scenes later (I added a bunch of stuff since I thought the original ending was incomplete) and I published the book in July of 2025.

It turned out reasonably well. People seemed to like the ending and find it satisfactory (at least those who read it). Final Quest sold slightly better than its predecessors. But to be honest, Shield of Power has generated sales in its first three days equal to what Final Quest did in its first two weeks.

So I'm grateful for everyone who read the trilogy or listened to the two audiobooks. I'm really grateful that you read it or listened to it and enjoyed it. But in all honesty, I'm glad to be done with the trilogy. I've always been kind of sad when I finished my other series, especially the big ones, but with Stealth and Spells Online, I'm just relieved to be done and that I don't have to think about it very much anymore.

It's easier to promote a finished trilogy than an unfinished series. Probably I'm going to make the first book free every three months, run some ads to it while it's free, and that will be that. I just signed up with C.J. McAllister a few days ago to do the audiobook version of Final Quest (and he did a very good job on the first two books in the trilogy), so eventually we'll probably have a Stealth and Spells Online: The Complete Trilogy audiobook, since audiobook bundles always do well and I expect a complete trilogy audiobook bundle would likewise do well.

Amusingly, I realized that to finish this book, I essentially followed my own advice that I've been giving for years. I always say on this podcast and my blog that you can finish a novel if you just keep chipping away at it and small efforts add up over time. Final Quest turned out to be about 117,000 words, and I mostly got there 500 words at a time.

Do I regret writing Stealth and Spells Online? No. But obviously if I had to do it all over again, I would definitely do some things differently.

Will I ever return to writing in the LitRPG genre? Probably not. I listed all the popular subgenres of LitRPG earlier, and while I don't have anything against any of those subgenres, I just don't have any particular interest in writing a story that revolves around those tropes.

For all that my books tend to be escapist, I always need to have at least a touchstone of reality in them so they make sense to me. Characters like Wire, Admiral Winterholt, and Alexander Maskell could definitely have their real-life (even contemporary) equivalents. LitRPG story tropes in general seem to be about a flight from reality. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but it's not something I'm really interested in writing.

I mean, I designed the Andomhaim setting in Frostborn around people who traveled from Sub-Roman Britain in the 500s A.D. to a world where magic is real, so that way I could make real-world historical references. I think if pressed, I could write a pretty good novel in the genres of epic fantasy, science fiction, mystery, thriller, and romance. But I'm not at all sure I could write a good book in the LitRPG subgenres I listed.

Honestly, maybe I'm just too old for it. I don't think I encountered an MMORPG for the first time until I was, I think 24 or 25 years old, and I've never actually seriously played one, so it definitely wasn't a formative experience for me the way it was for many LitRPG authors. In fact, if I'm remembering it right, my first serious encounter with an MMORPG was in fact at work when I got an IT support ticket about network throttling, complaining about how long a World of Warcraft update was taking to download.

So that is how I finally finished the Stealth and Spells Online trilogy. And once again, thank you to everyone who read and listened to these Stealth and Spells Online trilogy. I hope you found it enjoyable.

So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, we have a preview of four of my audiobooks, each of which is the fourth in its respective series.

1.) Ghost in the Razor, narrated by Hollis McCarthy.

2.) Shield of Deception, narrated by Brad Wills.

3.) Orc-Hoard, narrated by Leanne Woodward.

4.) Ghost in the Storm, narrated by Hollis McCarthy.

This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Ashes, Book #3 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store:

ASHES50

The coupon code is valid through August 19, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we’ve got you covered!

In this week's episode, we take a look at how the meaning of words can shift and evolve over time, and the challenges and opportunities that can create for writers.

This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Malison series at my Payhip store:

MALISONJULY25

The coupon code is valid through August 12, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 260 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July 19, 2025, and today we are reflecting on how the meaning of words changes over time. We will also have Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing and audiobook projects, and Question of the Week.

So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Malison series at my Payhip store, and that is MALISONJULY25. And as always, both the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through August the 12th, 2025. So if you need a new series of ebooks to read for this summer, we have got you covered.

Now for an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report that Stealth and Spells Online: The Final Quest, the final book in the Stealth and Spells trilogy, is now out and you get it at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. People have read it, have liked it, so I'm pleased that people are enjoying the ending to the trilogy.

Now that that is out, my next major project will be Ghost in the Siege, the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series. I am 32,000 words into the rough draft, and I think it's going to be about 100,000 words, give or take. I am also 2,000 words into Blade of Flames, which will be the first book in my new epic fantasy Blades of Ruin series, which will be set in the realm of Owyllain about a hundred years after the end of The Shield War. So listen for more updates on that coming later as I work on it.

In audiobook news, both Ghost in the Corruption (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) and Shield of Battle (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) actually came out on the same day, so as of right now, you can get them at Audible, Apple, Amazon, Google Play, Kobo, and my Payhip store. There's usually a few more stores in the mix, but I've been having trouble with Findaway Audio and I'm looking into different audiobook distributors. So hopefully we will have some progress on that soon. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects.

00:02:07 Question of the Week

Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question, do you get food delivery? Do you ever have pizzas delivered or perhaps a sandwich from a place that does delivery, or do you use some of the various delivery services that have sprung up in the last 10 years like DoorDash, Grubhub, or Uber Eats? No wrong answers obviously, since everyone's circumstances are different.

The inspiration for this question was a massive online discussion I saw about the etiquette of tipping DoorDash drivers, and since I had never used DoorDash or a similar service, I realized it was yet another massive technological and cultural shift that I had that happened to miss me out. So I was curious about what people thought about it, and as you expect, we had a range of answers.

Perry says: No, and we haven't for years. We live too far away to make it worthwhile, even if we wanted to.

Sarah says: I do very rarely get cooked food delivery, and then almost always pizza for the kids when I feel really sick. However, as a Walmart Plus member, I routinely get grocery delivery. I'm pregnant and homeschool three of my four kids (the littlest is too young for formal schooling). It saves me so much time to only have to bring it in the house. The time savings is about 90 minutes on an average week. I sometimes do grocery pickup, which my husband grabs on the way home for an hour time savings, since it is on his way home, but since he works awful hours, it's simpler for me to get the groceries than for him to grab them after a twelve hour day. Of course, feeding six mouths (and usually my dad too for a seventh), we have multiple short runs to Walmart throughout the week for stuff we run out of or general merchandise needs for home maintenance, so we managed to hit lots of in-store time and sales that we would otherwise miss too.

Mary says: No, even for Chinese takeout, we would call in the order and pick it up, and I haven't done that for years.

Justin says: No food delivery for me, thanks. It's not available where I am, but even living in a college town, I always picked it up.

Norma says: I do have Italian food delivered because they have delivery in-house. Have never used a delivery company, but I just heard from my grandson that he's working for one while at university.

David says: Maybe once or twice a year I'll get delivery for pizza. Everything else is pickup or eaten at the restaurant. I'm not pressed for time, so having it delivered doesn't make sense.

Tracy says: I get pizza delivered from Papa John's.

John says: When I lived in Houston, I rarely got anything delivered since it was as fast to just go out and get it myself. Now I live way out in the woods. Nobody delivers that far out, so I usually have to go get it for myself. I usually prefer to cook for myself.

Michael says: Alas, I am far too fond of such services (as reflected by my Winnie the Pooh body shape). I live in the middle of the most densely urbanized city in the country, with the result that there are at least 40 takeaways and restaurants within a mile or so radius of my home. While I usually go out if getting takeaway, sometimes an Uber Eats or a Deliveroo is too tempting!

For myself, as you might've guessed when I said that I missed out on DoorDash and Uber Eats, the answer is no, I don't get food delivery. I think it might've been over 25 years since I last had a pizza delivery. I did occasionally when I was a teenager and in college. When I moved out into the adult world, I never did. The reasons were one, I was extremely broke, and two, at the time I lived near a university campus with all the attendant fast food places that surrounded it. So if I wanted fast food, I'd get a bunch of stuff within walking distance. If I wanted fast food on a workday, all I had to do is just go through the drive-through on my way home.

Anyway, as I got older, the habit of never ordering delivery solidified, which is probably just as well because services like DoorDash and Uber Eats look massively expensive, even before the social etiquette question of tipping arises. These days, if I want fast food or a pizza, I would go get it myself (or more likely persuade myself that I’d really be better off to stay at home and eat vegetables and lean protein).

Though it is interesting given the range of the responses, it's a good reminder that people's circumstances can vary wildly and something that would be a waste of time or money for one person might actually be very advantageous for another.

00:05:51 Word Meanings and Chivalry

And now onto our main topic. It is interesting to reflect how the meaning of words shifts over time and how a word can sometimes long outlast its original purpose and meaning. “Mile” is a good example, since it's originally derived from the distance covered by a Roman soldier marching a thousand steps. Nowadays, the usage of miles has nothing to do with marching Romans, and most of the world uses kilometers anyway, but the name remains, having long outlived its original meaning.

“Chivalry” is another good example. Nowadays, chivalry or chivalrous typically means a man acting in a deferential way to a woman- holding the door, pulling out a chair for her, taking her coat, standing when she approaches the table, et cetera that an individual woman will either find charming, annoying, patronizing, or perhaps some combination of the three depending on her particular disposition and her opinion of the man in question.

But that definition of the word chivalry is only a ghostly relic of what it used to mean.

Chivalry comes originally from the French word “chevalier”, which means “mounted warrior on horseback”, which was a French term for the medieval knight In the Middle Ages, the term chivalry both referred to the expected conduct of a knight and in a larger sense knighthood as an institution or perhaps the proper behavior expected of the knightly warrior class as a whole.

Medieval knighthood originated from essentially three sources. First, the practice of barbarian kings and chieftains, gathering a “comtitatus” around them, a group of chosen warriors who lived with him and were expected to die with him if necessary.

Two, the influence of the medieval Catholic church and three, how a combination of the stirrup, the lance, and heavy armor meant that cavalry dominated the battlefield for most of the Middle Ages. Number three meant that knighthood was usually available only to the wealthy. The knight fought on horseback and fighting on foot was for lesser men, peasants, serfs, and churls. Horse mounted combat was the knight's defining trait.

Horses were (and still are) very expensive and suitable armor and weapons were likewise expensive. Additionally, learning to ride a horse in battle while effectively wielding melee weapons was a difficult endeavor, which meant that the boys and men who did needed to make a full-time profession of it, which again, limited knighthood to those able to afford it.

A lot of what we think of as chivalric behavior evolved out of the medieval churches efforts to control and regulate knighthood.

Early medieval knights were essentially armed thugs employed by local warlords. The early history of feudalism in post-Roman Western Europe tends to boil down to “local warlordism” based around holding land, with centralized states only slowly developing. In the late 800s-900s A.D., the church advocated movements like the Peace of God, which tried to instruct knights and nobles not to kill or rob women, children, the elderly monks, nuns, priests, and other non-combatants and the Truce of God, which tried to unsuccessfully ban fighting on holy days and any possible holidays. The fact that the church felt the need to be that specific shows just how widespread that kind of local warfare was.

While many knights adopted the external forms of piety, movements like the Peace of God and the Truce of God did little to dissuade them from practical business of looting and seizing as much land as they could hold.

Evidence of this is found in the First Crusade and the subsequent crusades. One of the motivations for the First Crusade was to drain off a lot of the belligerent young knights out of Western Europe and send them off to fight “infidels” in the Holy Land instead of making trouble at home.

“Chivalry” as a code of conduct developed out of the combination of the fact that it was expensive to be a knight and the church's attempts to regulate it. That meant that knighthood saw itself as a distinct social class with standards of expected behavior. A knight was supposed to be pious. He should show no fear and charge to meet the enemy without hesitation. A knight fought on horseback (fighting on foot was for lesser men). A knight should be reverent towards the church and obey his lord unquestionably.

He also should show courtesy to women of noble rank. This did not apply to peasants and townswomen. He also should develop romantic love for an unattainable married woman (since marriage between nobles was usually for reasons of power and not love) and should use that unrequited love to spur him on to feats of valor. A knight should also be generous and open-handed to the poor and to his fellows.

Now, all of this sounds good, but in practice a lot of these virtues twisted around into vices. Fearlessness in battle turned into arrogance and delusions of invincibility. One of the reasons France did so badly for much of the Hundred Years’ War was because the French knights insisted on charging into battle at once to demonstrate their knightly valor and prowess, which let them get slaughtered en masse by English longbowmen. Additionally, readiness to fight evolved into fighting for any excuse at all, which frequently led to wars both ruinous and utterly pointless.

Knighthood’s class awareness often cause nobles to treat warfare as a chivalric adventure, which was not conducive to sound strategy leading to victory. Generally, the most successful medieval monarchs were those like Henry II of England, Edward I of England, Charles V of France, and Philip II Augustus of France, who did not allow knightly virtues to get in the way of hardheaded practical policy. Generosity turned into extravagant displays of public magnificence, which in turn meant attempting to squeeze more tax money out of the peasants and merchants. A knight's respect towards the church often meant giving large donations to have Masses set in perpetuity for his soul after a lifetime of plunder. And of course, knight might have unrequited Lancelot-style love for an unattainable, married noblewoman. But in practice, many knights had many, many illegitimate children, sometimes with their “unattainable” married noblewomen.

Moralistic writers in every century of the Middle Ages bemoan the laziness, greed, and luxurious living of their contemporary knights and frequently exhorted them to return to the heartier, more virtuous knights of the past years. Even the Middle Ages had the Nostalgia Filter.

As is so often the case with institutions that have outlived their useful utility, knighthood was never really reformed, but eventually became obsolete. By the end of the Hundred Years’ War, the French King maintained a professional standing army, which is far more useful than giving land to nobles and attempting to get knights out of them through feudal obligations. Other nations soon follow suit. Longbows and Crossbows heralded the weakness of armor, and then gave way to trained infantry soldiers equipped with firearms.

Horsemen remained an important part of warfare for centuries, since they were vital for scouting and attacking unprepared infantry formations. The American Civil War was the first truly industrial war, and yet the Civil War still had numerous significant cavalry battles, but the armored knights’ days as master of the battlefield were over, and while knights remained part of the upper class, knighthood gradually became a ceremonial honor that had nothing to do with its original purpose of mounted warfare. Recently, filmmaker Christopher Nolan became Sir Christopher Nolan, Knight Bachelor of the United Kingdom, for reasons entirely unrelated to wielding a lance on horseback while wearing heavy armor.

So as we can see, the word “chivalry” has a long, long history. So it is amusing to see how the last remnant of its original meaning in the modern era is to hold the door open for women.

It occurred to me as I wrote this out that the reason I’m a fantasy novelist and not a historian is that I thought “hmm, there’s the ideas for like twelve different books in all of this.” Which, I suppose, is perhaps the point. Chivalric knighthood was something of a myth even in its own time, but the myth inspired some great stories over the centuries.

So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. I a reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, we look at five ways writers can avoid the self-destructive mindset trap of "comparisonitis", and five ways that comparing oneself to other writers can be useful.

Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week!

This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Wolves, Book #2 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store:

WOLVES50

The coupon code is valid through August 5th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 259 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July 11th, 2025, and today we are looking at why comparing yourself to other writers is a bad idea. Before that, we will do Coupon of the Week and have an update on my current writing progress.

This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Wolves, Book #2 in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store, and that is WOLVES50. This coupon code is valid through August 5th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook to listen to during your travels this summer, we have got you covered.

Now let's have an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report that Shield of Power is 100% done, completing the Shield War series. You can get Shield of Power at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords and my own Payhip store. It's been selling briskly and it's gotten good reviews so far, so thank you very much to everyone who has bought and enjoyed the book.

Now that Shield of Power is done, the first third of my Super Summer of Finishing Things is complete. So what's next? My next main project is Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest. It was originally going to be named Reactant, but I changed the title to Final Quest to emphasize really and truly and definitively that this is the final book in the trilogy. In fact, I'm already done with the rough draft and I am done with the first phase of editing it as of this recording.

If you've been listening to the podcast for a long time, you know how I frequently say that if you keep chipping away the novel over a long enough time, sooner or later you'll finish it. That is exactly what happened here. Since October of 2024, I've been writing 500 words a day on Final Quest, and this piled up over time enough so that after Shield of Power came out, I only had 3,000 more words to write to finish Final Quest, and I did that in an afternoon. One more phase of editing on that and then I would like to have Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest out before July 22nd, if all goes well.

I'm also 21,000 words into Ghost in the Siege, which will be my main project once Final Quest is finished. Ghost in the Siege will be the sixth and final book in the Ghost Armor series and will hopefully cap off my Super Summer of Finishing Things.

In audiobook news, Shield of Battle (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is now out. You can get it at Audible, Amazon, Apple, and Google Play as of this recording. Because of some difficulties with Findaway Voices, it’s going to take a little bit longer to get into the other stores, but I'm working on a way to do that and as I mentioned before, Ghost in the Corruption (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy ) is done and just has to finish processing on the various stores, and so hopefully that should be out before too much longer. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects.

00:02:52 Main Topic: Comparison

Now let's move right on to our main topic, The Dangers of Comparison. In Episode 257, we started a series on mindset for writers. In some of the previous series I've talked about some of the practical ways to help with distractions, procrastination, and managing time wasters. In this series, we're going to focus on things that derail writers from a mindset perspective because as we know with any endeavor in life, mindset is something like three quarters of the battle where if you convince yourself that you're going to fail before you start, you're probably going to fail. So that's why it's important to have an appropriate mindset to the task at hand.

Today we're going to focus on comparing yourself to others, and I will share five reasons it's not a great idea to compare yourself to others aimlessly and how to shift your focus to five more constructive ways to compare your work to other authors.

Comparisons are a constant of the reading world. Librarians and Goodreads reviewers talk constantly about “readalikes” or finding books that have similar themes or settings. Book displays and shops and libraries love to group similar books or authors together. People look at the bestseller lists like they're sports scores. Dollar amounts in publishing deals are a constant source of gossip and jealousy. Sometimes comparison is useful, especially when creating ads or finding the right demographics to market to. Other times, it can lead to limiting or self-destructive thoughts. So let's start off with five reasons not to compare yourself to others.

#1: It can limit you creatively. It can be easy to look at the bestseller list and try to think of ways to write a similar book. Following publishing trends keeps you from your most creative work and frankly isn't as enjoyable to write and most likely for your readers to read. Also, unless you're a fast writer, the publishing world might have moved on by the time you finished that book.

In fact, I just saw a thread on social media about that where the commenter was bemoaning the fact that she used to enjoy what's now called cozy fantasy, but that as the genre has evolved, it's developed established tropes and the writers of it are not willing to variate from those tropes. So you have what she said in her words were dozens of clones of Lattes and Legends and Bookshops and Bone Dusts floating around, which is a tricky thread to balance, I do admit, because you want something that'll appeal to the reader, but then the readers like familiarity. What they really seem to like is familiarity presented to them in a way they've never seen before, which can be a challenge when you are trying to look at the bestseller list and limit yourself creatively.

#2: What other people are doing is out of your control. You can't control if a book you think isn't as good as yours is suddenly the runaway hit of the year or an author who isn't experienced as you suddenly gets a movie deal. You can't control their success, so don't worry about it or get upset by it. You can control if you're wasting time online mocking those people or complaining about it, for example. That's a waste of your time and energy and doesn't actually make you feel better in the long run (and possibly in the short run as well). I believe in psychology and in military theory for that matter, there’s something called the locus of control where you identify the things that you can control and then you drill in and focus in on the things you can control rather than worrying about the things you can't control.

As we said, if an author who wrote a book you don't think is very good or you don't personally like has had a massive amount of success, there's nothing you can do about that and worrying about it is a waste of time and comparing yourself to that writer is also a waste of time. So that's why it's a better idea to focus in on what you can control.

#3: You're not being fair to yourself. Comparing yourself to other authors, especially as an aspiring or new author, isn't being fair to yourself. They have years (if not decades) of experience that you don't have. It's like comparing yourself to an ultra-marathoner when you're someone who's just starting to jog and struggling to get all the way around the block, which is some of the tricky parts of someone like me giving advice to new writers because Shield of Power was my 163rd book and Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest will be my 164th.

I've been doing this for a long time, which means I probably know what I'm talking about, but that not everything I do is immediately reproducible by someone who hasn't been doing it as long as I have. If you're writing something that's not as marketable or in a smaller genre, it's not fair to compare yourself to people in the biggest genre or even your own previous work.

For example, I can't compare the amount one of my technical books earns to one of my fantasy books. If I did that, it’d be a disappointment. But in reality, my technical books have had steady success and have even been used as textbooks at times (which is always surprising when I discovered that's happened because my Windows Command Line book and my Linux Command Line book have both been used as textbooks at various times, which was a surprise to me because that's not what I expected when I set out to write them, but I'm glad that they've been able to be useful for people).

#4: And point number four, which I think is a really important one, someone's online life is only the highlight reel of someone's actual life. Looking at someone's social media accounts isn't a great way to know what they're actually doing or how they're actually doing. Just because they're posting pictures of tropical vacations, speaking at conferences, or showing off shiny new stuff doesn't mean you're seeing the full picture of how they're actually doing.

As I said in a recent episode that when I was applying for disability insurance (just in case I need it someday), I learned that writers are actually one of the hardest professions to insure due to their high rates of mental illness and substance abuse. You might see the good stuff, but they might not be posting the challenges that come with their success: increased stress and anxiety, more criticism, the need to hire people and how much time it takes to manage them, more complicated taxes, increased business expenses, and relationship problems from the demands of success. These are all things that can accompany success. You're not getting the whole picture. You need to keep that in mind when you compare yourself to people online.

The best fictional example out of this that applies to so many situations is Lord Denethor and the Palantir from Return of the King. If you read the book, Denethor has been using the Palantir for years to spy on Sauron and give advantages to his forces and the soldiers of Gondor. But Sauron is able to manipulate what Denethor sees in the Palantir and has been gradually using this to create an edited version of what Denethor sees in the Palantir, and that drives Denethor to despair and eventual suicide. People talk about the increased rates of mental illness related to social media. Sauron did that deliberately to Denethor through the Palantir.

It's a sign of how good J.R.R. Tolkien was a writer that he managed to anticipate the effects that Facebook would have on some people by like 60 years. So always bear that in mind when you're looking at someone online and feeling jealous of them. You are not getting the whole picture and there are more than likely things going on that are difficulties in their life that they just don't talk about.

#5: Your time is better spent writing than comparing yourself to other writers. And this is back to our old friend, the locus of control. Looking at other authors’ sales ranks and reviews is not a productive use of your time. As I mentioned in the writing adjacent activities series, you need to be purposeful in non-writing tasks that take up your time and make sure you're not pretending they're writing related. If you need to compare sales ranks or some other data point with other authors or something you're actively working on like ad targeting, schedule that time and don't let it turn into an Internet spiral of time wasting.

And now to avoid those Internet spirals of time wasting, here are five ways to use comparisons positively and constructively.

#1: Number one, getting keywords or demographics for marketing purposes. For sites like BookBub or when creating keyword ads, knowing authors who are similar to you is incredibly helpful and can help you structure your ads. And this doesn't even necessarily require you to read the other author's books to see if they actually compare. There are tools that let you expedite this process. For example, if you look on Amazon at the Also Boughts, you can scroll through some of that and see which other authors and which other books people have bought in addition to your own and then you can test using those for keyword targeting. On Goodreads, people put books in lists or compare books. You can use that data to generate keywords for ad targeting. You can test them very easily. With BookBub ads in particular, if you build a campaign around just a single author and keywords and test the results. You can quickly see whether a specific author generates an appropriate click-through rate for you to use or not.

#2: A second way is to find authors you might want to do a promo with. Some authors, especially in the romance genre, do really well with group promotions. Finding other authors that write similar books and are at a similar level of success may be a way to take advantage of that. I've never actually set up a group promo, but I have participated in several of them from time to time with pretty good results.

#3: A third way is to better understand reader preferences in a genre. My best story for this is I've gone through six different variations of cover design for the Silent Order series. When I started out, I was using GIMP and stock photo images. GIMP is the free Linux version of Photoshop essentially. After I learned Photoshop, I upgraded to characters on the covers, but they never quite sold quite as well until finally I saw a Penny Arcade comic where they were commenting how they just want to buy books where they have spaceships in close proximity to planets on the covers. And I thought, huh, that makes a lot of sense.

So I redesigned all the covers to have a spaceship in close proximity to a planet, and the series immediately started selling a fair bit better with those covers. I would say that was not so much a comparison thing, just a genre preference I stumbled across and then had sort of the moment of enlightenment that I did. But if I had looked at the bestseller list for various science fiction categories, I would have realized that most of the bestsellers had spaceships and planets in close proximity to each other on the cover.

So I redesigned all the covers. It was just that I was too fond of the character based covers to give them up until I had that moment of revelation. So all the main books in the series were redesigned to have the spaceship covers, though for the free short stories, I did keep the character covers just because I was giving away the free short stories and I did like the character covers, so I got to have my cake and eat it too, which was nice.

#4: Learn from the successes and failures of others. You can learn from what another author does well. For example, Brandon Sanderson is very good at communicating his writing progress and other updates to his fans through weekly video messages on YouTube. Other authors are good at collaborating with other authors, while others make engaging and funny videos that make people more interested in their work.

Knowing your own strengths is an important first step. If you're just trying to follow everyone who is a success without first reflecting on that, you'll chase too many options and then can't excel at any of them. You can also learn from when an author responds poorly and how the Internet reacts to it. Understandably, I’m not going to give specific examples here. For myself, I tend to focus on what I do best, which is writing really fast and doing social media updates. I never got into video because I kind of have a face for radio and I just don't enjoy doing video. I don't enjoy editing them. It's a lot of work that I don't really enjoy, so I don't do it.

#5: Being informed makes comparisons less emotional. Knowing, for example, that an author was hired to write a book based on an existing outline created by the publisher, and then promised a future book deal with a big marketing budget in a preferred genre as part of the contract makes their cross-genre success seem less surprising and makes you feel less guilty for not being able to do the same on your own as an indie author. It's not a fair comparison because they have advantages that you can't understand without some industry knowledge.

For people that compare themselves to me, for example, they should know that I've been writing since I was a teenager a very long time ago. I was an early adopter of self-publishing when it was less competitive and I usually work more than eight hours a day and I generally keep to a very rigid writing schedule. Some authors like me were able to get the rights back to their earlier published works and then self-publish them early on in order to finish a series, which is much less likely to be an option in a contract for a traditionally published author now.

If you're just starting out, travel frequently for work, and only have an hour a day to write (and even that is dicey because your partner would rather you spend that time on some other activity because they don't support your writing), you can't possibly compare your writing output to mine. Knowing all this about me explains why it might be harder for you and why you shouldn't feel bad about having a harder time with writing.

Comparison has been called “The Thief of Joy” all over social media for many years. That can definitely be true, but like so many things in life, how you respond to something and find ways to help it make you stronger is what really matters. Comparison has its place in the writing world, but it's important to keep it in perspective and not to let it overwhelm you emotionally or keep you from your writing goals or plans. So that is it for talking about comparison. I hope that was helpful and offered some useful tips on how to avoid the trap of comparison-itis.

So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's 4th of July episode, I take a look back at Episode 147 and try to figure out how many short stories I have actually written.

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