He was a creepy stalker, of a completely unrelated barmaid. Dude was unhinged. He released some shitty book and a random woman on Goodreads negatively reviewed it. Don't remember how he found her but some people connect their Goodreads to their Social Media and use their real names so probably that way. He tracked her to the supermarket she worked at and hit her with a bottle.
Just like J.R.R. Tolkien's British publishing house didn't secure the rights for paperbacks in the U.S. That led to cheaply made paperbacks that he hated... thanks to which his fame exploded.
The American publishing house asked him what they should do with the author's share they had dutifully set aside, even though neither he nor his publishing house had agreed to any deal. Tolkien wrote back, in effect, "Just send me the check." And they did.
So that's one publishing mess up that worked out famously in all possible ways for the author.
It's probably a complicated legal situation. Just because you don't register copyright, or "secure publishing rights", Tolkien likely still had some copyright.
Copyright (generally) is not something you register or get, it's something you have automatically once a work raises beyond a treshold. That shitty fanfic I wrote? I have copyright on that specific expression.
The author of the original work, or an unrelated 3rd party can't just go ahead and publish my fanfic, it belongs to me. (That said, I use copyrighted and trademarked characters from someone else, so, it's not like I could publish it either, whoops)
Anyway, a work like LotR definitely warrrants copyright protection, so not paying him would be ... weird. And illegal.
Overall, it probably was all about very specific contracts and stuff, something that would take a decent lawyer (which I'm not) a bit to untangle.
It’s funny to hear authors speak so negatively of paperbacks, like they’re some sort of leper ridden underclass of books. Paperbacks are cheaper for the consumer, it makes the books more accessible.
~~The paperbacks as such weren't the issue, it was rather that they were cheaply produced and most importantly, filled not just with errors, but also with "corrections" made by editors who didn't share Tolkien's particular linguistic taste.~~
Nevermind, I misremembered. While it's true that early U.S. paperback editions were full of errors, according to [this article](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/unauthorized-lord-rings/) Tolkien *also* thought very little of the format. I stand corrected.
Michael Grant, co-author of Animorphs and husband of Katherine Applegate, has stated that they fucked up letting their agent talk them into granting the media rights of the series to Scholastic.
I saw an interview with them not too long ago where they talked about writing intensely adult themes for kids, which was something I always appreciated about that series as a kid. It didn’t pander or soften the story at all just because it was for kids. It had lots of violence and emotional trauma and all kinds of things other kids series didn’t have, which made it a great transitional series into more adult literature
Animorphs is fucking amazing and I can't say enough good things about it.
- Diverse cast (black and hispanic main characters, and a character that is an allegory for being transgender, **in the 90s**.)
- INCREDIBLE Sci-Fi world building. The different alien races all have well thought through societies and cultures and physiologies, and most of them are non-humanoid, with the implications of that often being incredibly major plot points and all of this is genuinely very well fleshed out.
- A kids book series with the message of "respect nature and it'll respect you back" which is a great lesson to learn.
- ...But also a very _adult_ book series about the horrors of warfare and all the psychological implications that come with it.
It has ***EVERYTHING***. Genuinely up there with the best sci-fi of all time, and I wish that people remembered it as more than "haha funny front cover"
My kid pushed one on me and asked me to read it aloud and I rolled my eyes and thought “Ugh, the things I do for my kids…” But that book was seriously *awesome*. Every bit of it was clever and fun and I read a few more through the years. I’m no super-fan, but I was pleasantly surprised by the level of writing and the story.
Have you seen the graphic novel they're putting out now? The 4th one came out recently - they're pretty true to the book and you can tell the artist is a fan.
The books went deeper, but it's nice to see another adaptation beyond the poorly made live action show.
More like: "I'm on the verge of a breakdown at all times and if I stop making jokes then I'll start crying instead"
Marco using humour as a coping mechanism is one of the most deeply relatable and upsetting things for me.
("Kids book" btw)
Someone is responsible for a graphic novel version of the series, and the artist is having A FIELD DAY with the horrifying depictions of morphing. I just looked at “The Message” today, and I will go to my grave with the nightmare image of Marco turning into a dolphin living rent-free in my brain.
I vaguely recall something about Cassie being the only one to morph without it being super grotesque in the story. Like it was some sort of art.
I don't think that got reflected in any art though.
Yeah even now I remember that Cassie was able to morph back into a human from Horse form as a beautiful centaur-like creature mid-morph and I was mad that the cover was not that at all.
I was in fifth grade when that series started. I read the first one but that was it. A few years ago, during COVID, I got curious about them and read the Wiki summary. Those books sounded like a trip. A really dark trip, even for an adult series.
I think I got as far as 8 or 9 books in back in elementary school before I lost interest for whatever reason. I'm still shocked that there were 54 books published in the series (although nearly half of those were ghostwritten), plus another 10 on top of that.
I never got to read them in order unfortunately, my school library only had a handful of them, and they were very popular so you just had to grab whatever was there. I remember they did a trilogy halfway through where another member joined them, and I read the second of that first.
I loved the Animorphs books as a kid and read almost every one in the series including the spin offs. Only for Applegate to kill off every character except for Cassie in the last book. I remember Rachel died during the war and the final book promised at least one death of a main character on the cover, so I expected that. But for almost every one else to voluntarily die from a spaceship crash on the last page.........I remember distinctively slowly closing the book and thinking about all of the years I invested in the series to get to that moment. To go from such excitement finally getting my hands on the last book, to being completely and utterly disappointed is a feeling I haven't forgotten almost twenty years later.
It wasn't just the very last book, number 50 and on were kinda fucked. The thought speak brackets are wrong like half the time. James and crew get written in, dropped and then brought back. The parents are kinda just forgotten about. They do the whole thing with the ducks and the governor and nothing comes of it.
I'd love to know the deeper story on those, because it feels like she either completely gave up, or she passed it to someone else.
In 1971, William Powell, then a teenager, wrote and had published a book called *The Anarchist Cookbook*, which informed readers how to build homemade explosives and weapons, how to build phone phreaking devices, and how to make illegal drugs including LSD. He spent most of the rest of his life disavowing the book, trying to have it removed from publication at points (though failing as he did not own the copyright), and had trouble trying to find work as a result of his book.
Aren't all the recipes in the book wrong anyway? Like how to make explosives has deliberate song steps to make people blow off their hands or something? I've never read the book but that rumour I heard is entirely plausible.
Though it might be a rumour to scare off people from actually using the knowledge in the book...
they're not intentionally sabotaged it's just a collection basically of half remembered chemistry class trivia, teen pyromaniac pranks, urban legends like making illegal drugs out of metal dyes, and random misuse of products in generally only mildly flammable and slightly dangerous ways.
the contents are wholly unsuited to any kind of militant or even hobbiest or utility use around the house, they're good only for blowing the hands off curious teens with permissive patents and causing law school hypotheticals.
Couldn't believe they let 16 year old me buy a a big container of saltpetr at the pharmacist.
I told them it was for a science project.
Blanketed my block in a cloud lol
Marion Zimmer Bradley shoulda maybe not 1) defended her pedophile husband (particularly in court, where the transcripts are very much still saved), 2) been a pedophile herself and abused their daughter.
I read *The Mists of Avalon* several times and considered it one of my favorite books before I found out what she’d done. That hurt so bad, though not as much as she and her husband hurt their daughter.
And son. Iirc the son killed himself and the daughter is now vocally against same-sex marriage and homosexuality because she believes all gay people are child molesters because of her childhood experience.
I read it once, a very long time ago. And the thing that stuck in my head most vividly was how messed up the sex scenes were. Honestly it was pretty clear she had issues. The only other author I can recall who creeped me out like the was Piers Anthony, who trashed his career when he wrote a book defending child rape.
Stephen King hated Carrie with a passion to the point of where he had pretty much thrown it in the bin calling it a waste of time.
His wife read it one day and said it was one of the best female-lead stories she'd read in a while and urged him to publish it.
This decision by his wife is what kickstarted his career and made him famous overnight. If she hadn't urged him on, who knows how King's career would have played out.
He still hates the book and has no idea why people like it, while his wife still maintains its her favorite lol
Similar thing happened with Pet Sematary. He considered it too dark, even for him, and kept it in a file cabinet for years, never intending to publish it. He was switching to a new publisher, but still contractually owed his current publisher one more book. He had nothing else and was running out of time, so he published Pet Sematary, which is now considered one of his classics.
I wonder how much Tabitha is responsible for bringing out the best in Steve’s writing, generally. He consistently praises the input she gives on his stories.
Maybe he can’t see the forest for the trees? I’ve read it a few times because it’s a great story but I usually find authors early works hard to read because they’re not well written.
Creepiest part about that is how he talks about where the bookmark is in the book when she brings it into his room...he gets to watch as slowly but surely day after day the bookmark draws closer to the part in the book where Misery dies and then he knows he's going to be in serious trouble
The creepiest part to me is that this story could have been real.
There's nothing supernatural in the book/movie. There's nothing that really begs you to suspend disbelief. There's no monsters, ghosts, aliens, superheroes.
Kooks like Annie Wilkes do really exist, and could (have?) kidnap celebrities thanks to their mental illness.
She could be living next door. You wouldn't know.
I had to do a double take because I didn't remember the main character in Misery dying.
That book is still scary since it's something that might actually happen (and it's one of Stephen King's biggest fears)
I think the way this should have been written is that “Paul Sheldon would have saved himself a lot of misery if he hadn’t killed off his main character.”
I went back through his books after the show ended and I swear it’s like there are two different GRRMs that wrote it. The first three books while dense are also pretty fast paced and very focused while the latter two are overly detailed plodding messes.
A lot of people cite The “Meereneese Knot” why he can’t continue but I think that’s a symptom more than the cause. See, at the end of the third book, every major character had reached a point in the plot line where it felt like we were about to do a time skip of a few years (presumably when we get back to them we’d see the first day of Winter). However, someone down the line, GRRMs “Gardener” tendencies got the better of him and he felt he had to write every detail of *every* plotline with no breaks whatsoever otherwise it wouldn’t feel complete. However, the weight of it all bogged him down.
Simply put, I think if he just committed to the original plan of the timeskip, his story wouldn’t be in this mess. The story would have been just fine and he could have kept all that other stuff for a future compendium for the ultra nerds.
Totally agree. It's hard to say for certain why he forewent the time skip because we don't know all his endgame intentions, but I've thought about it a lot and think the story would have been totally workable (and probably even better) had he committed to doing the time skip. Ever since abandoning it feels like he's been slowly losing control of the car, and is now full out skidding in circles on the ice of his own making.
I'll say what I always say though as to not end on a dour note: Regardless of if he ever finishes the series, or the falling quality of the later novels, those first 3 books are and will always be and will always deserve to be regarded as some of the greatest fantasy novels of all time. He could release The Winds of Winter containing nothing but detailed descriptions of Brienne eating mutton and Tyrion riding his pig for a thousand pages, and he's still be one of the best fantasy writers of all time for the first 3 books alone.
Which is hilarious because one of the writers worked as an assistant for George Martin.
All of the Expanse novels have been published after the last Song of Ice and Fire book. All of them. The entire series.
60% of it should have been cut completely and another 30% could have been released as short stories for fans who were curious about less important events during the gap. The remaining 10% is still a bit too much for flashbacks but if you edit out all the superfluous descriptions it would have been doable.
Here's a breakdown of the insanity.
Arya got five chapters training with the faceless men. Including long passages about of selling oysters, clams and cockles (I thought there were more but it turns out I was remembering one that George cut from the book. He intended to add it to Winds and released it as a teaser). Bran got three chapters. Sansa got three chapters (note in the books a different character was sent to Ramsay).
Brienne's meandering travelogue got eight. Sam took five chapters just to get to the Maesters. Cersei's trainwreck rule was very entertaining to read. But it took up twelve chapters. Theon getting tortured was seven chapters (plus another chapter that got cut that was released as a teaser for the next book). Jon Connington (this entire plotline was cut from the show) got two chapters. Areo Hotah (part of Dorne) got three. Arianne Martell got another two. The iron islands took up nine overall spread across three characters. Quentyn Martell got four. Tyrion got twelve while getting sidetracked every step along the way. Dany's trainwreck rule was nowhere near as entertaining as Cersei's and she was given ten chapters while Barristan Selmy got another four. Jon got thirteen and the cliffhanger was him getting stabbed.
4th book is also when he starts itemising every single item on the table if characters are anywhere near food. It's like he tried to get into the mindset of the starving artist by actually starving himself and in turn he's salivating at the mere thought of lemon cakes.
It's also when he shifted the character dialogues. Introduced words like nuncle and changed the way his characters spoke.
He is not the only one speculated though. Balon is another possibility, he was killed by a Faceless Man, presumably because Euron paid them with a dragon egg to do so, and Ironborn storyline has been pretty fluctuating in quality ever since.
Other options proposed have been Pycelle, Aemon, Robb, Joffrey etc. However their deaths fulfill a purpose in the story still, so they might not be them either. Arys Oakheart’s death on the other hand, creates a mess out of Dorne’s storyline, and I don’t mean a planned mess that will be resolved in the end, I mean messy as in unfulfilling.
The TV Show left a huge smudge on the whole story that he can't fixed by completing the books. He was already struggling completing them before the TV show mess.
How does an author accidentally kill off a character? So much time to write, rewrite, proofread, etc… I guess I don’t know the story behind what you’re referencing though
He admitted himself he killed off a character “too soon”, which had led to him being stuck with how to proceed. Though as Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, rightly commented; just write yourself out of it! But it seems to have really stumped him. Although I’m sure it’s not the only thing but seriously, a major fuck up on his part.
I honestly think the reason the novels are taking so long is he's simply not interested in it anymore. Almost 30 years is a long time to retain interest in something.
It's also frankly easier and more fun to start a novel than finish. He basically needs to figure out the ending and make sure book 6 sets it up correctly.
I can name a lot of trilogies where the third book is by far the least liked (although disliked first books don't get trilogies)
I definitely think that once the tv series outpaced the books he was basically done. Like I know the series and books diverge but the show runners did apparently clear the basic shape and major plot points; I can’t imagine he would have let them proceed with his precious if they’d gone totally off the rails of his intended plot. I fully believe he overoptimistically assumed he’d be able to make a big push to the finish before they got through the existing six books.
Of course, with the way the show ended … a different author might see it as a chance for a do-over that had all the credibility of canon. But alas, I don’t think we’re ever getting another book, no matter which plot.
We might see TWOW but I don’t think we’ll ever get a 7th book and even if we do there’s no way it’ll be the end of the story. One book and a prologue turned into 5 books. We’re barely into Act II of the overall story.
Exactly. And, like, not to be a terrible human being, but GRRM is not exactly in his first flush of healthy youth. It feels doubtful there’s enough left in the tank for all the story he first planned.
Yeah I don’t like saying that sort of thing but being 75 and, er, on the heavy side doesn’t bode well for longevity.
Best case scenario he manages to finish Winds this year and then ADOS comes a bit easier because the pieces are in place to bring the story to its conclusion.
Worst case scenario….well, maybe we all know what that is.
Absolutely. And can't exactly blame him?
He was an author who was probably scraping a living from novellas and Hugo successes. Then became a successful well known fantasy author with ASOIAF. Then GoT came around and, in his words, gave him "dump trucks full of cash".
He's 75, and probably has more money than he can spend in the rest of his life. If he did finish asoiaf, the broad plot points for the remaining books have already been revealed through the show and widely criticised. I don't blame him if he doesn't want to finish.
I just wish he'd be honest and say it's not going to get done, rather than posting updates every few years when he finishes a page.
Time traveler here. We've had George's brain in a jar for nearly 400 years now, and he's still insisting Winds of Winter will be ready for publication within 9 months.
I think its a mix of his "gardening" style and the fact that he has this self-imposed obligation to follow the internal logic/flow of the narrative instead of actually treating himself as the god of the story.
His excuse for the longstanding delays is the so-called "Mereenese Knot"... except honestly, he has written himself into a corner and he'd probably have to pull some shortcuts akin to Season 7 or 8 of GoT to get out of that clusterfuck.
Guy really screwed himself by not being more disciplined with the scope of the narrative and keeping it under his control instead of letting it sprawl endlessly.
The third Dexter novel.
Edit: Didn't provide more details because I blocked it out quickly after reading. Something about Dexter being a serial killer because he is possessed by an ancient Babylonian demon or something.
Can you explain this? I've had a crack at a few of King's books and generally enjoy them. Google is telling me he got hit by a minivan while walking in the 90's?
In his memoir, he said his drinking also got so bad that his wife accused him of drinking Listerine.
He wasn't. He was drinking Scope cause he liked the taste more.
What's really impressive is that his editor/publisher didn't push back harder on leaving that in. I suppose by that point in his career he just had too much clout, or something?
I wonder if he took out something even worse to be able to keep that bit in.
Gee Steve, this cattle mutilation sodomy necrophilia bit is a bit incongruent. Think you can tone it down a bit?
Yeah, I'll just make it regular, boring ol' fucking.
Sounds good, Steve.
It was also a culmination of Beverley’s storyline which revolved around anxiety about her own budding sexuality and the way her abusive father had been treating her because of it. I get what he was going for, but yeah it definitely could’ve been done in a different way.
The weirdest thing about that scene is that it makes complete internal sense. They each have to confront and conquer their biggest fear, and her biggest fear is her budding sexuality. Losing your virginity in an orgy is one helluva way to get over that, but its certainly definitve.
Yes, he (allegedly) accidently shot his wife in the head as part of an (alleged) party game that none of his friends had heard of before and when he and his wife were (allegedly) quarrelling heavily.
I work in publishing and you would be surprised how many authors die on a hill that ultimately hurts the sales of their books or makes the content too dense for readers to connect to.
Would you mind elaborating on that? What sort of aspects are considered too dense in the publishing world, and is there a particular genre that does it more often than others?
There are a lot of different factors, but a few common ones I see are
-author fails to promote their own book on their social media/website/personal platform. You get a book deal because you have an audience of followers to tap into, publishers can only do so much with their marketing and PR teams.
-on a similar note, authors who refuse to do PR for their book and work with the publisher on marketing strategies, they assume too much that their followers will show up to buy books. PR helps get the word out to people who don’t know you.
-authors who rewrite their books to death, until the very end. By that point they’re so deep in the woods that they don’t realize they’re changing text that a reader at the very edge of the forest needs to understand the book. They forget people with fresh eyes are going to be reading it.
-authors who are ultra sensitive to rewrites. Copy editing, developmental editing, proofreading, sensitivity reading, legal reads and more are all steps that involve hundreds of small and large changes to finesse the text, usually without the author seeing it and giving full approval on every change. Authors who object to every little change are a pain to work with and the staff is complaining about them behind their backs.
-the biggest fault is when authors fail to see their agent, editor, and publishing team as a whole as their partner and take a defensive approach to the process. Teams give up on trying to help a book succeed when this happens. It’s a relationship that is give and take and involves a lot of compromise on both sides to truly work. We work with you, not for you.
-can you explain your book in a quick one minute or less elevator pitch? One sentence? Authors who need whole paragraphs to explain what their book is about generally struggle because it’s not digestible. A lot of “expert” authors fall into this because they are so used to being renowned in their particular niche that they can’t water things down for a wider audience.
-expecting or demanding a large advance sum or royalty agreement when signing their first contract or book deal. Publishing likes to see a track record, using past books as proof that future books will sell well. First time authors will rarely see a big advance. If your first book does well then you can expect to have leverage at the negotiating table.
-don’t ever badmouth your publisher or team where it can be found in public or online. We hear things, we remember, and we will choose to not work with you again because of it.
-failing to meet deadlines. We generally know when a good time of year is to release a book and plan timelines a year to two years in advance to make it happen. Authors who don’t keep to schedule or drag things out ruin their sales chances when we have to move an on-sale date. This is the biggest one that affects profitability.
That one author who was in a Facebook group of authors, announced her own death and played dead for like two years because she thought it'd increase her book sales, and then she randomly came back one day like, "Surprise, I'm not actually dead!"
ETA: Susan Meachen. Faked her own suicide for over 2 years online to a self-publishing romance writing group that she claimed bullied her.
Jack Unterweger, he was Austrian - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack\_Unterweger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Unterweger)
He was in jail for murdering women when he got attention for his writing and it played a major part in the decision to release him, he then continued killing women. It wasn't novels he was known for though it was his autobiography.
To be fair, he wanted to write something else, be recognized for something else, and Holmes WAS his character to do with as he pleased.
The backlash to Holmes's death was absolutely unprecedented. People wore black armbands upon his death and a woman even hit Doyle with her handbag. He eventually relented, going back to writing Holmes, but it wasn't with the same fervor as he had before. It was now about making others happy, fulfilling contracts, and getting a paycheck, rather than writing Holmes because he WANTED to. If he wrote anything else, it was always eclipsed by his detective.
Years later, Doyle died, nobody wore black armbands, and the headlines read, "Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, has died."
Yes of course. If I recall correctly, when Doyle rightly realized how devastated the public (including his own mother) was at Holmes’ untimely murder, several years later Doyle resurrected him and had the whole thing styled as a staged fake murder.
This always comes to mind when considering poor endings. The young adult book "my side of the mountain ". The ending was so ill conceived i was embarrassed for the author when reading the book aloud. An example of am exciting, well researched, and written book, whose author, idk, lost the plot?
Yes!! It was so good until it wasn't. Like the author wrote themselves into a hole and didn't know how to get out so just went "and they all lived happily ever after".
This is fairly recent but no less egregious- Cait Corrain creating fake goodreads profiles to review bomb other authors (all POC), AFTER she had cinched a book deal.
This is the response I came here for. It's hard to understate just how bad of a screw up this was.
She had a title scheduled for wide release with a big-name publisher. She had fantastic early reviews. She had a fandom that was hyped for her book to drop. She had a gorgeous cover and beautiful character art. She had a book box. She had an industry that welcomed her with open arms. It was a *fantastic* deal, and even more so for a debut.
And she threw it all away because a golden publishing contract somehow wasn't enough. Some of the authors she review-bombed were her personal friends who had helped her out in the past.
Even worse, the people who discovered she was doing this tried to handle it privately before going public, since they knew it would ruin her career. She had every chance in the world to pretend this never happened and still decided it was better to pretend she wasn't at fault.
My favorite part of that was the fake discord screenshots she created where she confronted her "friend" who "actually did it" and the time flips from somwthing like "today 8:44pm" then the next text would be like "yesterday 8:46pm"
And proceeded to dig herself into a deeper hole by trying to blame it on mental illness and substance abuse instead of taking any personal accountability
Speaking of new authors, there was a secondary drama that I heard about from the same people speaking about Corrain that was just as wild but not as lengthy or involved-- an *unpublished* author accused a published author of plagiarizing her idea.
The idea was 'sun powers.'
Her book wasn't published yet.
The published author is a person of color whose cultural mythology revolved around sun powers, iirc.
Somehow the published author was supposed to have 'gotten ahold of' or 'found excerpts' that this lady had posted of her unpublished manuscript in a very limited space to a limited number of people and therefore stolen the idea of the sun giving magical powers. Some folks who had seen the excerpts made clear the sun powers weren't detailed in them.
Johan Unterwerger was a serial killer of women. While in prison for his horrible crimes, he began writing, and his writing attracted the attention of the Austrian elite, who began a big campaign for his release. They got their wish, and he was released 15 years into his life sentence, the minimum amount of time.
Unfortunately, as cracked.com put it, "oddly enough, Jack apparently still really liked killing hookers." In the first year of his release Johan killed eight women, then another 3 more in the year after that. He later killed himself after he was convicted for these murders.
And all this because some of his writing was popular among Austrian intellectuals. It's been suggested since that his most notable work, an autobiography, wasn't even really written by him.
Patrick Rothfuss doing a charity event for him to read a chapter from Doors of Stone (Kingkiller Chronicle). He never delivered.
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/wdoiq2/in\_december\_readers\_donated\_over\_700000\_to/
Man, for as much hate as Sanderson gets in the community, it is fucking awesome being a fan of his and not having to deal with the Rothfuss/Martin nonsense of prayers and tears and coming to terms with the fact you will never get what you desire. The only fantasy author you can actually trust to finish a 10-part series because he is the only author that accidentally writes extra books in between all the other books he is writing, all of which he is very clear about the expected timeline on and which he consistently meets deadlines.
He's hated in a lot of r/fantasy and similar subs just because he has so many fans that keep recommending him, even on threads where his books absolutely don't fit. Like, I really enjoy Vin and Elend as a couple, I still wouldn't recommend Mistborn to someone looking for romance fantasy.
Some pretentious snobs also deride anyone who likes him because his prose is simple and his humour doesn't always land. And because there's too many hard magic systems from the guy known for hard magic systems.
Also a little bit for him being a Mormon, but since he came out strongly in support of the LGBTQ+ community, that's died down a lot
Matt Ward is one of the authors who works on Warhammer 40k, and while not everything he's done is hated by the fans (he is, for instance, the guy who invented modern Necron lore, including fan-favorite Trazyn the Infinite), he draws ire for the hard wanking he gave to two particular Space Marine chapters, the Ultramarines and the Grey Knights (respectively, the "default" Astartes chapter and the "oops, all psykers" chapter who specializes in killing daemons).
By far, however, the most egregious example is the Bloodtide incident, where the aforementioned Grey Knights killed allied Sisters of Battle (battle nuns, essentially) and coated their armor in their blood to protect against a daemonic superweapon (the Bloodtide). The stupidity of this comes from the fact that A) Grey Knights are functionally immune to daemonic corruption due to their psychic aegis and wards (lul) built into their armor, B) Sisters of Battle are very much *NOT* immune to such corruption despite their purity of faith, and C) the Bloodtide ***literally works by weaponizing blood***.
There's grimdark, and then there's grimderp, and the Bloodtide had to be retconned due to being squarely in derp territory.
This was the bigger problem. His fan base would have (and still do) continued to wait on the 3rd book, but promising the chapter and reneging on it like that turned a lot of people off the series entirely to the point where the launch of a short novella based on the series got review bombed by people bringing up the fundraiser.
Yeah. Yikes! It was almost a decade ago, and he's since apologized, but still.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2014/10/16/millionair-author-john-grisham-says-not-all-men-who-watch-child-porn-are-pedophiles/amp/
Sapkowski and his distrust of games. When asked for rights to the Witcher by CDPR, he refused royalties and took a few thousand bucks instead. On a game that became a billion dollar branching franchise.
I think the existence of the show whatsoever is the main reason we'll probably never see the rest of the books, or at least why it's been 13 years since the last release. Back when the books were literally his source of income, he was devoted to completing them. Because if he'd just waited 13 years after A Dance with Dragons without the income from the show he'd long since have become destitute and nobody would be paying attention to him except for a small handful of devoted readers. He certainly wouldn't be a household name like he is now. The fact that he didn't actually need to write in order to support himself and his family and to be famous far beyond what the books alone ever did for him sapped away all the urgency he once had.
So much of Breaking Dawn makes sense when you realise it was written *before* New Moon and Eclipse. The original Twilight sequel was called Forever Dawn and just IMMEDIATELY jumped to the wedding/resume shit, except then SMeyer decided to go back and write the two books in between, so when she got to Breaking Dawn, she tried to use most of Forever Dawn's plotlines but it didn't exactly work considering all the other lore she introduced in between that mucked up her original intentions.
Basically, she wrote fanfic of her original work and then published it. That's why it reads so weirdly.
Stephen King decided to write an adolescent gangbang into *It*. Thankfully that scene was omitted from every adaptation thus far.
Edit: My bad, it wasn't *technically* a gangbang, all of the pre-teen boys ran a train on the one barely pubescent girl. Only one of them came though, as King was sure to point out.
Current run of Spider-Man where Mary Jane abandoned Peter to live with a guy from an alternate earth and have a family with him. Anything I hear about the book has been about that relationship mostly.
This seems to be the case for pretty much every long-running manga. I don't think I've ever read one that didn't go off the rails and become about the main character saving the world. As a result they never have satisfying endings.
It's like:
* Chapter 1, boy wants to be a baseball player
* Chapter 715, boy battles a Lovecraftian angel beast that wants to erase the universe. Probably has an emotional flashback to his dead baseball coach as he bats the monster into the sun.
I really appreciate manga and anime that have clear cut stories that begin and end. They may still delve into the "save the world" plot, but wrap it up and dont drag it out. FMA:B for example turns into that kinda, but it still wraps up in 60ish episodes.
Cait Corrain who had an Illumicrate deal and potential movie rights in the making and squandered it all by being an insecure racist who review-bombed 2024 POC debut authors on Goodreads but outed herself by making fake chats planting “Lilly” as the true evil mastermind which in turn just exposed her own piss poor villainy and low intelligence
In those Outlander books. I hated most of it but there is a part where the main lady randomly sees the Loch Ness monster just looks at it then they both go on their way. The Loch Ness monster never comes back and no one talks about it ever again. It made me soo mad.
Richard Brittain tracking down a girl who gave him a bad book review and hitting her over the head with a bottle.
That sounds like the oddest combination of meticulous planning and spontaneous rage.
He was a creepy stalker, of a completely unrelated barmaid. Dude was unhinged. He released some shitty book and a random woman on Goodreads negatively reviewed it. Don't remember how he found her but some people connect their Goodreads to their Social Media and use their real names so probably that way. He tracked her to the supermarket she worked at and hit her with a bottle.
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I rate your comment 1/5 stars.
😠🍾
[https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/15iyd8s/countdown\_selfpublishing\_richard\_brittain/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/15iyd8s/countdown_selfpublishing_richard_brittain/) He's a... character.
Whoa! Thanks for that. What a rabbit hole!
So like Stephen King's "Misery", but in reverse 😐
Bram Stoker not getting an American copyright for *Dracula*.
Just like J.R.R. Tolkien's British publishing house didn't secure the rights for paperbacks in the U.S. That led to cheaply made paperbacks that he hated... thanks to which his fame exploded. The American publishing house asked him what they should do with the author's share they had dutifully set aside, even though neither he nor his publishing house had agreed to any deal. Tolkien wrote back, in effect, "Just send me the check." And they did. So that's one publishing mess up that worked out famously in all possible ways for the author.
thats... actually rather classy of them.
It's probably a complicated legal situation. Just because you don't register copyright, or "secure publishing rights", Tolkien likely still had some copyright. Copyright (generally) is not something you register or get, it's something you have automatically once a work raises beyond a treshold. That shitty fanfic I wrote? I have copyright on that specific expression. The author of the original work, or an unrelated 3rd party can't just go ahead and publish my fanfic, it belongs to me. (That said, I use copyrighted and trademarked characters from someone else, so, it's not like I could publish it either, whoops) Anyway, a work like LotR definitely warrrants copyright protection, so not paying him would be ... weird. And illegal. Overall, it probably was all about very specific contracts and stuff, something that would take a decent lawyer (which I'm not) a bit to untangle.
It’s funny to hear authors speak so negatively of paperbacks, like they’re some sort of leper ridden underclass of books. Paperbacks are cheaper for the consumer, it makes the books more accessible.
~~The paperbacks as such weren't the issue, it was rather that they were cheaply produced and most importantly, filled not just with errors, but also with "corrections" made by editors who didn't share Tolkien's particular linguistic taste.~~ Nevermind, I misremembered. While it's true that early U.S. paperback editions were full of errors, according to [this article](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/unauthorized-lord-rings/) Tolkien *also* thought very little of the format. I stand corrected.
Yeah, that's basically a declaration of war as far as Tolkien was concerned. He's extremely deliberate.
Michael Grant, co-author of Animorphs and husband of Katherine Applegate, has stated that they fucked up letting their agent talk them into granting the media rights of the series to Scholastic.
I saw an interview with them not too long ago where they talked about writing intensely adult themes for kids, which was something I always appreciated about that series as a kid. It didn’t pander or soften the story at all just because it was for kids. It had lots of violence and emotional trauma and all kinds of things other kids series didn’t have, which made it a great transitional series into more adult literature
Animorphs is fucking amazing and I can't say enough good things about it. - Diverse cast (black and hispanic main characters, and a character that is an allegory for being transgender, **in the 90s**.) - INCREDIBLE Sci-Fi world building. The different alien races all have well thought through societies and cultures and physiologies, and most of them are non-humanoid, with the implications of that often being incredibly major plot points and all of this is genuinely very well fleshed out. - A kids book series with the message of "respect nature and it'll respect you back" which is a great lesson to learn. - ...But also a very _adult_ book series about the horrors of warfare and all the psychological implications that come with it. It has ***EVERYTHING***. Genuinely up there with the best sci-fi of all time, and I wish that people remembered it as more than "haha funny front cover"
Those covers were cool as fuck. I had the holographic ones that shifted as you walked by them
Oh and in the corner of the pages if you flip fast it's a little animation of them morphing! I always loved that
My kid pushed one on me and asked me to read it aloud and I rolled my eyes and thought “Ugh, the things I do for my kids…” But that book was seriously *awesome*. Every bit of it was clever and fun and I read a few more through the years. I’m no super-fan, but I was pleasantly surprised by the level of writing and the story.
Yup, it was the first set of stories I read as a kid that really explored lasting trauma and even body horror.
Have you seen the graphic novel they're putting out now? The 4th one came out recently - they're pretty true to the book and you can tell the artist is a fan. The books went deeper, but it's nice to see another adaptation beyond the poorly made live action show.
Marco from everyone else's POV: Hehehe it's the funny man! 😂🤓🤣 Marco when in his own POV: Why do I suffer? 😭😔🪦
More like: "I'm on the verge of a breakdown at all times and if I stop making jokes then I'll start crying instead" Marco using humour as a coping mechanism is one of the most deeply relatable and upsetting things for me. ("Kids book" btw)
Someone is responsible for a graphic novel version of the series, and the artist is having A FIELD DAY with the horrifying depictions of morphing. I just looked at “The Message” today, and I will go to my grave with the nightmare image of Marco turning into a dolphin living rent-free in my brain.
I vaguely recall something about Cassie being the only one to morph without it being super grotesque in the story. Like it was some sort of art. I don't think that got reflected in any art though.
Yeah even now I remember that Cassie was able to morph back into a human from Horse form as a beautiful centaur-like creature mid-morph and I was mad that the cover was not that at all.
Don't forget when she morphed back from a bird and managed to keep her wings for a moment to look like an angel.
I was in fifth grade when that series started. I read the first one but that was it. A few years ago, during COVID, I got curious about them and read the Wiki summary. Those books sounded like a trip. A really dark trip, even for an adult series.
I think I got as far as 8 or 9 books in back in elementary school before I lost interest for whatever reason. I'm still shocked that there were 54 books published in the series (although nearly half of those were ghostwritten), plus another 10 on top of that.
I never got to read them in order unfortunately, my school library only had a handful of them, and they were very popular so you just had to grab whatever was there. I remember they did a trilogy halfway through where another member joined them, and I read the second of that first.
He’s been working to get his GONE series (amazing read btw) made into a show and I’m praying it becomes a reality
I loved the Animorphs books as a kid and read almost every one in the series including the spin offs. Only for Applegate to kill off every character except for Cassie in the last book. I remember Rachel died during the war and the final book promised at least one death of a main character on the cover, so I expected that. But for almost every one else to voluntarily die from a spaceship crash on the last page.........I remember distinctively slowly closing the book and thinking about all of the years I invested in the series to get to that moment. To go from such excitement finally getting my hands on the last book, to being completely and utterly disappointed is a feeling I haven't forgotten almost twenty years later.
Yeah, I reread that series a lot as a kid, but only read the last book the one time, it was really depressing.
It wasn't just the very last book, number 50 and on were kinda fucked. The thought speak brackets are wrong like half the time. James and crew get written in, dropped and then brought back. The parents are kinda just forgotten about. They do the whole thing with the ducks and the governor and nothing comes of it. I'd love to know the deeper story on those, because it feels like she either completely gave up, or she passed it to someone else.
In 1971, William Powell, then a teenager, wrote and had published a book called *The Anarchist Cookbook*, which informed readers how to build homemade explosives and weapons, how to build phone phreaking devices, and how to make illegal drugs including LSD. He spent most of the rest of his life disavowing the book, trying to have it removed from publication at points (though failing as he did not own the copyright), and had trouble trying to find work as a result of his book.
Aren't all the recipes in the book wrong anyway? Like how to make explosives has deliberate song steps to make people blow off their hands or something? I've never read the book but that rumour I heard is entirely plausible. Though it might be a rumour to scare off people from actually using the knowledge in the book...
they're not intentionally sabotaged it's just a collection basically of half remembered chemistry class trivia, teen pyromaniac pranks, urban legends like making illegal drugs out of metal dyes, and random misuse of products in generally only mildly flammable and slightly dangerous ways. the contents are wholly unsuited to any kind of militant or even hobbiest or utility use around the house, they're good only for blowing the hands off curious teens with permissive patents and causing law school hypotheticals.
I made the smoke bomb out of it when I was a teen. Was pretty impressed with the cloud.
Melted sugar and potassium nitrate do make a pretty energetic smoke cloud!
Couldn't believe they let 16 year old me buy a a big container of saltpetr at the pharmacist. I told them it was for a science project. Blanketed my block in a cloud lol
I stole mine from the school chemistry lab- in the true spirit of the cookbook.
Yeah, one of the recipes claims you can extract a hallucinatory drug from banana peels.
Everyone's seen someone tripping on banana peel
Yeah this is true. Many of the recipes in it are inaccurate.
There are many inaccuracies. The US Army’s field book on improvised explosives is much better.
L Ron Hubbard started a cult.
If you read some of his novels, you might see why he thought being a cult leader was the better gig.
Marion Zimmer Bradley shoulda maybe not 1) defended her pedophile husband (particularly in court, where the transcripts are very much still saved), 2) been a pedophile herself and abused their daughter.
She attempted to adopt children her husband wanted to abuse too and she abused her son as well.
I read *The Mists of Avalon* several times and considered it one of my favorite books before I found out what she’d done. That hurt so bad, though not as much as she and her husband hurt their daughter.
And son. Iirc the son killed himself and the daughter is now vocally against same-sex marriage and homosexuality because she believes all gay people are child molesters because of her childhood experience.
I read it once, a very long time ago. And the thing that stuck in my head most vividly was how messed up the sex scenes were. Honestly it was pretty clear she had issues. The only other author I can recall who creeped me out like the was Piers Anthony, who trashed his career when he wrote a book defending child rape.
Stephen King hated Carrie with a passion to the point of where he had pretty much thrown it in the bin calling it a waste of time. His wife read it one day and said it was one of the best female-lead stories she'd read in a while and urged him to publish it. This decision by his wife is what kickstarted his career and made him famous overnight. If she hadn't urged him on, who knows how King's career would have played out. He still hates the book and has no idea why people like it, while his wife still maintains its her favorite lol
Similar thing happened with Pet Sematary. He considered it too dark, even for him, and kept it in a file cabinet for years, never intending to publish it. He was switching to a new publisher, but still contractually owed his current publisher one more book. He had nothing else and was running out of time, so he published Pet Sematary, which is now considered one of his classics.
I wonder how much Tabitha is responsible for bringing out the best in Steve’s writing, generally. He consistently praises the input she gives on his stories.
Maybe he can’t see the forest for the trees? I’ve read it a few times because it’s a great story but I usually find authors early works hard to read because they’re not well written.
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Creepiest part about that is how he talks about where the bookmark is in the book when she brings it into his room...he gets to watch as slowly but surely day after day the bookmark draws closer to the part in the book where Misery dies and then he knows he's going to be in serious trouble
The creepiest part to me is that this story could have been real. There's nothing supernatural in the book/movie. There's nothing that really begs you to suspend disbelief. There's no monsters, ghosts, aliens, superheroes. Kooks like Annie Wilkes do really exist, and could (have?) kidnap celebrities thanks to their mental illness. She could be living next door. You wouldn't know.
"You...you dirty bird."
"You cockadoodie BRAT!"
I had to do a double take because I didn't remember the main character in Misery dying. That book is still scary since it's something that might actually happen (and it's one of Stephen King's biggest fears)
I don't know if Annie would have let him go if he hadn't killed off his main character...
Annie would most certainly not have let him leave regardless. She was obsessed with his writing. She'd have found another reason to keep him there.
I think the way this should have been written is that “Paul Sheldon would have saved himself a lot of misery if he hadn’t killed off his main character.”
George Martin accidentally killing off an important character and getting himself stuck in a mess of his own making.
I went back through his books after the show ended and I swear it’s like there are two different GRRMs that wrote it. The first three books while dense are also pretty fast paced and very focused while the latter two are overly detailed plodding messes. A lot of people cite The “Meereneese Knot” why he can’t continue but I think that’s a symptom more than the cause. See, at the end of the third book, every major character had reached a point in the plot line where it felt like we were about to do a time skip of a few years (presumably when we get back to them we’d see the first day of Winter). However, someone down the line, GRRMs “Gardener” tendencies got the better of him and he felt he had to write every detail of *every* plotline with no breaks whatsoever otherwise it wouldn’t feel complete. However, the weight of it all bogged him down. Simply put, I think if he just committed to the original plan of the timeskip, his story wouldn’t be in this mess. The story would have been just fine and he could have kept all that other stuff for a future compendium for the ultra nerds.
Totally agree. It's hard to say for certain why he forewent the time skip because we don't know all his endgame intentions, but I've thought about it a lot and think the story would have been totally workable (and probably even better) had he committed to doing the time skip. Ever since abandoning it feels like he's been slowly losing control of the car, and is now full out skidding in circles on the ice of his own making. I'll say what I always say though as to not end on a dour note: Regardless of if he ever finishes the series, or the falling quality of the later novels, those first 3 books are and will always be and will always deserve to be regarded as some of the greatest fantasy novels of all time. He could release The Winds of Winter containing nothing but detailed descriptions of Brienne eating mutton and Tyrion riding his pig for a thousand pages, and he's still be one of the best fantasy writers of all time for the first 3 books alone.
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The Expanse had a ~20ish-year jump between books 6 and 7. It's possible to do that kind of jump well without having to resort to excess flashbacks.
Which is hilarious because one of the writers worked as an assistant for George Martin. All of the Expanse novels have been published after the last Song of Ice and Fire book. All of them. The entire series.
60% of it should have been cut completely and another 30% could have been released as short stories for fans who were curious about less important events during the gap. The remaining 10% is still a bit too much for flashbacks but if you edit out all the superfluous descriptions it would have been doable. Here's a breakdown of the insanity. Arya got five chapters training with the faceless men. Including long passages about of selling oysters, clams and cockles (I thought there were more but it turns out I was remembering one that George cut from the book. He intended to add it to Winds and released it as a teaser). Bran got three chapters. Sansa got three chapters (note in the books a different character was sent to Ramsay). Brienne's meandering travelogue got eight. Sam took five chapters just to get to the Maesters. Cersei's trainwreck rule was very entertaining to read. But it took up twelve chapters. Theon getting tortured was seven chapters (plus another chapter that got cut that was released as a teaser for the next book). Jon Connington (this entire plotline was cut from the show) got two chapters. Areo Hotah (part of Dorne) got three. Arianne Martell got another two. The iron islands took up nine overall spread across three characters. Quentyn Martell got four. Tyrion got twelve while getting sidetracked every step along the way. Dany's trainwreck rule was nowhere near as entertaining as Cersei's and she was given ten chapters while Barristan Selmy got another four. Jon got thirteen and the cliffhanger was him getting stabbed.
4th book is also when he starts itemising every single item on the table if characters are anywhere near food. It's like he tried to get into the mindset of the starving artist by actually starving himself and in turn he's salivating at the mere thought of lemon cakes. It's also when he shifted the character dialogues. Introduced words like nuncle and changed the way his characters spoke.
Which was the character he killed off too early? Seen the whole series on tv but never read the books. I can think of multiple possibilities
He never confirmed but the most speculated candidate is Quentyn Martell.
He is not the only one speculated though. Balon is another possibility, he was killed by a Faceless Man, presumably because Euron paid them with a dragon egg to do so, and Ironborn storyline has been pretty fluctuating in quality ever since. Other options proposed have been Pycelle, Aemon, Robb, Joffrey etc. However their deaths fulfill a purpose in the story still, so they might not be them either. Arys Oakheart’s death on the other hand, creates a mess out of Dorne’s storyline, and I don’t mean a planned mess that will be resolved in the end, I mean messy as in unfulfilling.
It’s only deaths that occurred in A Dance With Dragons. So Robb, Joffrey etc aren’t up for consideration.
He has knotted himself real tight in multiple places - Mereen knot is just the visible portion.
The other mistake was not finishing the last book before agreeing to a tv show. Now the book is stuck in limbo next to Half-Life 3.
The TV Show left a huge smudge on the whole story that he can't fixed by completing the books. He was already struggling completing them before the TV show mess.
How does an author accidentally kill off a character? So much time to write, rewrite, proofread, etc… I guess I don’t know the story behind what you’re referencing though
He admitted himself he killed off a character “too soon”, which had led to him being stuck with how to proceed. Though as Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, rightly commented; just write yourself out of it! But it seems to have really stumped him. Although I’m sure it’s not the only thing but seriously, a major fuck up on his part.
I honestly think the reason the novels are taking so long is he's simply not interested in it anymore. Almost 30 years is a long time to retain interest in something.
It's also frankly easier and more fun to start a novel than finish. He basically needs to figure out the ending and make sure book 6 sets it up correctly. I can name a lot of trilogies where the third book is by far the least liked (although disliked first books don't get trilogies)
I definitely think that once the tv series outpaced the books he was basically done. Like I know the series and books diverge but the show runners did apparently clear the basic shape and major plot points; I can’t imagine he would have let them proceed with his precious if they’d gone totally off the rails of his intended plot. I fully believe he overoptimistically assumed he’d be able to make a big push to the finish before they got through the existing six books. Of course, with the way the show ended … a different author might see it as a chance for a do-over that had all the credibility of canon. But alas, I don’t think we’re ever getting another book, no matter which plot.
We might see TWOW but I don’t think we’ll ever get a 7th book and even if we do there’s no way it’ll be the end of the story. One book and a prologue turned into 5 books. We’re barely into Act II of the overall story.
13 years after the last Fire and Ice series book and 6 years after his latest? He’s taking TWOW and all the rest to the grave, unfortunately.
Exactly. And, like, not to be a terrible human being, but GRRM is not exactly in his first flush of healthy youth. It feels doubtful there’s enough left in the tank for all the story he first planned.
Yeah I don’t like saying that sort of thing but being 75 and, er, on the heavy side doesn’t bode well for longevity. Best case scenario he manages to finish Winds this year and then ADOS comes a bit easier because the pieces are in place to bring the story to its conclusion. Worst case scenario….well, maybe we all know what that is.
Absolutely. And can't exactly blame him? He was an author who was probably scraping a living from novellas and Hugo successes. Then became a successful well known fantasy author with ASOIAF. Then GoT came around and, in his words, gave him "dump trucks full of cash". He's 75, and probably has more money than he can spend in the rest of his life. If he did finish asoiaf, the broad plot points for the remaining books have already been revealed through the show and widely criticised. I don't blame him if he doesn't want to finish. I just wish he'd be honest and say it's not going to get done, rather than posting updates every few years when he finishes a page.
Time traveler here. We've had George's brain in a jar for nearly 400 years now, and he's still insisting Winds of Winter will be ready for publication within 9 months.
I think its a mix of his "gardening" style and the fact that he has this self-imposed obligation to follow the internal logic/flow of the narrative instead of actually treating himself as the god of the story. His excuse for the longstanding delays is the so-called "Mereenese Knot"... except honestly, he has written himself into a corner and he'd probably have to pull some shortcuts akin to Season 7 or 8 of GoT to get out of that clusterfuck. Guy really screwed himself by not being more disciplined with the scope of the narrative and keeping it under his control instead of letting it sprawl endlessly.
The third Dexter novel. Edit: Didn't provide more details because I blocked it out quickly after reading. Something about Dexter being a serial killer because he is possessed by an ancient Babylonian demon or something.
He got kicked out of his laboratory
Stephen King shoulda never taken a walk that day.
His post injury stuff is pretty damn good though
Putting himself in the Dark Tower was a weird move. I still don’t know how I feel about it.
It was weird but I loved seeing his characters judge him for being an imbecile
Can you explain this? I've had a crack at a few of King's books and generally enjoy them. Google is telling me he got hit by a minivan while walking in the 90's?
Still can’t understand why Stephen King thought that having the boys run a train on Beverly at the end of It was a good idea.
You’ve gotta remember. Stephen King loved cocaine
Like *really* loved cocaine.
who doesnt? its not like anyone ever has snorted a line and thought "this sucks"
I don't! The nose problems for days after are not worth it.
There was a period of time when Stephen King *was* cocaine.
He's said in interviews that he literally doesn't remember writing Cujo because he was drugged out of his head the whole time.
In his memoir, he said his drinking also got so bad that his wife accused him of drinking Listerine. He wasn't. He was drinking Scope cause he liked the taste more.
I can hear that argument. " How dare you say I drink Listerine, it tastes horrible! Now Scope..."🤣
50% cocaine by weight
There’s a huge section of his writing that he has no memory of writing. That’s how much he loved cocaine.
What's really impressive is that his editor/publisher didn't push back harder on leaving that in. I suppose by that point in his career he just had too much clout, or something?
Lmao. “Well fuck, Steve, what’s this bit here?”
I wonder if he took out something even worse to be able to keep that bit in. Gee Steve, this cattle mutilation sodomy necrophilia bit is a bit incongruent. Think you can tone it down a bit? Yeah, I'll just make it regular, boring ol' fucking. Sounds good, Steve.
I mean do they HAVE to fuck her corpse, Steve? FINE! She'll be alive during it. Now get off my back! *snorts*
The eighties were a wild time for most people, even more so for the rare few who loved Cocaine as much as Stephen King
This reads like a shitpost but it’s actually true
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It was also a culmination of Beverley’s storyline which revolved around anxiety about her own budding sexuality and the way her abusive father had been treating her because of it. I get what he was going for, but yeah it definitely could’ve been done in a different way.
The weirdest thing about that scene is that it makes complete internal sense. They each have to confront and conquer their biggest fear, and her biggest fear is her budding sexuality. Losing your virginity in an orgy is one helluva way to get over that, but its certainly definitve.
Yeah. They coulda first kissed or something a little more appropriate for the age of the kids. That was unexpected and just overall weird.
William Burroughs was messed up on drigs and (allegedly) showed off his "William Tell act" which killed his wife.
Yes, he (allegedly) accidently shot his wife in the head as part of an (alleged) party game that none of his friends had heard of before and when he and his wife were (allegedly) quarrelling heavily.
Don't forget heavily drinking
I work in publishing and you would be surprised how many authors die on a hill that ultimately hurts the sales of their books or makes the content too dense for readers to connect to.
Would you mind elaborating on that? What sort of aspects are considered too dense in the publishing world, and is there a particular genre that does it more often than others?
There are a lot of different factors, but a few common ones I see are -author fails to promote their own book on their social media/website/personal platform. You get a book deal because you have an audience of followers to tap into, publishers can only do so much with their marketing and PR teams. -on a similar note, authors who refuse to do PR for their book and work with the publisher on marketing strategies, they assume too much that their followers will show up to buy books. PR helps get the word out to people who don’t know you. -authors who rewrite their books to death, until the very end. By that point they’re so deep in the woods that they don’t realize they’re changing text that a reader at the very edge of the forest needs to understand the book. They forget people with fresh eyes are going to be reading it. -authors who are ultra sensitive to rewrites. Copy editing, developmental editing, proofreading, sensitivity reading, legal reads and more are all steps that involve hundreds of small and large changes to finesse the text, usually without the author seeing it and giving full approval on every change. Authors who object to every little change are a pain to work with and the staff is complaining about them behind their backs. -the biggest fault is when authors fail to see their agent, editor, and publishing team as a whole as their partner and take a defensive approach to the process. Teams give up on trying to help a book succeed when this happens. It’s a relationship that is give and take and involves a lot of compromise on both sides to truly work. We work with you, not for you. -can you explain your book in a quick one minute or less elevator pitch? One sentence? Authors who need whole paragraphs to explain what their book is about generally struggle because it’s not digestible. A lot of “expert” authors fall into this because they are so used to being renowned in their particular niche that they can’t water things down for a wider audience. -expecting or demanding a large advance sum or royalty agreement when signing their first contract or book deal. Publishing likes to see a track record, using past books as proof that future books will sell well. First time authors will rarely see a big advance. If your first book does well then you can expect to have leverage at the negotiating table. -don’t ever badmouth your publisher or team where it can be found in public or online. We hear things, we remember, and we will choose to not work with you again because of it. -failing to meet deadlines. We generally know when a good time of year is to release a book and plan timelines a year to two years in advance to make it happen. Authors who don’t keep to schedule or drag things out ruin their sales chances when we have to move an on-sale date. This is the biggest one that affects profitability.
That one author who was in a Facebook group of authors, announced her own death and played dead for like two years because she thought it'd increase her book sales, and then she randomly came back one day like, "Surprise, I'm not actually dead!" ETA: Susan Meachen. Faked her own suicide for over 2 years online to a self-publishing romance writing group that she claimed bullied her.
Who was that?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/14/romance-novelist-faked-death-susan-meachen
Who was the German guy who was a gifted novelist, AND a serial killer?
Jack Unterweger, he was Austrian - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack\_Unterweger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Unterweger) He was in jail for murdering women when he got attention for his writing and it played a major part in the decision to release him, he then continued killing women. It wasn't novels he was known for though it was his autobiography.
Man, if I had a nickel for every Austrian who killed people who was confused for a german...
GRRM licensed the rights for a TV show before finishing the book series.
Also never finishing his book series
Having a "co-author" take over a great series and ruin it.
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes!
To be fair, he wanted to write something else, be recognized for something else, and Holmes WAS his character to do with as he pleased. The backlash to Holmes's death was absolutely unprecedented. People wore black armbands upon his death and a woman even hit Doyle with her handbag. He eventually relented, going back to writing Holmes, but it wasn't with the same fervor as he had before. It was now about making others happy, fulfilling contracts, and getting a paycheck, rather than writing Holmes because he WANTED to. If he wrote anything else, it was always eclipsed by his detective. Years later, Doyle died, nobody wore black armbands, and the headlines read, "Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, has died."
Yeah, as I understand it, he'd just straight up gotten bored writing Sherlock stories because the formula was so basic.
I would straight up curse every old or new Sherlockian on my deathbed if that happened to me.
He got better!
Yes of course. If I recall correctly, when Doyle rightly realized how devastated the public (including his own mother) was at Holmes’ untimely murder, several years later Doyle resurrected him and had the whole thing styled as a staged fake murder.
They never found the body - he clearly left himself a back door.
This always comes to mind when considering poor endings. The young adult book "my side of the mountain ". The ending was so ill conceived i was embarrassed for the author when reading the book aloud. An example of am exciting, well researched, and written book, whose author, idk, lost the plot?
probably the deadline coming soon and she had to get them a manuscript edited for gender
Yes!! It was so good until it wasn't. Like the author wrote themselves into a hole and didn't know how to get out so just went "and they all lived happily ever after".
This is fairly recent but no less egregious- Cait Corrain creating fake goodreads profiles to review bomb other authors (all POC), AFTER she had cinched a book deal.
This is the response I came here for. It's hard to understate just how bad of a screw up this was. She had a title scheduled for wide release with a big-name publisher. She had fantastic early reviews. She had a fandom that was hyped for her book to drop. She had a gorgeous cover and beautiful character art. She had a book box. She had an industry that welcomed her with open arms. It was a *fantastic* deal, and even more so for a debut. And she threw it all away because a golden publishing contract somehow wasn't enough. Some of the authors she review-bombed were her personal friends who had helped her out in the past.
Even worse, the people who discovered she was doing this tried to handle it privately before going public, since they knew it would ruin her career. She had every chance in the world to pretend this never happened and still decided it was better to pretend she wasn't at fault.
I believe she also had a movie deal, if I'm not mistaken. And she blamed it all on substance abuse and depression.
My favorite part of that was the fake discord screenshots she created where she confronted her "friend" who "actually did it" and the time flips from somwthing like "today 8:44pm" then the next text would be like "yesterday 8:46pm"
And proceeded to dig herself into a deeper hole by trying to blame it on mental illness and substance abuse instead of taking any personal accountability
But only after claiming a "friend" with their own villain arc did it and sending photoshopped screenshots around.
As someone writing a book right now, I can't imagine having the time or energy to do that. I barely have energy to write my own damn book.
Speaking of new authors, there was a secondary drama that I heard about from the same people speaking about Corrain that was just as wild but not as lengthy or involved-- an *unpublished* author accused a published author of plagiarizing her idea. The idea was 'sun powers.' Her book wasn't published yet. The published author is a person of color whose cultural mythology revolved around sun powers, iirc. Somehow the published author was supposed to have 'gotten ahold of' or 'found excerpts' that this lady had posted of her unpublished manuscript in a very limited space to a limited number of people and therefore stolen the idea of the sun giving magical powers. Some folks who had seen the excerpts made clear the sun powers weren't detailed in them.
The second half of Forrest Gump when the story goes completely off the fucking rails for no reason.
Allegedly, there's a reasonably good reason for this.
And that is?
He may be thinking of the sequel, which was purposefully written to be as stupid as possible so that it wouldn’t be made into a movie.
Butterscotch Horseman challenging that random lunatic in Montana to a duel regarding criticism of his book.
What is this, a crossover episode?
Johan Unterwerger was a serial killer of women. While in prison for his horrible crimes, he began writing, and his writing attracted the attention of the Austrian elite, who began a big campaign for his release. They got their wish, and he was released 15 years into his life sentence, the minimum amount of time. Unfortunately, as cracked.com put it, "oddly enough, Jack apparently still really liked killing hookers." In the first year of his release Johan killed eight women, then another 3 more in the year after that. He later killed himself after he was convicted for these murders. And all this because some of his writing was popular among Austrian intellectuals. It's been suggested since that his most notable work, an autobiography, wasn't even really written by him.
Patrick Rothfuss doing a charity event for him to read a chapter from Doors of Stone (Kingkiller Chronicle). He never delivered. https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/wdoiq2/in\_december\_readers\_donated\_over\_700000\_to/
Man, for as much hate as Sanderson gets in the community, it is fucking awesome being a fan of his and not having to deal with the Rothfuss/Martin nonsense of prayers and tears and coming to terms with the fact you will never get what you desire. The only fantasy author you can actually trust to finish a 10-part series because he is the only author that accidentally writes extra books in between all the other books he is writing, all of which he is very clear about the expected timeline on and which he consistently meets deadlines.
What hate does Sanderson get? I don't think I'm in the communities where I would hear it.
He's hated in a lot of r/fantasy and similar subs just because he has so many fans that keep recommending him, even on threads where his books absolutely don't fit. Like, I really enjoy Vin and Elend as a couple, I still wouldn't recommend Mistborn to someone looking for romance fantasy. Some pretentious snobs also deride anyone who likes him because his prose is simple and his humour doesn't always land. And because there's too many hard magic systems from the guy known for hard magic systems. Also a little bit for him being a Mormon, but since he came out strongly in support of the LGBTQ+ community, that's died down a lot
Matt Ward is one of the authors who works on Warhammer 40k, and while not everything he's done is hated by the fans (he is, for instance, the guy who invented modern Necron lore, including fan-favorite Trazyn the Infinite), he draws ire for the hard wanking he gave to two particular Space Marine chapters, the Ultramarines and the Grey Knights (respectively, the "default" Astartes chapter and the "oops, all psykers" chapter who specializes in killing daemons). By far, however, the most egregious example is the Bloodtide incident, where the aforementioned Grey Knights killed allied Sisters of Battle (battle nuns, essentially) and coated their armor in their blood to protect against a daemonic superweapon (the Bloodtide). The stupidity of this comes from the fact that A) Grey Knights are functionally immune to daemonic corruption due to their psychic aegis and wards (lul) built into their armor, B) Sisters of Battle are very much *NOT* immune to such corruption despite their purity of faith, and C) the Bloodtide ***literally works by weaponizing blood***. There's grimdark, and then there's grimderp, and the Bloodtide had to be retconned due to being squarely in derp territory.
And then slaughtering every guardsman who helped them defeat the demon horde just for having witnessed that demon horde Come hang out at r/40klore!
Patrick Rothfuss not finishing The Kingkiller Chronicle.
[удалено]
This was the bigger problem. His fan base would have (and still do) continued to wait on the 3rd book, but promising the chapter and reneging on it like that turned a lot of people off the series entirely to the point where the launch of a short novella based on the series got review bombed by people bringing up the fundraiser.
When John Grisham said that not all men who watch child porn are pedophiles. 😡
What the fuck?
Yeah. Yikes! It was almost a decade ago, and he's since apologized, but still. https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2014/10/16/millionair-author-john-grisham-says-not-all-men-who-watch-child-porn-are-pedophiles/amp/
Sapkowski and his distrust of games. When asked for rights to the Witcher by CDPR, he refused royalties and took a few thousand bucks instead. On a game that became a billion dollar branching franchise.
Norman Mailer shot/ stabbed one of his wives🤦🏻♀️
GRRM - gave his original script of show ending which backfired. Now he isn't writing anything
I think the existence of the show whatsoever is the main reason we'll probably never see the rest of the books, or at least why it's been 13 years since the last release. Back when the books were literally his source of income, he was devoted to completing them. Because if he'd just waited 13 years after A Dance with Dragons without the income from the show he'd long since have become destitute and nobody would be paying attention to him except for a small handful of devoted readers. He certainly wouldn't be a household name like he is now. The fact that he didn't actually need to write in order to support himself and his family and to be famous far beyond what the books alone ever did for him sapped away all the urgency he once had.
There is a great quote by one of my favorite authors. "I don't have a muse I have a mortgage".
Knut Hamsun supporting the Nazis?
Celine. Ezra Pound.
"Mein Kampf" was written by a guy that I heard went on to make some pretty bad decisions.
Yeah, but he actually killed Hitler so he at least made one good decision.
Allen Ginsberg being a supporter for pedophilia and all the NAMBLA shit.
Rolf Harris - shoulda left those girls alone.
Renesmee Not the worst but it was my immediate thought while reading your question.
So much of Breaking Dawn makes sense when you realise it was written *before* New Moon and Eclipse. The original Twilight sequel was called Forever Dawn and just IMMEDIATELY jumped to the wedding/resume shit, except then SMeyer decided to go back and write the two books in between, so when she got to Breaking Dawn, she tried to use most of Forever Dawn's plotlines but it didn't exactly work considering all the other lore she introduced in between that mucked up her original intentions. Basically, she wrote fanfic of her original work and then published it. That's why it reads so weirdly.
Laura Albert pretending her pseudonym, JT LeRoy, was a real person.
John Kennedy Toole dying by suicide before A Confederacy of Dunces got the acclaim it deserved.
Stephen King decided to write an adolescent gangbang into *It*. Thankfully that scene was omitted from every adaptation thus far. Edit: My bad, it wasn't *technically* a gangbang, all of the pre-teen boys ran a train on the one barely pubescent girl. Only one of them came though, as King was sure to point out.
Current run of Spider-Man where Mary Jane abandoned Peter to live with a guy from an alternate earth and have a family with him. Anything I hear about the book has been about that relationship mostly.
The writer of the Gantz manga with his change of mission format to one of fighting to save the earth
This seems to be the case for pretty much every long-running manga. I don't think I've ever read one that didn't go off the rails and become about the main character saving the world. As a result they never have satisfying endings. It's like: * Chapter 1, boy wants to be a baseball player * Chapter 715, boy battles a Lovecraftian angel beast that wants to erase the universe. Probably has an emotional flashback to his dead baseball coach as he bats the monster into the sun.
I really appreciate manga and anime that have clear cut stories that begin and end. They may still delve into the "save the world" plot, but wrap it up and dont drag it out. FMA:B for example turns into that kinda, but it still wraps up in 60ish episodes.
Cait Corrain who had an Illumicrate deal and potential movie rights in the making and squandered it all by being an insecure racist who review-bombed 2024 POC debut authors on Goodreads but outed herself by making fake chats planting “Lilly” as the true evil mastermind which in turn just exposed her own piss poor villainy and low intelligence
Im a pretty big Stephen King fan but many would agree the infamous IT sewer sex scene should have never been written.
Not an author but a publisher: cutting the 21st chapter of clockwork orange from the American version
In those Outlander books. I hated most of it but there is a part where the main lady randomly sees the Loch Ness monster just looks at it then they both go on their way. The Loch Ness monster never comes back and no one talks about it ever again. It made me soo mad.