Peter Ahlstrom

This is sad. I know as a politician these companies are going to spend a billion dollars against me for saying it but 🤷🏽‍♀️ Pervasive gambling is not good for society. It turns life into a casino, traps people in addiction & debt, surges domestic violence, and fosters manipulation.

It's not a rule. It's a Problem: the Tiffany Problem. You put a character named Tiffany in your medieval Earth, readers balk because they think she's a Valley Girl. YOU and enlightened medievalists know that Tiffany was a common nickname for Theophania. The reader is WRONG! (Let's pause a moment until the blasting of kazoos fades.) Congrats, you're right, but at a cost: reader immersion. You've put a moment of WTF into the head of every reader who doesn't know this thing you know, and even into many of those who do (they'll stop to marvel at how you knew that weird detail, too). You pay the price one of three ways: add enough context for the unenlightened readers to understand, change the name, or break immersion. Choosing to break immersion isn't the brave choice. Not because you're not a brave person, but because it's not a moral choice: it's a craft choice. So is how you choose vocabulary (simple/esoteric/flowery), description style (plain/poetic), setting (every day/historical/ultra-weird), or blending genres. Breaking immersion often will winnow/refine your readership to those who like how YOU break their immersion, who like being pulled out of their reading world to marvel at tiny details you got right. Readers who prize maintaining their immersion will likely choose authors who prioritize maintaining readers' immersion in the future. "Aha! See? I'm being brave because I won't water down my creative vision for the sake of reader immersion!" Eh... maybe. There's a lot of competition in that space, and those who do it well enough to make careers are doing a lot of things well. (Maybe some do it intuitively, but the perpetual heavyweights are highly aware masters of craft.) Those who love a niche aren't necessarily anti-commercial; they're just placing their bet on an uncluttered field with fewer competitors: Tom Clancy filled his books with (boring/fascinating) technical details of military hardware/doctrine/oh-god-everything that one might think only a hardcore mil-geek could love. He relayed the story that when he finally managed to sell The Hunt for Red October to a small publisher, he said, "I think it might sell five thousand copies!" His wife said, "I bet it'll sell fifty thousand copies!" Surely only a language geek could love Tolkien, amirite? Surely only the staunchest navel-gazer could love Proust? So make your choice, pay your price. If you do your niche well enough, you can make a career either way. (Wow, this turned long. I think it would've made a better substack. Let me know. I'm thinking of starting one.)

@BreathTakerAnon @hannahhedon @Nicosaesthetic Yeah, this is classic Bipolar Type II

Suddenly came out of a depressive episode at 7am. I cleaned my entire room, sorted all of my laundry, & bought an entirely new furniture set that I’ve been putting off for over a year.

Looking forward to the Quentin Tarantino remake of Julius Caesar where at the end he pulls out a huge sword and yells, “Eff you, Brute!”

<.< … >.> I deny everything.

@IlluminatiEyes @OG_Okobogee @CollinRugg Last December the inversion got so bad in Salt Lake during a convention that I was holding my breath as much as I could between the convention center and the hotel. And I hate seeing these rolling coal trucks just belching black smoke everywhere in Utah County. So inconsiderate.

@OG_Okobogee @CollinRugg Haha yes it is beautiful here- it’s just when the inversion hits it sucks. It’ll happen in summer with wildfires and winter just for the hell of it. Part of the geological landscape to trap all the particulates in the air.

NEW: ‘Diesel Brothers’ star David Sparks released from custody after being thrown in jail for refusing to pay fees owed in connection with a ‘Clean Air Act’ lawsuit. Sparks refused to pay $843,602 in fines. “Mr. Sparks was not arrested for a crime. In fact, no crime has been alleged or charged. The arrest stems from a civil matter regarding some zealous environmentalists seeking collection of attorney’s fees,” his attorney said. The fines were related to a judgment that determined Sparks and co-defendants were liable for selling “illegally modified diesel vehicles.”

@kyaathecatlord Yeah, FINALLY! 😆

I'm finally getting around to reading Mistborn. I'm sure my old friend @PeterAhlstrom will be like "finally". We have only been friends since the Tokyopop forums....

A few weeks after we moved here we let the grass grow to see what it did, being new to Georgia. The dickhead HOA president knocked on our door to tell us it was like ¼ inch too high. We naturally told him to kindly fuck off. So I went to the next meeting to let the board know that, it happened to be an election meeting and someone nominated me after my speech, and I was voted President, on a platform of doing absolutely nothing. Three years later and our fb group is in an uproar because we haven’t had a meeting since then and I have no intention of changing that. I’m praying someone tries to enforce our HOA by-laws in court. PRAYING 🙏🏽

A new book!

Made it to your living rooms!

@paulapoundstone Perfect economy of motion. That dog knows exactly where to direct its energy to get the job done. It’s poetry.

I don't even think it's a dog.

Today's signing at the new B&N in Naperville. Had a great crowd, and it was so good to see the new location.

@Natalie48097163 @liz_churchill10 I looked into it a few tears ago, and it turns out Gardasil makes you half as likely to die of a gunshot wound! 4 deaths from gunshots in control group, 2 gunshot deaths in Gardasil group. That’s how statistics works, right?

We need ARRESTS. “Gardasil is the single worst, mass vaccine that we've ever seen. This vaccine targets MILLIONS of teens for whom the risk of dying from cervical cancer is zero. The death rates in the ‘Trials’ were 37 times the death rates for cervical cancer…” -HHS RFK Jr.

@milfmisaki It’s happening to everybody. Even Brandon Sanderson. This is the second time this exact book has shown up on Amazon, now under a different title and author. amazon.com/Path-Kings-New…

all jokes aside this is beyond fucked up. this person legit put tsok into ai and wrote an ai version, used ai cover and stamped their own name to it to sell?? like wtf???

“can i copy your homework?” “sure, just change it a bit so to not make it obvious”

@kimberl84933136 @pyrameadhead The flag also has at least 15 stripes!

@pyrameadhead 😆 I never noticed that, dam AI.

Legal question: can a statement like this made by an attorney get them disbarred

@WGBManga I’ll take a look. It definitely isn’t consistent across all K-Manga series.

@PeterAhlstrom Compare the first few chapters of Galaxias and Gachiakuta(2 amazing Kmanga recdnt hits) to Ichi the Witch and Kagurabachi (jump recent hits) and I'd say they start similarly but lose their closed chapter style faster at Kmanga. JUMP tends to be more episodic for vol 1

After reading a bunch of series on K-Manga in the past year, and comparing them to Jump manga, I’ve noticed something that seems odd to me. Jump manga are almost always paced such that a chapter tells a complete story or ends on a cliffhanger. Kodansha’s editors seem to just…

…chapter. This is not something I noticed when I worked on a bunch of Kodansha manga at TOKYOPOP. Has it been a recent shift in their style of editorial direction? That they focus on the plot arc of an entire tankōban instead of chapter by chapter?

…not care about this. Chapters often end seemingly with the assumption that you’ll simply turn the page and continue the story with the next chapter. No plot arc within the chapter, no cliffhanger…the story just reaches the last page with no fanfare and picks up in the next…

@CapelLofft When I went to university and the congregation was all single students, the silence took some getting used to!

@CapelLofft I’ve heard comments from visitors to congregations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that they love the sounds from all the little kids, that it really feels alive and welcoming. To me it’s just normal.