Chartwell Press

Chartwell Press has published a new novel by author Christine Silk, titled "The Dark Fire." You can find it on Amazon. amazon.com/Dark-Fire-Chri…

@punishtrollface @PYeerk And die by his own hand if the father is enough of a jerk? Because, in the final analysis, that is the message of the movie. What a horrible message for young people, and for parents. Anti-life.

@chartwell_press @PYeerk The film is about responsibility Keating was attempting to instill that it was the students' responsibility to live life to the fullest. Carpe Diem and all that. When someone dies they look for who's responsible. Parents OBVIOUSLY can't be responsible for this... heaven forbid

Any movie where the message is that you, the viewer, are a bad person for watching the movie or for watching movies in general

@punishtrollface @PYeerk The whole point of the movie was about the relationship he formed with his students. Maybe he could not have intervened (although the writers could've done that), but he could've spoken to the students after the suicide, and conveyed that it was not the way to go.

@chartwell_press @PYeerk That's.... really off base. At no point is the teacher in a position to intervene in said suicide. So I have no idea what you're going on about. The rest I'll write off as gobbledegook.

@monsterhunter45 Their idea of "good" writing is not based on standards that common sense recognizes.

I hope that long after I'm dead the snooty literati English professor class will finally take an honest look at my body of work and realize that I was consistently good over a wide variety of genres and capable of writing books with wildly different tones and themes, so Larry Correia was actually a pretty good writer. Lol no. The only way that'll ever happen is if some revisionist historian in fifty years declares that I was secretly liberal. Only then could I finally be a *real* author. :D

It's still inside my laptop.

True creatives block out the world around them. They enter a trance, and the only reality is what they see while in that trance. Hence, the person on the train writes a novel on the laptop, oblivious to everyone else except what she's seeing in her mind's eye as she types.

“Being hated by idiots is the price you pay for not being one of them.” - Jean Cocteau

Yep. For those of you not familiar with the total scam that is the NYT bestseller list, as a NYT bestseller myself, it's utter bullshit. It's not an actual list of bestsellers. It's "curated editorial". As in, stuff they like gets on there, and stuff they don't like doesn't. Or stuff they like places higher, and stuff they don't like but obviously sells too much to deny its a bestseller gets on there lower. I still tell people I'm a NYT bestseller because most regular normies think that actually means something impressive, and it's just quicker to say that to establish that you're a certain level. Within the actual publishing industry its fairly meaningless and everybody knows it. In reality I made it on there a couple of times early on in my career before they realized who I am and what I'm into (the totally wrong politics, loudly!), because then it was like a post it note got stuck on the wall there saying FUCK THIS GUY, because after that no matter how many copies I sold, even if I was mud stomping half their list in actual sales, I wasn't getting on there ever again. Everybody is aware of this scam. The key to getting on the list is the NYT wanting to promote you. They don't actually track all book sales. They track certain "reporting stores" (which are supposed to be secret but we all know how they are). But then the NYT takes whatever reality is and massages it to fit their narrative. It isn't just to keep wrong thinking pariahs like me off there either. I've got friends who are apolitical or even mildly liberal who still make the list, but who get bumped down a bunch of spaces from what they should be because there's somebody else with a new book out the NYT wants to fluff. Even when the NYT isn't putting its finger on the scale, it also only measures velocity, as in how many books sold that week. So if you sell 20k copies that week, but never sell another book again, you're a bestseller. But a guy who sells 1k copies a week every week for an entire year, is not. Also, I don't know if it is still this way, because I quit paying attention to what makes the NYT list years ago after I understood what a joke it was, but it was only for physical books, not ebooks, not audio. And there are authors who crush it in ebook who sell very few physical copies in stores. I don't know if this is still the case on what they claim to track or not today. So basically it is a biased list of what one small part of the industry sells in a short period of time that the NYT then tweaks to ignore reality if they feel like it anyway. And this isn't just my opinion as a disgruntled former NYT bestseller, this has gone to court. Authors have sued the NYT which is where the "editorial" thing comes from. This gets some attention periodically when somebody really famous raises a stink about it. A couple years ago it was Elon. Before that it was Mike Rowe. Etc. But then regular people all forget and go back to thinking the NYT's bestseller list isn't as full of shit as everything else the NYT does.

@Kristin_Fiction This essay is spot-on. Here is a discussion of the problem of wannabe writers from a slightly different angle: @christinesilk/p-168215566" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@christinesilk…

The self-publishing world is chock full of people who don’t belong there, making it worse and harder for the writers who actually… write New article is live kristinmctiernan.com/companion-book…

@gwen_novak9 @Kristin_Fiction Gwen, do you have any insight as to why a lot of authors don't read? It seems as mystifying as composers who don't listen to music, or painters who don't go to museums.

Good article. I get hired to humanize AI a lot these days. I also have written for YouTube. There’s another segment indie authors are up against too. The content mill books. Although that’s mostly for romance that I have seen. I can help the self insert authors, what I find difficult is helping authors who aren’t readers.

@CourtSunnyYay It helps to audition three to five editors, preferably those from referrals from people you know who have used them. Give each editor the exact same essay or short story to edit. Include mistakes. Be clear on the edits you are looking for. See how each handles it.

I've kept this to myself out of sheer embarrassment but have decided to share so it can possibly be avoided by others. I hired a Copy Editor before I launched my book with KDP, on Fivver. They had good reviews and were asking more $ than a few others so I thought I'm getting the quality I'm paying for. What I got back looked great, until I noticed font size inconsistencies... missing chapters, duplicate paragraphs. Y'all I cried myself to sleep so many nights before launch trying to patch my little book back together. I received an instagram message from said copy editor saying they got kicked off Fivver, but I could reach them there in the future (their bio said they were based in Nigeria). Point of the story, sorry to those I recommended Fivver to, and make better choices than I did.

Ahead of the launch of his rebooted Mind MGMT series, comics writer and artist Matt Kindt showed off his latest creation: a seal that declares his comics are 100% human-made. “Hopefully it’ll catch on and become a standardized label,” he said. buff.ly/7q36cuM

I spent six hours yesterday writing a poem, and it was difficult, but by the end I was in tears because the experience was so creatively rewarding. No one will ever be moved to tears by inputting a prompt into a chatbot. Don’t surrender the most rewarding parts of living.

@DocSilverby @paul_jkrause Burgess's "The Wanting Seed" is prescient. There's a reason it's not being talked about in 2026.

@paul_jkrause A master of style. Sometimes reading for wordplay and style is necessary. Anthony Burgess' autobiography is delicious. I've never read his fiction. But it's helpful as a writer to read prose that crackles.

Reading Dickens is entering a world of heart and soul. The passion, the calculation, the determined and ruthless pursuit of power and wealth, memory, childhood, good and evil, truth and lies. Plus, sometimes just reading his prose is delightful as a reader.

People want the fantasy of being creators without putting in the work and experiencing the frustration and setbacks of actually creating.

@Historycourses The midnight ride of Paul Revere would be an awesome scene.

"Oh, there's nothing left to celebrate, because those liberals/conservatives have ruined it all" If you feel that way about America I do not consider you a fellow countryman.

@AbakpaJob William Somerset Maugham's short story "Jane" illustrates this perfectly. Jane is brutally honest, but she comes across as witty and amusing in her social circle because honesty is rare there.

people think writing is about being smart but actually it's about being honest which is way harder

@lauramatsue Cal Newport just did a podcast on how to reverse brain rot.

So many of us are losing friends to brainrot. They communicate in TikToks and reels. They do not read. They do not think. Their attention span has dwindled to mere seconds. This new generation thinks in memes, viral sounds, and sound bites; their opinions are not their own, but a mixture of whatever slop the algorithm is serving today. It doesn't have to be this way. Always ask yourself who benefits from you being illiterate and having the attention span of a goldfish. It's not you. We have more power than we think. But we must get our minds back.

People don't want truth. They want confirmation. Say 100 things they agree with, you're a genius. Poke their narrative once, you're the enemy. That's not conviction. That's fragility dressed up as faith.