B.R. Keid

It's almost time! Hard Drop is finally going up for presale on Amazon on—you guessed it—November 10, the Marine Corps Birthday! ARC copies are available now! NetGalley users, the link is below. If you're not on NetGalley, shoot me a DM with a link to one of your reviews and I can hook you up! #HardDrop #NetGalley #MilitarySciFi #SpaceOpera

@SeloSlav @blakeir +1 to playing outside. I still remember all the epic battles in the yard with my Micro Machine armies.

@blakeir Nah, not commercial art. The gaming industry's been cannibalized by commercial art in the last decade or so. But a game is just a fun loop at the end of the day. Board games don't need AAA graphics. Neither does playing outside in the yard. How you skin the cat is irrelevant.

games are commercial art built with software. i’m not sure there’s another software industry as resistant to AI as gaming.

@oldyzach I STILL play this. 💪🪖👍

And you? Have you defended Earth from the Aliens today?

@SeloSlav Baby steps. I'm thinking about some kind of AI-powered AWD drone swarm sim to start. But I'm busy on CDM Book 2. 🪖 Keep up the great work sir, these games are awesome (and inspiring)!

@keidwrites Btw, Three Colonies MMO wen?

Vibe coding EVE Online...

@oldyzach This is still my all time favorite game (Half-Life is a close second). The visuals, the scope, the story. So good. Homeworld, Cataclysm, Homeworld 2, DoK, all perfect. We won't speak of the latest... "iteration".

In case anyone has forgotten, this is how AWESOMENESS began in 1999. First Homeworld. First game of the Relic Entertainment. And first loved game for many, I guess. Enough writing. It's time for Adagio for Strings.

@oldyzach I still play this one to this day. They did a great job with the new XCOM games, but cannot beat this nostalgia.

Dear Citizens! Please stay in your homes! X-COM is here! The situation is under control! 😎

@oldyzach Grew up on the Metaltech games! 💪🪖👍

Hey, this is a sim game, right? 😎🔊 🕹️ Metaltech: EarthSiege (1994), MSDOS

The Twitter Crush comes out on January 20th and the reviews are starting to trickle in 🙌🏻 Have you preordered yours?

There is no "magic bullet." Having failed to make it into SPFBO, I've been thinking of the fundamental challenge of indie publishing: finding an audience. Removing the TradPub gatekeepers did nothing to remove that challenge. The Big Five may not be able to stop you from putting a book out anymore, but you still have to find a way to reach the massive numbers of readers they used to be able to connect with. Let's have a fast reality check: If you want "Novelist" to be your job -- no corporate cube sitting, no ubering or dashing on the side, no McDonalds, just pure novels is how one pays one's rent -- you're going to need to sell an absolute truckload of books. You will need to sell over 7000 $2.99 eBooks every single year just to hit the poverty line in the U.S. Some old marketing wisdom from decades ago, that's probably out of date in today's world far oversaturated by advertising, is that a person has to see your message seven times before they even start to remember what you're selling. So you need to get seven thousand people to see your book cover -- a book cover so awesome that everyone who notices it will want the book -- seven times. So: the daydream that "One of my posts will go viral and get a million views, and I'll finally be a bestseller" probably isn't going to work. You need to pull that off seven times. "My story is great. Word of mouth will gradually spread and my book will be successful." We all come in with that in our hearts, whether we admit it or not. If you've reached the stage of indie writing where you read my posts, you already know that's false. BookBub can deliver a month of mind-blowing sales. For that one month, being a full time author looks like a real possibility. And then the sugar rush fades, and next month you're lucky to make $100. And good luck getting the same book into BookBub a second time. Some people master Amazon ads, but mastering it is hard, and you can burn a lot of money trying to learn. The SPFBO has a big audience, and winning that definitely has made a difference in people's writing careers. But a quick look at the "Champions' League" showed me only three books I even recognized, and one I had bought. So obviously winning SPFBO won't make you a household name either. The secret to being a full time novelist isn't out there. There is no one shot that will get you there. There is another secret, though: learn to love the joy of creation. Thrill with your characters as they pull off heroic escapes, as they defy the odds, as they rise in triumph. I am blessed beyond measure to have a real life job that I love. To me, being a full time novelist would be great if it happened, but it's not why I write for a couple hours every morning. I do that because I love the stories.

Couldn't agree more. All of @VincentAbnett's 40k work is fantastic. Of these two, I'd go Gaunt's Ghosts, hands down.

Oh, you know, just morning chores on the farm.

Just say No to chicken wings. Some good USMC Recruit Weapons Training

@JBudzien @rywilwrite Then it was a very good day. 💪

@rywilwrite I did not write any words of fiction today. However, I did have a post on annual books read start to get traction (3.2k views this morning), so I have spread the gospel of #DoomsdayRecon and tagged you as a reply to myself. We'll see if that has any effect.

I wrote words today. Words of fiction. Perhaps not my best words, and potentially words I’ll delete tomorrow, but words nevertheless.

@WH40kbestof Lost my mother this year, too. It'll get better in time. You're not alone.

I originally made this account for Warhammer content or just for fun—but today, I need to use it for something deeper. My beloved mother passed away. In this moment of grief, I’d be truly grateful for any prayer, kind thought, or word of comfort.

Cast of Aliens describing their experiences with guns. Fun fact, Al Matthews had in fact served in the USMC during Vietnam with several combat related awards and two purple hearts.

@sainimatic @SkyeSharkie lol

@rywilwrite I'm with you, sir. Empty nests are colder this time of year.

I resisted getting overly emotional and embarrassing my sons with awkwardly expressed fatherly feelings of love and pride and other such things. Please clap. (Of course now that they’re gone I’m a wreck.)

@rywilwrite Pepper says wassuuup.

Gus says hi.

Nothing tastes so good as a stranger’s 5-star review 📖💃

You can be an author any way you want. That's the beauty of being INDEPENDENT. New article is now live on Fictional Influence. fictionalinfluence.com/p/the-novel-is…