#DinoHyde | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jaywrites101 · 2 years

Text

So, we got your feedback

When I Blazed the advertisement post for my book The Wingman, I got a lot of positive feedback: from the black mc, to the fresh idea of following a homeless man who stays homeless in the end... It was pretty gratifying for me to get such good notes! But there was one criticism that kept reoccurring: the cover.

Now, I'm an adult. I've been online for a while now, and I thought I understood where this was coming from. Eighty percent of this hate is people just being put off by the idea of Blaze and hoping that, if they complained enough, Tumblr would remove it. Sure.

But then we found this unnamed expert who opened our eyes to the REAL problem!

Oh, right! It's the kernelling, duh! How did we not see it? Clearly, the font and the colorations were just ALL WRONG!

And you can't have a standard font with automated spacings! You need to hand-do that stuff, or people will think you published a book by yourself!

And they're right! So I talked with my illustrator, and we worked together to come up with a solution. For the kernelling AND the quality of the artwork!

See? Much better, right? The kernelling is now 100% hand-done, and you can see for yourself that having it fixes every problem people had with the cover! And that legibility is just so much better!

But I thought we could surpass our limits!

So we did.

The kernelling comment really impressed to me that the problem was just that a hand-drawn style—no matter how gorgeously done it was in five-year-old-kid authentic CRAYONS this time!—doesn't really look good. It doesn't sell that my book is a nitty-gritty serious book for adults! Why it looks like it might be made for children—Perish the notion!

It's the same reason you can't buy hot-pink cars. Other adults might laugh at you!

We can't have that!

So we went to work on a cover that reflects our mature and serious tastes as consummate professionals:

How about that! Now with 95% less color!! This is a cover you can take to the office with you. It just screams I do tax work for fun! With this book in hand, the guys at the office will feel outright inferior to your vast intellect! Girls will be indubitably impressed by your refined tastes. And ladies, if guys see you reading this book, they'll be so intimidated at your agglomeration of literature that they'll leave you alone! And yes, this is 100% hand-done kernelling too! What a savings!!! ...

but...

Gee... I don't know... something just feels... missing.

It felt like we needed some passion! So we went ahead and borrowed from the Romance Genre of book covers to make a third design.

You're welcome.

HAWT!! Now that's how you do a book cover! It's just so original and steamy!

But, oh nose! Now we can't decide which is the best cover to use!

Now it's up to you to vote on which cover is your favorite! Leave a comment or reblog with your thoughts. If you haven't seen it (or just want a reminder), the original post can be found here or you can buy The Wingman at any of these outlets:

Barnes & Noble, ThriftBooks, Bookshop.org, BookFinder, or Amazon

Below the cut is my serious review of using Blaze to advertise The Wingman. Read it to see if Blaze is a good fit for you! This parody of Clinch Cover's Art was made in part using free Unslpash stock photo's by Justin Essah, Meg Jerrard, and Mathew Schwartz.

Okay, now that that's over—serious business time! As you may know, I bought the largest Blaze package at $150.00 USD for approximately 50,000 impressions. This was in effect from Thursday, April 21, 08:38 to Friday, April 22, 08:38.

Overall, I got 58,193 Impressions. This broke down into: 239 likes, 50 reblogs, 7 comments (a few of them were my own.) 1 Follow (which was probably due to me adding them first) and 11 shares off of Tumblr.

I had two people purchase The Wingman. One print, one e-book. Meaning I had a net loss of about $130.00USD. And the post I Blazed has had precious few notes on it since Blazing.

What does this mean to the book industry? Well, it means advertising sucks. For one thing.

We meticulously combed the meta qualities of my serious post to be widely appealing and upbeat (qualities that get lots of reblogs). I know many people think that means I was cheating, but keep in mind—despite gaming the meta content to be marketable, I lost money. This, unfortunately, tracks with similar experiments done on Facebook and Amazon. If you're trying to advertise your stuff as an indie artist/author—DON'T! Tumblr is selling about the same impressions that other sites are using at about half the cost... actually, less than that, if you take in the fact that people find Tumblr advertisements amusing. It is important to note: This was NOT a high traffic day, so doing a similar experiment on a Friday/Saturday may yield slightly better results. Tags are a roulette. I did my best to tag appropriately, but there is most certainly a better method to utilize tagging. I did not follow up with a second Blaze on the same post to see if the extra advertising would reach different people. I suspect it will, but we deemed it too risky to Blaze the same serious advertisement twice. Ideally, an advertisement builds goodwill so people will like you; ours had mixed results on that front. A second Blaze would've stretched people's patience too much. Especially since there appears to be Blaze purists who want Blaze to only be used to meme on people.

Overall, being a novelist is harder than ever. At least with image art, the artist's work gets to speak for itself. The Art of Writing has to evolve, and the Art of Storytelling is trending toward shorter one-off posts or things in which other users can participate.

TL;DR: It's better to use Blaze to advertise yourself than it is to go anywhere else. But Blazing alone will not help you market your books. Expect to lose money.

2K notes · View notes

jaywrites101 · 2 years

Text

How One Black Homeless Man Became His City's Wingman—A Superhero Story

Sam Farsight has a plan to end gang violence forever. Or at least, he did before it all backfired and the biggest gang lord threw him off a building! No one could've known that the wings would appear, saving him from smacking face-first into the pavement. And now? No one CAN know.

Sam Farsight is dead, and the man who’s here now has a long way to go before anyone will call him a hero. Quickly labeled as his city's biggest nuisance, he'll have to work hard if he wants to compete with the other vigilantes in town.

Can The Wingman catch his city before it falls?

Order your copy…

… At Barnes & Noble!! … on The Evil One, I have to include because they own the world Amazon … at ThriftBooks! … at Bookshop.org!!! … or find more options on BookFinder!

410 notes · View notes

jaywrites101 · 4 years

Text

The City In FreeFall: Chapter Four

This is part of my ongoing Beta for my new book The City In FreeFall, slated to be released sometime early in 2020. New chapters are released here and on AO3. Special shout out to my StreetTeam members: @ciestess and @leave-her-a-tome for their advanced reading and suggestions. On to the story! Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Beaten, bruised, and broken. Oh yeah, today was going exactly according to plan…

I made it through the front door of our apartment and immediately stumbled towards my bed. The alarm clock next to the bed read 1:48 in bright, red numerals. I wasn't failing Math, so I did a few mental calculations. I had to be at the warehouse by 8:30, which meant I'd have to leave the house by 7:00 at the latest. That left five hours to sleep and set the third part of my plan in motion.

The agonizing pain in my lungs reminded me that five hours wasn't nearly enough time to recuperate. Stupid lungs. They should know better than that by now.

As I approached the bed, everything went dark. I could vaguely feel myself collapsing, in a numb, underwater sense. I was well past my breaking point, but this was different. My mind was still running at top speed, even though my body was failing. Last time I blacked out, it happened too quickly for me to process what was happening. This time I was aware enough to be afraid of it.

I woke up tied to a chair. On top of our apartment. Leaning over the precipice.

I panicked! The sight of the street below filled me with adrenaline. I threw myself against the straps, completely disregarding my previous injuries. But an orange, scaled hand stopped me from leaning forward.

I thought he was a myth! But that hand was real. The sun setting behind him burned right in my eyes! He pushed my chair further and further back despite my protests. My heart was trying to beat itself out of my chest. Wind tousled my hair while I screamed. Once again, I couldn’t stop myself from looking down. The ground was so far away, the pedestrians below were like ants on a picnic table. My eyes were glued to the asphalt twenty stories straight down.

With a herculean effort, I forced myself to look back at the thing in front of me. Burnished orange scales broke up his silhouette. Humanoid, but not human. His head--Oh God! There was nothing human about that head. Bulged over with a massive lower jaw. And at the top. Two glowing crimson eyes. It was like staring into the depths of Hell and seeing that Hell was staring back!

Movement behind him drew my attention to his tail. It twitched aggressively. "What do you know about Warehouse 15!" he growled. His voice! Even now, sitting alone in my cell, I shiver just remembering it. It was a low growl, impossibly loud! It was the voice of a dragon.

This was DinoHyde.

"Don't kill me!" I pleaded.

"Wrong answer!" he roared in return. With one hand--one--he pushed the chair all the way over the edge. I thought for sure I was about to fall. But the monstrosity still had hold of the back of the chair. Even as all four of the legs swung out into space, that grip held the chair in place. The straps cut into me. Slicing my already bruised body with every shudder.

"Y-you won't kill me--You can't kill me! DinoHyde n-never kills people." At this point, I was pleading more to myself than to him. He pulled me up, just enough to force me closer to those wicked eyes.

"What do you think happens to those people who mysteriously disappear in this city?"

"They were killed by the gangs?"

DinoHyde didn't answer. He didn't need to. I'd heard the tales in the Heap. We all did. Stories that a wild dinosaur was cloned in a lab and exposed to human DNA. No one really believes it. We all grew up just outside that lawless age where vigilantes took up arms to keep the peace. Most of us just assumed DinoHyde was just another vigilante dressed up in a spandex suit.

Those scales seemed real to me. Somehow, those eyes bored themselves into my skull and pulled out my greatest fear from the deepest recesses. Tears burned their way out of my eyes. Even my mantra was forgotten.

"What do you know about Warehouse 15!" he asked again.

"I-I don't know anything about Warehouse 15," I cried, expecting to fall at any second. "It's just an abandoned Barron Corp storage site. I needed to find a place the SmashStones and the BloodBlades could go wild without getting anyone else hurt! That's it, I swear!"

DinoHyde seemed taken aback. He blinked his eyes a couple of times, at any rate. "You're not working for Lawson?"

"Who?" The name struck a chord with me, but I couldn't place it. I certainly wasn't working for him, whoever he was.

DinoHyde seemed to sense the truth. More confirmation of his supernatural powers. "It's not important," he said. He paused for a minute, his head cocked unnaturally.

A breeze blew around me. For a moment, I actually thought he was going to drop me. But the moment passed and DinoHyde swung me around back onto the roof. I was stuck facing away from the mutant vigilante.

I craned my neck so hard I swear something popped, but I still didn't get a good look at him--he just stepped into my blindspot no matter what I did. "You should be in school, kid," he said. His voice was still gravely, but much less harsh. He still didn't know what to make of me.

"I'm not going to school anymore. I'm not going ever again," I returned stubbornly. God, I was such a prick.

"You don't know what you're playing at."

"How can you say that? We're on the same side!"

DinoHyde growled. "You're not on anyone's side, kid!" His voice returned to that deep reverberating tone that scared me so much. "You've made enemies of everyone in the city what with the stupid stunts you just pulled! Stealing a cop car, joining the SmashStones, marching right on up into the BloodBlades stronghold--it's a wonder you haven't killed yourself already!"

At the mention of my heroic deeds, my injuries started throbbing again. In addition to the busted ribs and the hole in my chest, I also had bruises on my back that stung like acid, a tender, itchy line across my throat, a cramp in my left leg, and a collection of cuts on my arms and shoulders. "I guess I just don't have the talent for dying."

DinoHyde smacked at the back of my head lightly. My vision doubled as my eyes crossed from the pain. Add one concussion. Lovely.

"Give it up, brat. You don't have what it takes to make it in this line of work."

"Screw you!" I spat indignantly. "You know, i-if you were out protecting people instead of throwing kids off building tops, I wouldn't have to be here, a-and my friend would still be alive!"

You know, I didn't think I was doing anything particular by bringing the conversation around to Jerry again. It took me by surprise to realize I meant it this time. Seeing the myth right in front of me… Damn… That gave me someone to blame. Someone besides the gangs. After all the lies and half-truths… This was real. And it hurt. Like a bitch.

I bawled for a solid minute. I've never been any good at handling grief. Even now it's easier to just escape into the past and forget the last couple of days… forget what's happening to me.

DinoHyde let me cry. He waited for me to calm down before he said, "I was sorry to hear about Jerry." That was it. No nonsense, or he's in a better place now like all the other adults kept repeating.

Just, sorry.

"He was a good kid,” DinoHyde continued. “Smart. Honest. I wish I could've stopped what happened to him."

"THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU!" I shouted. "You're the monster vigilante! You're the one going around playing hero! Why didn't you--or any of the others--protect him!"

I expected him to smack me over the head again, or maybe tell me off for being a brat. I would've deserved either. But instead, DinoHyde just made an odd wheezing noise that I eventually recognized as a sigh. "It happened in the daylight. I can't operate so freely during the day."

"Whatever," I huffed. I wasn't ready to forgive him so easily. "As soon as you let me go I'm going to clean up your mess for good. There won't be any more kids in caskets."

"It's not that easy."

"Well, maybe you just haven't been trying hard enough!"

DinoHyde spun the chair around into the setting sun once more. He towered over me, those red eyes blazing. "Listen to me kid! What you're doing won't work. The gangs aren't just going to kill each other off just because Sam Farsight has a grudge against them. All you're going to do is start a war that'll burn down this whole city."

I dug my toes into my shoes and forced myself to stare anywhere but at his eyes. The building next to us had a park on its roof. Empty, of course. Most buildings locked their roof access at sunset. It was--

"Sunset…"

"What are you going on about now?" DinoHyde asked.

"It's sunset! And none of the buildings near my apartment have a park on them! Where am I? What time is it??"

DinoHyde huffed. "Relax, kid. We're near the docks, and it's only 7:30-ish."

I quickly ran some more mental calculations. "There's still time, but I've got to hurry. Are you going to let me out of this chair?"

"I will. But I won't help you. What you're doing is suicidal. Both Cutter and SmashStone will be pissed. Even I can't take them both on at once."

"That's fine," I snapped. "I didn't want your help anyway."

"This isn't a game, brat!" DinoHyde growled again. (He does that a lot.) "If you go through with this they will kill you. And I won't be there to save you."

"Then I'll die!" There was something in the force of it that gave the vigilante pause. Conviction, plain and simple. I knew the dangers. But that wasn't going to stop me. "At least I'll die knowing it wasn't in vain. Knowing that I made a difference."

"Kid…" DinoHyde began. But he stopped. Making another one of his strange sighs, he reached behind me and unbuckled the straps that bound me. I wasn't going to stay and chat. I was already limping off to the door.

"Kid!" he tried again. "Listen to me--look, there's a better way. A proper way. Just back down from this madness and I'll--"

"I don't want your help! I'm doing this my way. I don't want anything to do with you!" I limped down the steps, all twenty flights of them. DinoHyde didn't follow after me. I don't know what he did after I left. I didn't care. Was I reckless? Yes. Was I stupid? Yes. Do I regret my actions that day? Oh, most definitely. Did I care at the time? Nope… I was convinced I had things figured out. DinoHyde was just one more test of my resolve.

#The City In FreeFall #book #super powers #superheores #fantasy #StreetTeam #my writing #support authors

3 notes · View notes

jaywrites101 · 5 years

Text

My Process

Since I’m starting a new WIP after finishing A Treasure Made of Death (For purchase here.) I have the unique opportunity to share with you my process as I write it.

For reference, I believe this method is called the Planster process, but if you’re normally a panster kind of writer who doesn’t plan at all, you might still find this helpful to think about.

So if you’re a newer writer just getting started, or if you just want to keep up with me and my WIP’s: Here’s how I generally write my novels:

First: I come up with an Idea.

This normally is just a basic thought like “A dude with a dragon that turns into a sword.” or something ridiculous like “A race of cat’s exploring the stars.” Both of which are actuall WIP’s that I’ve stalled for some reason or another.

My Idea page for The City In FreeFall, can be found here.

The finished product rarely looks similar to the idea page. Some elements will naturally transfer, but in general, this is only expected to be a note to yourself what kind of story you’re wanting to write.

Next: We’re going to do a little bit of worldbuilding.

Take some time to think about how long or short the story is going to be. Do you want your story to be super long? Will it be a short story?

Where is your ending point? When will the story stop? These are things you’re going to want to know before you begin the project.

The City In FreeFall, is going to be a collection of twenty (20) short stories that make up one full story.

Create a Character list: This list should be the minimum characters you’ll need to tell the story. These names don’t have to be set in stone. The purpose of this list is to find all the necessary character roles and have them filled.

So you’ll need your protagonist, his/her friends, the antagonist, and his/her allies, and any other character you’ll need to reach the ending point of your story.

The Character List for The City In FreeFall is as follows:

Protagonist: Sam Farsight, The Wingman

Brolly Barron: DinoHyde. A millionaire businessman by day, vigilante by night.

Randal "The Catcher" Dreg: FBI agent tasked with bringing in the vigilantes.

Commissioner Halbert: Leader of the local cops. Neutral force.

Filbert "The Rat" Warren: Dirty police captain. In league with petty villains.

Eugene Dippett: The Auditor, an ordinary paper pusher with a penchant for managing multiple criminal enterprises and hiding their paper trail.

Laney Jane: The love interest.

Victoria "Vicky" Barron: Brolly's younger sister.

Harla Troy: Community leader of a Homeless group.

Pastor Decklan: Leader of a Baptist church. Cultist by night.

Imam Shareed: Leader of a Muslim mosque, a suspected terrorist. (Actually, his alter boy equivalent is the terrorist, but he's using his Imam's name.)

Mr. Lawson: Brittish CEO edging in on Barron's company.

Silvia Lambert: A tec-expert who runs a legitimate computer repair shop. Ex-Hacker.

Bob: Sam's friend who knows his secret and helps him from time to time. Homeless.

The Dawson Family: A family of people that The Wingman saved several times. They sometimes let him stay in their apartment during the day.

Berry Dillmore: A train enthusiast. Operates a subway train.

The Pocketteer: A pickpocket who dabbles into higher crimes.

The Pulsar: A mercenary who stole a pair of wavelength manipulation gauntlets and switched careers to petty crook.

The Bullet: A petty crook turned mercenary after showing a talent for shooting people with a sniper rifle.

SeaBreeze: A mutated woman who pained aquacenisis when she was struck by a meteorite while surfing.

Tesla: A man obsessed with creating infinite electric power. Real name unknown, his illegal experiments often put the city at risk.

Judge Patterson: A justice of the peace who hates vigilantes with a passion.

Matt Brine: The local DA

Lovett & Blake: a law-firm employed by The Auditor to aid criminal activities.

Marvin Klien: A public defender in the service of The Auditor to clear smaller criminals without drawing suspicion to Lovett & Blake.

Sara Beckett: An honest public defender who hates vigilantes.

Martin Beckett: Sara's husband, an amateur vigilante named The Runner. Works at a bar.

Cutter: The leader of the BloodBlade gang in the city.

SmashStone: Leader of the SmashStone gang in the city. Mega strength.

Blane Cook: an international mercenary with a hobby of shooting birds, and vigilantes.

Harry Brigess: The Auditor's fixer. intermediary with the criminal heads of the city.

Adam Maddly: A common crook on his last chance. Has a family that's long since given up on him.

The Grenadier: A mercenary obsessed with explosions.

HotShot Lagoon: A part-time vigilante with a bow. Easily manipulated.

Marry Poole: A drug dealer.

Looks like a lot of people? It’s a big story. These are the minimum characters I’ll need to reach The End Point. Maybe, I’ll end up cutting a few characters, or combining a few. But it’s more likely I’ll end up adding more as the story progresses.

Typically bundled in the same package, the next step Chapters and Titles gives you a rough estimate of how your story is going to play out over the course of the writing.

So if your story is going to be ten chapters long, you fill out ten spaces and write in what plot beat goes into this point.

You can remove the Chapter titles at any point, especially if you’re writing a short story that is not large enough to justify full chapter titles.

Chapter and Title for The City In FreeFall:

The Day I died.

Tesla's Coil.

Terror and Terrorists.

The Manhunt and How I escaped.

The Mercenary

The Problems with HotShots

The Auditor

The Pulsar

Put a Pin In It.

The Wingman on Trial.

DinoHyde's secret.

Homeless.

The Church's Basement.

A Flightless Bird.

Tesla's Gun.

Saving the Life of Addam Maddly.

The Gang War Begins.

The War to End All Wars.

One Last Fire to Put Out.

The Day I'm Going to Die.

Again, These titles are to be considered as placeholders. If something better comes up while you’re writing, or if you decide to add an extra beat, you can change this master list on the go.

As I put more work into this WIP I’ll add more posts like this one. Let me know what you thought by liking, reblogging, and leaving a comment. This WIP will have an open Beta, meaning everyone will get a chance to read, comment, and leave criticism for each chapter of the First Draft as soon as I finish them.

If this kind of story tickles your fantasy, Share the Love!

#writeblr #new #story #writing #superhero #support authors #my writing #words #writers #amwriting

8 notes · View notes