Two Separate Paths: Looking at R. Brady Frost.

Why I find it fascinating to follow R. Brady Frost.

     Yes, I'm calling out a fellow writer whom I have known since High School.  To be fair, several years passed before we reconnected via Facebook, and I have seen his physical present since we were both young and skinny.  Well, he still looks kinda skinny.  We have however, had several moments of correspondence. Read each others work, and traded opinions here and there.

      We both have a lot in common.  We are both fathers who are tackling family, jobs, and other such things.  We both work in IT, (though he is well established, and I'm up and coming as I'm still in school.)  We also both face challenges on a weekly basis on getting our writing done as one would figure from the things mentioned above.

     There are differences too.  Brady is focused more on a Sci-fi path with his current work on Clorophyllium 9: A Final Hope.  And his short stories are more inspiration based than mine.  Well, he does have the zombie one, but his focus is in different areas, that are still fiction based, than I generally pursue.  I tend to focus more on fantasy, urban fantasy, and horror.  His attention to small detail in writing is something I would love to develop and emulate as I find myself often skipping the little stuff and having to add it in later.  I know he has mainly discovery written, while I like to outline.

     The biggest difference I see is that Brady seems focused on being self-published, while I am looking towards trying to be traditionally published.  Now, I say that fully realizing that I have short stories that I have written and put up on amazon.com.  For my book though, my full stories, I plan on trying to pursue traditional publication.  Brady has always (and I could be wrong) seemed focused on self publication.

     Now, there is nothing wrong with either path.  My pull towards traditional publishing comes from the lack of desire to have to work hard on marketing myself at this point.  I also am not sure about how to market myself beyond growing an internet presence and putting up the odd short story to hope I garner some attention.

     Brady has a great website rbradyfrost.com.  He has a podcast he has been working on at hunting the muse.  And is often a lot more present on social media that I manage to be.  His podcast has writing prompts on a weekly basis, and they are great for getting you to think about different ideas. He is constantly working on his writing and even has a book, COMA: The Cataclysm on his website so people can read and actively give him feedback.

     I compare that to the fact I tried to start a Facebook page for prospective writers, and it fizzled after a couple months.  I have wanted to podcast about things myself, but have never really sat down and banged out what I would need to do one.  I don't even know what platform I would go for, as writing is not the only think I would like to discuss.

    So why do I follow Brady and make comparisons? Well I will tell you.

    It fascinates me to see what he is able to accomplish with his time.  It gives me a standard to compare myself to, that is more realistic than looking at a published author such as Larry Correia or Jim Butcher.  Those folks are published and established.  With Brady I can watch him develop and achieve success form the ground up.  It makes him more relate-able to me.  Of course it helps that I remember him from when we were younger as well.

    I also watch, because as he finds success I can learn from it.  I already know I'm not great at sitting down and writing daily.  Though I do put out a good weekly word count.  I am constantly developing my stories in my head as I go through out my day, and I have goals I am starting to set and meet better than I ever have.

    So fellow authors, who do you watch and learn from?  Who are those you look up to that may not be already published big name authors, and why?  How do you learn from these folks?  How does that fit into your goals?

Ben Marble

Please drop by and visit R. Brady Frost at his website rbradyfrost.com and/or check out his podcast at hunting the muse.  You can also find his short stories at Amazon.com for your kindle or e-book reader.

As always, if you would like to support my clubbing of select baby seals, you can always purchase on of my short stories at Amazon.com as well.

Discussing alpha readers.

So, I had a unique experience this week.

     I am working on a short story that will soon be up on Kindle.  This one will bridge my other two shorts "The Choice," and "The Black Oak" and create a connection between them, while continuing Elias' story.  I'm very happy with this piece so far and I am enjoying having time between phone calls at work to devote myself more to my writing.  I look forward to getting some long awaited editing done once I get a pass for my laptop, and I hope to do NaNoWriMo again this year.

    To get feedback I let two of my new co-workers read through the short.  It's not a long piece, at the moment sitting at about 5.5k words and it's meant to be quick and to the point.  I made a point of actually not digging into details that weren't pertinent to the story.  And happily I got two levels of feedback.

    The first reader said he rather enjoyed it, pointed out a few punctuation issues I might need to work on but pretty much left me at that.  I enjoy getting the feedback and the praise and happily discussed my other two shorts a little with him, and he may pick them up on his Kindle  (If not, I'm not worried about it.)

    The second reader immediately started discussing very technical aspects of the fey, as they are part of my story, pushing about whether my demon was the christian version, more elemental, etc... etc...  He went into naming schemes, base roots of these different aspects and pulled things a lot deeper than I had an intent to go.  I found that fantastic but heavy feeling.

    I bring this up because these are both two kinds of Alpha readers you may get, and they both have great points, and bad ones.

   First of all, remember the first person you are writing for is you.  If you aren't enjoying it, question why and fix it.  Feedback is great, but measure it against your vision of the story.  Take everything you hear and consider it, but don't get married to any one idea someone else gives you.

    The first Alpha reader was great, but I didn't get anything constructive from him.  I am glad he enjoyed the story, but I was hoping i could at least get an answer to "was there anything that felt out of place, or glaringly inaccurate" Instead I got a warm response, and that's good but it doesn't help me improve.

    The second Alpha went the opposite direction and I was getting information overload.  While he had some great mentions and ideas I may add and use, a lot of the information he thought I needed at the end of the day does not fit my vision or the feel of the story I am working on.  I am not looking at giving people a deep discussion on the Seelie/Unseelie courts or spending a long time defining my demon at this point.  That is beyond the scope of the story I want to tell.  Some of the information is important and likely to be added, but if I double my word count just to go into tangents I'm really not treading the path I want.

    The point is, remember when you get feedback to balance it.  Look for good feedback but don't worry about taking it all.  I will probably share with both again in the future.  I will also be better prepared on how to elicit feedback, or temper it from each now that I know what to expect.

    The best alpha reader I have had to date, and I have to give him credit, is Brady Frost.  On the first book I finished for NaNoWriMo he gave me incredible feedback.  That book is still being changed and edited, and I'm hoping someday to mail him a signed copy so he can see all I did to it. He gave me great feedback, didn't push too much information, and spent a lot of time making great notes.  Part of the reason I want to finish that book and publish it, is because of his contribution to it.

    That is all I have for the moment.  If you have opinions or comments, as always share bellow.  Feel free to tell me I'm full of it, or add to the conversation.

Ben Marble.