My Blood Runs Cold: An Objective Review

So I purchased the new John Castle booklet, My Blood Runs Cold, from Amazon yesterday.

I shall post my review here, without any consideration of the author's persona.

EDIT: The review can be found here and here.

Out of interest @John Castle , can this be purchased in hard copy (genuine question)?

I get too little time to read as it is, I don't think I'll bother myself.

This review is spot-on. It is certainly a book that one is able to purchase.

My first thought was that, at 41 pages and a price of $2.99, this is an awfully expensive booklet.

Black Sun Reich, a book from another Wordforge author, clocks in at 162 pages for $0.99.

Strangers From The Sky, also from another Wordforge author, clocks in at 416 pages for $8.99. Mind you, this book is backed by a professional publishing house hence the heftier price tag.

Doing some simple arithmetic (which I know will get me banned because this is the Red Room), My Blood Runs Cold costs about 7.3 cents per page.

Black Sun Reich costs a mere 0.06 cents per page while Strangers From The Sky costs about 2.4 cents per page.

So, without even going into the artistic merits of My Blood Runs Cold, from a very simple value-for-money perspective this booklet does not deliver.

I unfortunately left my Kindle at home this morning so my review of the booklet itself will have to wait until later today or tomorrow. At 41 pages, I should be able to read it in about five minutes.

Isn't this a J. Giles Band song?

My angel is the centerfold.

Amazon Prime members could get the ebook for $0.99.

And a £70 sub.

A one-year subscription to Amazon Prime costs $99. So, to save the $2 on the booklet price you would have to pay $99, which effectively brings the cost of the booklet to $99.99.

At that price, the booklet costs a whopping $2.44 per page!

You get one year free with the purchase of a kindle.

Any way it is worth it as long as you spend at least $100 a year on Amazon. The free shipping and reduced prices add up quickly. I also use the shit out of Amazon's video on demand service.

Yeah, the prime membership is a good deal, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it for the sake of one pamphlet.

If this is the one I'm thinking of, I read some of the free excerpt - it immediately annoyed me with the voice being done in a southern accent for all the narration. I got through about 3 paragraphs. I can't speak to the merit of the story itself, but for me it was not worth attempting to interpret that horrible accent for 1 page, let alone 40.

Maybe Maud would have liked it.

How do I obtain the free sample?

If you have a kindle, you can get a free sample directly from the ordering page. That will give you a better per page value than We Are Borg's approach.

I'm assuming you don't much care for the works of Mark Twain, then, either. Not making a comparison of anything except the use of dialect.

Um, no, I think he's saying that your use of dialect isn't as skilled as Twain's.

I try to support WF writers regardless of my opinion of them as posters.

That's not what it sounded like to me. To me it sounds like he just doesn't like a southern accent.

@Demiurge will have to confirm, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

Who does?

Still, a good review should list all of the price options since some of us do have Amazon Prime. I am sure I am not the only one.

Probably people in the south.

Here's problem number one with your writing: you assume all advice and criticism is superficial or in bad faith. You can never improve as a writer if you never acknowledge your mistakes.

The problem with the voice in your sample is that it's very, very poorly done. It reads like you never actually lived in the south or familiarized yourself with it, but rather saw a couple of movies 20 years ago and are going off of distant memory and sloppily combining it with some old-west you saw around the same time. It's truly awful.

Problem number two with your writing is related, and it's your lack of empathy. Just like you can't take criticism from others, you can't put yourself in other people's shoes. Every fictional character you write who isn't a fantasy version of you is bound to ring completely false because you simply can't imagine how people who aren't you think and feel about the things that happen to them in their lives. You really should stick with non-fiction, because this flaw of yours is fatal to your fiction writing abilities. It's something you'll never be able to overcome.

Okay, let's test this. Name the characters in the story in order of appearance. Wanna know why I'm testing? Because your criticism rings false. It mentions no specifics regarding the story you're criticizing. It's no more authentic than cold reading from a faux psychic.

John Castle is completely unable to accept that Mark Twain is a better writer. That pretty much says it all.

That has absolutely nothing to do with anything I've said. So hey, how much of this shit do you expect me to put up with before I end up at the end of my temper and you call it a "meltdown"? How about just for the novelty of it, you and your little flying monkeys don't continue to act like a lot of twats today, hmm?

I do. Very much so. I went to Atlanta, GA in January for a few days and essentially fell in love with every woman I heard speak.

Yabbut they all sound like idiots, with that accent.

You first.
I think you need to demonstrate the ability to act like a proper person before we treat you like one.