My Blood Runs Cold: An Objective Review

Tell you what I'll do -- I'll just be your compliant little whipping boy. You all take all the cheap, halfwitted shots you want, indefinitely, and I'll just put up with it, indefinitely, the way absolutely nobody would. Does that suit you?

No, the problem is you.

Dance all you like, call me a dumbass all you like, but you may as well claim the sun goes round the earth and the moon is formed from cheese, but the sold truth and fact remains the problem is you. Always has been, currently is, and always will be.

Nothing will change that, some folk are locked into their orbits, unable to change, no matter how destructive a route that is likely to be. And you are, you poor bastard.

Also, @John Castle good luck with the writing career, I genuinely wish you well, I'll probably buy your book, but on here I'll go back to pretty much ignoring you, if I wanted to talk to walls, well, I have house with plenty of them

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it, already. I'm in control of all of you, none of you can be held responsible for engaging in deliberate provocation, you're all perfect little angels and I am the bad, bad man who refuses to just take the constant shit without retaliating. Oh, if only I was a good person, I'd take the bullshit for ever and ever and ever and never hit back.

If you think none of it is true then it just backs up what i said. Take it or leave it

By the way, im with ecky, i hope you do find a succesful career, it probably wont fix your many character flaws but i bear you no real ill will.

He "forgets" that he started it all way back when, because it doesn't work for his mythology.

Is that a threat?

As far as real comments on this book and your storm comment. He may have liked it, and he is a published writer, but I know for a fact he couldn't get it published till my friend agreed to edit it for him. Then it got published quick. If people are telling you to get it edited you might want to find a good editor, and take any advice they give.

He's right Castle.

I once asked you if you were interested in constructive criticism. You insisted that you were. Yet I've never seen you actively take any on board and, worse still, if you perceive someone to have an agenda against you automatically assume that what they are saying is nonsense. The only loser in that equation is you.

I admire that you want to prove people wrong, but you are trapped in a delusion that you can do it all by yourself and don't need to accept facts, reality or advice that may not be what you want to hear. It is to your detriment and nobody else's. In short, what @Stallion has pointed out very well is that you're your own worst enemy...and you refuse to accept it.

No disrespect to Storm, but Castle is using him as the benchmark and that is very silly indeed. That is not to take away from Storm's achievements or the quality of his work, but rather to accept the basic fact that he's not the last word in writing or publishing, and frankly it's unfair of Castle to put him on a pedestal.

I order to be successful Castle needs to appeal to potential customers, irrespective of what other writers think, and that's a fact that he refuses to accept.

The interview thread proves that it's you that's your problem. I posted the thread and then walked away, and in the interim you went into full meltdown mode without being poked any further. All it took was one question about something you posted on the board and you once again went on a hysterical rant. In the process you completely squandered any sympathy people had for you against my thread. You might want to think about that.

Castle sees Storm as a hero, because he has some similar political views but is respected and liked. The irony, is that Castle can't put two and two together, and see that it plainly means political views aren't the issue.

Castle worships Storm, and wants to suck his dick, but learns nothing about why one is a success and one is a complete failure.

Exactly. Frankly I see some of the views that Storm posts on FB and they're just so far from what I'd think that I wonder sometimes what we agree on. But the fact is that Storm, like most here, separates his politics with daily life and his views of people with different opinions. As a consequence it makes him a well rounded man capable of humility when necessary. He also a man who worked and continues to work to support himself and his family while he followed/follows his dream. His is everything that Castle is not, but poor Johnny boy just can't see it.

Kinda my point. Storm thought his books were great, but they weren't being picked up. He had to take some harsh editing to get the books up to snuff.

This. That's why I wrote him off. I actually bought his Smokeless book and reviewed his blog. While he was producing quality content on the blog, he wasn't doing it right. And when it comes to a successful blog while quality content is a necessary condition it isn't sufficient for success. I explained how important regular posting was (he'd go 9 days without a post then post 3 in a night) and that he should split his vaping stuff from his political and writing stuff (even went and looked up a few urls based on his smokeless title), why it was important, how to go about expanding his influence, the whole nine yards. I actually went into details and gave some good advice (I've only been doing this whole blogging thing for 4 years).

He completely ignored my post but that day posted a rant on his blog about he wasn't going to conform and be like all other bloggers, this was his blog and he was going to do it his way... blah, blah, blah, read it yourself:
http://johncastlewriter.com/2013/10/26/so-heres-the-dealio-emilio/

Okay. Lesson learned. If you offer advice he'll just spit in your face for no reason.

Oh, and the ironic part is that years later he's adopted almost all my suggestions. Too bad he blew his moment in the sun when Smokeless first hit the scene.

You're not the only person to suggest splitting the vaping. I said as much as well because anyone with a shred of marketing experience, which even people in my profession have to do, knows that you have to get in touch with your target audience and the way not to do that is to expect that audience to come to a rambling mixed bag and sort through it for what they want.

But, as usual, Castle thinks he knows better. But his problems don't end there. When it takes you months to write 40 pages and then you expect to earn a workable living from it, you've got some serious issues with understanding how things work outside of your front door.

I'ma let you finish your meltdown, but posts like the ones coming out of you kids just now? They're why I don't readily accept your advice.

Lemme direct your attention to somethin', Chup.

That's Gul... pulling a Castle, let's call it. I won't take his "constructive" criticism for the same reason I wouldn't expect you to take mine. And he's totally oblivious.

What do you personally define as "pulling a Castle"? In your mind.

Gratuitous vulgarity for the entertainment of its originator alone.

You don't accept it because you don't want to hear it. You perceive certain people as enemies and therefore assume every single comment is an attack without foundation. In actual fact there are a great deal of people here are smarter than that and while people do poke and tease you, it doesn't always mean that what they say to you is nonsense and not a valid opinion or piece of advice.

You're the one suffering mate, and sometimes you need to swallow your pride and listen to advice wherever you get it, even if that sometimes means having to listen to your enemies.

Actually there's more in that statement than you are claiming, and all you're doing is defaulting to the very type we are currently describing, rather than asking yourself why Storm has earned respect and you are loathed and pitied.

As for Ancalagon's gripe -- I actually did take your advice about the blog. You'd known if you'd been watching the blog; or, what did you expect? For me to come running into the room, bare feet slapping on the floor, yelling, "Daddy! Daddy! Come look!" Is that what you thought it'd look like? I told you at the time that I'd consider it, and think about how I'd go about implementing the change. That's what I did.

Don't care. If you sharpen it up and try to stab me with it, I don't care if the advice is solid gold.

This goes back to the original problem: I'm responsible for the way I'm perceived; you want me to understand that. But I do. What I want you all to understand is that the dynamic works both ways. I treat "constructive" criticism as an attack because that's how it's being fashioned.

Notice the difference in my reaction to gul as opposed to my reaction to mburtonk? One is being a shithead, the other is not. I react to one as if he's being a shithead, and react respectfully to the one who's not. There's a lesson in there somewhere...

Fine, but only you lose with that attitude.

But we aren't the ones whose lives are failing and come on here seeking feedback. If you can't see the distinction then more fool you.

Like I say, even if someone is being a shithead, it doesn't mean there isn't still something to be found in what is being said....and, let's face it, most of the criticism you get is consistent across a great deal of folks.

And yet, mburtonk is even less interested in helping you than Chup or I. Basically, the statement that Castle is putting out, is that he'd rather harm himself than take good advice if he doesn't like the source. That is an astonishingly bad plan for somebody so filled with hatred.

You may also have noticed that when it's not overbearingly shithead-tastic, it does get acted upon. Like the price of the first installment of the book. Yep, that was objectively too high, and it got changed. I did also mention that there's been some content editing. When it's presented as constructive criticism, it gets treated like constructive criticism.

On the other hand, there are for example Liet's "contributions" to this thread. Why would I treat his posts as anything other than useless crap? There's nothing in them but that. And if I lose with this attitude, tell me: What exactly am I losing? The approval of people like Liet? Never had it. Won't miss it.

Well, fair dos on the price change, albeit that is really was beholden on you to research prices before putting it on sale. As for editing, who is doing it?

Well, just this past hour @Ancalagon reiterated our advice that you should split your fiction writing from your vaping blog. Is that nonsense as well? Look at the page that Anc linked to. Achieved anything for you has it?

The only difference between my criticism and the other criticism you get in this thread is that you've firmly convinced me that you're a lost cause, that you can not change to be a better fiction writer. There's no real disagreement at all among the people criticizing you about what the problems are with your writing, nor is the disagreement all that significant about the extent of those problems. If you read my criticisms and you see something different than you're getting from everyone else then you are not reading carefully at all.

Learning to read carefully, by the way, would improve your writing immeasurably. You have these ideas in your head about how the world should be and anything you read that contradicts such notions of yours gets glazed over at best or willfully misinterpreted at worst. If you can't read closely, if you can't understand what other people are saying and thinking about the world around them and about your writing in particular, then you'll never be able to generate a significant audience for your writing.

I take quite the ribbing from people over my Bronyness, though it's in good fun most of the time, and if you don't think people chew me out and give me a piece of their mind, you don't remember some of the Help Desk threads we had. People disagree with me all of the time, and even if they didn't, it's not like I'd exact vengeance on them. I mean, yeah, when I rule the world with an iron fist and mandatory smiles, there will be dissenters culled in the locust pits, but for everyone else, life will essentially be the same.