Sera

I can't speak about self-publishing. It's harder to see through it: how exactly it's being marketed, which strategies are successful, what sort of content has higher chances of succeeding. If the context (national market preferences, publisher quality, editors availability) plays a big role in traditional publishing, it weights even more in self-publishing. I can say that right now my country has an underdeveloped ebook market. Self-publishing in my native language first wouldn't help at all. You have a better idea of what works in your country, how self-publishing fares there and everything than all of us. Only you can decide the best strategy. Don't forget you can build a fan base in another ways. If you're taking the online route you have social networks to work with. If I were starting to build a strictly reader fan base today I'd probably keep a blog/page on writing, with perhaps some off posts on creative processes and related stuff, and I'd occasionally throw excerpts or very short stories there. It works for everyone? Nope, you need to be a blogger-type person. It won't work if you don't love it, people will see through it as an attempt to simply sell stuff. But that's just food for thought, one of the many uses of social networking.

I also forgot about this thread (I kinda dropped from the edge of the world actually), sorry for the late reply. Your Paulo Coelho mention brought a smile to my lips, since he's from my country. Is it possible to start in your own language and become an international success later? Surely! The issue is how unlikely it can be. Paulo Coelho was already big here, years upon years of writing. Then he got translated, and it worked, and the fact he got published in US fed into his national fame which fed into his international fame as well, if it's even possible. This man has a seat at the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the biggest honour bestowed upon a Brazilian writer. Yet he went bigger! He took risks! His career is exceptional. It shows you can get translated later and make it work. But it's exceptional. You won't find anyone else from my country experiencing nearly the same success. Even the moderately successful in the national market don't take off the way he did, they just remain moderately successful. To achieve something similar you'll need time, the right marketing strategies, a great book, and a dash of luck. In Coelho's case, going international had a great impact on his career.

Haha. Ideed, I felt it was better to watch it in one go. That's when I decided to wait it to finish airing. It only took me eight years to actually do that. Hm, trying to remember something good to add to this topic, and I can only remember the popular shows I watched recently and didn't like. Since I don't want to be lynched... Walking back in time, I quite enjoyed Attack on Titan. I had some problems with how the characters were presented—Eren is plot blackhole!—, and the contrived pessimism at some points, but the worldbuilding was so delicious I couldn't help to watch (then read) it. Oh, in the same worldbuilding vein, I loved Last Exile. Daaaw!

Landis, there's only a problem here: there might be no italian audiobook. The market varies from country to country. I.e.: Physical books are still pretty strong in my country, and you can see some ebooks now, but audiobooks are a rarity. There is no audiobook for Mistborn, actually, Mistborn is still being translated! They didn't release Hero of Ages yet, hah. I also suspect there might be restrictions to posting pieces of the audio—it's different than quoting text, it'd be an actual file. Not sure about the staff's views on this. Hence the suggestion to use the listen function in Google's Translate, so you get to listen the transcriptions Yata kindly provided. I can't speak for the quality of the Italian audio there, seems a bit slow. You might want use another text-to-audio, e.g.: http://imtranslator.net/translate-and-speak/speak/italian/ (I'm using Portuguese as my basis, it's okay and with the right cadence; italian might be. I'm no italian, after all.) Oh, and since you're building a dialect, this link might be of some interest. It's the annotation by Brandon for this chapter, with the meaning of the quoted conversation (except last line, I didn't transcribe it). I'm impressed by the Italian translation, it seems they referred back to these annotations to ensure the underlying meaning of the exchange wasn't lost in the translation.

Yeah, I think I stopped watching it when this spoiler reveals its relevance. I just rewatched the first episode over lunch and realized I should have given a small content warning here: things can get bloody. They don't use it for shock value, it's linked to the plot, but still...

And it's short! Perfect for watching without compromise. On a fun note, I had no clue it was directed by Watanabe until I started watching. I found the tone so familiar... It was a nice surprise. Hahaha, I had similar reaction! Considering how I couldn't find something grave against it my ultimate decision is "yes, I quite enjoyed it". Yes, it is satisfying to watch. Let me try to put my thoughts in order... - It's beautiful, for a start. - I think the characterization helped here. You won't find many flashy angst yelling teenagers in Zankyou, even the childish characters are collected and thoughtful. Someone like Lisa would be romanticized in another series, she'd be presented like Asuna from SAO. Nine and Twelve always have an edge of danger, if I had to compare them to a known character... I don't know, they remind me of Kelsier from Mistborn, split in two and taken in a different direction. It was refreshing, I'm sick of anime MCs archetypes. I watched Zankyou mostly to see why the characters were doing what they were, and to see how they would act in the situations they were pushed into. - I also appreciated the pacing. While it might annoy people used to shonens, it's the sort of pacing I'm looking for in a series. No "enemy of the week" which will fight the MCs to kill-them-yet-not-because-reasons to artificially raise the stakes. _______ Hm. I'm thinking about finishing Baccano!. I started to watch when it was first aired, but never got around finishing it. It was fun. Mafia, outlaws, alchemy and supernatural elements in the 1930s (and also 1700s). It's hard to follow at the beginning though, too many characters to keep track. Oh, it also has one of the most satisfying OPs I've ever seen. Can't put my finger on what made it so attractive, I suspect it was the successful pairing of the music with the animation, it set the tone just right. Squeezing 17 characters in that opening was a feat. (yes, 17. With names included.): +Random anime suggestion: Seirei no Moribito. It's a bit old now, from 2007, based on a fantasy novel. The protagonist is a spearwoman on her 30s, tasked with protecting the crown prince. It has a fairy-tale like tone, and slower pacing than a shonen. It was responsible for my love of spears as weapon of choice, and I actually wish it had more fights, because they're so mesmerizing.

I'm confused about the audiobook part. Do you wish to hear the audiobook passage or something? The thing is, as far as I know, an audiobook is directly based on the book. The dialogue won't change, if you get your hands on the book translation, you should have the equivalent to the audiobook. Other than English I have only the book version, and it's in Portuguese. It has shared roots with Italian, thus might be of some help. If you feed the text to Google Translate you can listen to a more or less okay pronunciation—though the speaker is tremendously sluggish. Examples from The Final Empire: Chapter 24 English: "Niceing the not on the playing without." (Spook) Portuguese: "Favor não brincar sem." (Spook) En: "Losing the stress on the nip. Notting without the needing of care." (Kelsier) Pt: "Perdendo força do aperto. Sem necessidade de cuidado." (Kelsier) En: "Riding the rile of the rids to the right." (Spook) Pt: "Enredar o enredo dos desembaraços do direito." (Spook) En: "Wasing the was of brightness. Nip the having of wishing of this." (Spook) Pt: "Sendo o ser da brilhanteza. Cortar o ter de querer isso." (Spook) En: "Ever wasing the wish of having the have." (Kelsier) Pt: "Sempre tendo que fazer isso." (Kelsier) They dropped the accent in the translation. I have no clue of where "wasing" comes from, no odd word equivalent was used in the translation. Some sentences read as unintelligibly as in English, others, due the different language structure, make perfect sense (e.g.; "Sem necessidade de cuidado.") and could be used in a formal context, sounding slightly terse at worst. It happens because our verbs inflections are a little more complex than English's. Our verbs make the pronouns implicit, allowing you to drop many of them* in Portuguese. I'm almost sure the same thing happens in Italian. *usually done at the beginning of the sentence, mostly for "I" and "you". We don't need to say "I like you", or "Did you see that?", we can say "Eu gosto de você" and "Você viu isso?".

Yeah, however, she says it in the prologue. It was the first (well, second) time Wax met her, when Wayne was still called a "boy", a time before she got her mysterious gift. Wayne could have picked it from her. Also, the utter lack of reaction from other characters to this expression makes me believe it's not that uncommon. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a Wayne worldhopper. I think he's my favourite Cosmere character.

Same. I'm afraid my tastes changed, I became more exigent and annoying or something. __ To be honest, I haven't watched many animes lately, besides Mushi-shi the only other one I kinda liked was Zankyou no Terror, though this one is from 2014. The characterization made up for a couple of plot holes, and the beautiful style was a plus.

Lessie says "God Beyond" in the SoS prologue.

Witchcraft! It's not only you. I can see it as well, and this page wasn't like this in the past. The page actually has the same margins, but it's absurdly stretched, having ~10k px of width. I peeked at the source code and it's caused by P_2(R )'s code at #4. The culprit is an empty paragraph at the end of his post, right under the names list. It's full of , blank spaces. I'm pretty sure it's the WYSIWYG editor acting dumb again, probably when the author edited his post last time. My sincere advice would be the staff getting rid of this editor and implementing a better one, since it's the second time I see a bug like this being caused by its failure to validate the "pretty" code. It worries me, stinks of vulnerability. Unfortunately, it's probably not feasible. If they add a simple overflow: hidden; to the .entry-content they could avoid this same problem in the future, though sicking random {overflow: hidden}s in the code can generate other issues, to not speak of the possibility of someone figuring out how maliciously exploit of the wacky validation.

They're clearly talking about duck sandwich. Inbreading is merely another way to refer to a dish composed by closely related slices of bread, as in from the same loaf. No?

He went out of his way to establish that Wayne ended the book unable to heal himself. It's a mystery whether it's a continuity error—Sanderson forgot to establish Wayne hadn't enough health stored to fully heal such injury—or despite wanting to end the book with Wayne wounded he thought it wasn't necessary to wrap up the metalminds' fate in the epilogue. The third alternative is that the missing metalminds are actually a tiny hook for the next book. Either something mildly relevant for some plot point, or a red herring.

Yeah, he was out of bendalloy. A quick search, though, suggests he wasn't out of health yet. Not sure if it's the last we read about his metalminds, but he said to MeLaan in the shack scene (where she talks about human flesh taste, and they're accompanied by Marasi): "Maybe I'm different. Wanna gnaw on my arm a bit? It'll grow right back, least once we find out what that monster did with my metalminds..." It's implied he had health. So, now I'm curious too. I can't see feruchemical gold being terribly useful for a kandra. I wonder if she simply discarded it when fleeing, if she gave it to someone, or if she burned it at some moment (though it's a very narrow window of time there).

I'm almost sure he had no health stored at this point—I remember it was foreshadowed a couple of times. Bleeder might have not known he exhausted his reserves. She was careful, but not omniscient.

Nope, the moss was for light. Harmony didn't want anyone to be trapped in the darkness of the Pits again. The holes where the crystals had once grown were all empty. Wax used them as handholds. I don't remember any clear statement about the Pits no longer producing Atium, but I'm inclined to think so based on what Wax saw (or didn't in this case) and other passages stating that the God metals no longer exist. You should re-read that part and do a quick search in the Ars Arcanum. It's possible you'll also find relevant information on what Harmony did to the Atium on the end of The Hero of Ages.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to call it "Ascendant Warrior" tomb instead? Not only it keeps a spoiler out of the title—I'm sure there are people out there who still didn't read the entire Mistborn trilogy—but it's more consistent with the in-book lore.

ARS Arcanum? "It should be noted that the inbreeding of the Feruchemists with the general population has diluted the power in some ways. It is now common for people to be born with access to only one of the sixteen Feruchemical abilities. (...)" Implicit: It's uncommon, but not impossible to be born with the sixteen abilities.

As soon I learned about Lessie's identity I asked myself why didn't she just get up after getting shot by Wax the first time. Then it dawned on me. Have you ever done (or didn't do) something and deeply regretted it later? Paalm had always been a good girl. Not only she did as she was told, but she made the possible to ensure success in her missions. Seducing Wax was her idea. He'd both be more willing to let her stick around and hear her if he fell for her. But she also fell in love, and she wanted to protect him. Wax loved the Roughs and was free there. Paalm refused to do as Harmony said, but she took no action either to alert Wax. She didn't want to antagonize Harmony, that would be unthinkable. She thought she could just keep living with Wax, perhaps she kept herself from thinking about the future, just wishing things would remain as they were if she didn't do what Harmony said, if she did nothing. But Bloody Tan happened. Harmony still needed Wax in Elendel, and he couldn't make Paalm change her mind. He didn't want to take over her either. I don't think he guided Bloody Tan from the beginning, at least he didn't led him to a murder streak on purpose. However, that happened anyway, and Harmony saw his opportunity. He used it. Harmony certainly saw or heard from Paalm herself that Wax and her had been held hostage against each other in the past. All he had to do at this point would be whisper "She's sneaking behind you. Catch her.", "He'll shoot. Move her." in Bloody Tan's ear when they set after him. It's the perfect solution to his dilemma. No innocent would actually die, and Paalm would be cornered: Rebel against God and also risk terrifying and grossing Wax out (besides the trauma of him having just shot her), or be a good girl and play dead? She chose inaction again. The deed was done already, she couldn't go against her "Father", who knew everything. I suspect that the intense emotion that "frees people" she kept talking about was regret in her case. She regretted not alerting Wax to Harmony plans in first place, and regretted buckling under pressure and playing along when she was shot. She wished she could turn back in time and take different decisions, but no matter how hard she wished it was impossible. She'd never have the same life she had at Wax's side, he probably would be angry at her, at her failure to do something, for "playing" him. She couldn't undo, and she was so furious at herself for making the wrong choices, at Harmony for placing her in this situation. She was furious for having thought Harmony was a good God, only to see him doing something so horrible to Wax she no longer trusted him. How long would it take for him to decide to take control over her? How better than Lord Ruler was him? What about her previous missions, were they truly the better choice? Or had she been doing terrible things as she just did to Wax all this time? She couldn't undo what happened, but she still could to something, a last thing. She could keep one step ahead of Harmony in this grotesque chess game, avoid him ultimately taking control over her. She took out her spike. ...then, she went mad. We don't know how proud Paalm was (putting the blame exclusively on others is a self-preservation mechanism), or how the mystery spike affected her, but I wish we had seen more of her internal conflict besides her anger against Harmony.

I suspected Innate as soon the focus shifted to protecting him, if not a little earlier when it became clear someone was trying to set the city on fire. If I were a deranged yet intelligent murderer possessing the ability to become anyone, where would be the best place to hide? Somewhere I had power and freedom of movement. I'd be someone no one suspected. No one suspects the victim. Later they might fear the victim being replaced—and replacing him would become harder, I'd no longer have easy access to him—, but they'll hardly guess it could have happened before the attempt on his life. They won't catch any behaviour change if they never get to know the original in first place, because all they'd know would be the impersonator. It was extremely convenient, and being the governor would allow to discretely set the city on fire without anyone interfering. You can say "no" to anyone but the governor. Bleeder also couldn't be sure about Innate's reactions to her attacks. Would he flee? Would he manage to do the right speech? Remember he managed to fool the population with promises in the past. He wasn't that incompetent, and taking the right actions would ruin her plans. He wasn't simply a risk, he was the biggest risk to her plans, she couldn't afford to let him run loose. It was the perfect solution. That's how I figured.

It's implied he's not flying in this scene, but Pushing to stand still at ten feet. I read it as if he just spun in place, simple as that. It depends on your understanding of Pushing, I guess. I've always read it as applying force on things, as in pushing the ground with greater strength to propel yourself upwards—aka jump. The magic would lie in doing it without touching the object you're Pushing, almost as if pushing by proxy (limited by range, of course). We're constantly pushing the ground to stand on our feet, yet we don't go sailing through the air due it. Same thing would happen when a coinshot stands on the air, he uses the appropriate Pushing intensity and stays still. For all intents and purposes, as long the coinshot keeps his center of mass in place, he's standing on the ground. Spinning depends only on his balance. His Feruchemy might help him to keep his balance; speaking from my own experience I suppose my low weight compensates for my inflexibility, allowing me to spin in place, jump to my feet from a lying position and perform dumb antics like that.

That's a first draft? It's so clean! I think a great part of the issues, including pacing on early pages, can be linked to Ahma's POV, and you're onto the origin of the issue with this POV already. At the risk of sounding prescriptive... and by no means I want to be prescriptive, it's simply what works with me as a reader, any example being a quicker and clearer way to express something: I realized every time I had issues with Ahma I was locked outside of her head. Sometimes it manifests as slower pacing when I hit passages that seemed to be an account of her life by an external observer. I got a quick taste of her emotional state—the same thing I'd be able to glean if I were looking at her face—but not enough reasoning, intention, thoughts. Other times it becomes antipathy. She sounded mean because I had no clue about her motivations or feelings at the moment (besides the "I'm having fun at your expense" feeling, which is quite unsympathetic on its own). I could, however, clearly see Benam's discomfort, and his POV bled into hers. Every reaction she had was physical, body language alone. That meant I, the reader, was seeing her through the eyes of the other. And who was the other in this scene if not Benam? I could see his feelings, I could read his motivation in this actions, and being able to see this while Ahma didn't acknowledge it made her extra unsympathetic. If she had acknowledged the effects of her words on him I'd have a completely different reading of her character. That she's a jerk if she didn't care at all, that she's emotionally awkward in some cases if she felt a pang of guilty, that she had an ulterior motivation if she felt it was well deserved despite any remorse she felt. In any case, I'd feel a stronger connection to her, not to Benam. She doesn't need to be always likeable to be compelling. The reader in me loves flawed characters and desperately wants to connect with the character I'm reading, may it be due an emotion I can relate, or seeing something so interesting I can't take my eyes off them. The writer in me, knowing its reader side, says you don't need to tune her background unless the impulse came from you alone, not based on a couple of earlier chapters feedback at least. Being careful to step in her shoes during her POV, kicking Benam's and Covelle away, might be enough. You pointed your engendered sympathy and I agree. It can be hard from other POVs if you allow yourself to wander to this side. Keeping a list of questions in mind might help you to better immerse yourself in Ahma's character as you write her. What does she see, how she processes what she's seeing, what led her to feel that way, which secondary feelings stem from this (e.g.: I'm happy someone tripped that annoying brat, and I'm a horrible, horrible person for feeling this way. I should feel awful and I don't!) , how she externalizes (or represses) these feelings. How she perceives the feedback to her actions? What does she see (literally), smells, hears, touch? Small wordsmithing note: Another thing that facilitated the POV bleeding was how the other customers were treated in Ahma's POV. She barely acknowledged them or their requests, except as an interruption of her interaction with Benam. It's good for plot flow, but effectively hung a spotlight on him, accentuating the accidental feeling that it's not quite her POV I'm reading. ___ My bad habit of overusing "but"s made them my top suspects when it comes to sentence skimming. I ought to say that this sentence I flagged curiously reads fine, it rolls and pauses on the right points.My only issue was the volume of information, and the cumulative effect of these. Yeah, in any case it's not a high priority flag in a first draft.

The painful wait...

I didn't read the prologue and first chapter, and I'll just parachute here. That was a fun read, I hadn't much trouble following the story despite missing the beginning. Since I'm not sure about which sort of feedback you're after I'll tell my reactions and the reasons behind them. Eh... My post became rather big, sorry about that. Promises I see and my guesses - Sword and magic fantasy story, with a possible subtle touch of modernity for flavour (a business specializing in washing and ironing clothing? Tastes like industrial revolution for me. I like that.). For now, I don't think it'll be a particularly dark story, it feels more like a classic. Your tone is very light, but if you decide to write darker passages it'll get grim quickly, since you use little humor and enjoy using your tools to create dramatic effect. - Ahma is a caster or is closely connected to them in some way. She has a lot to learn, and is likely to be the foolish, selfish young character who grows into a likable character after wreaking some havoc. - Benam will grow as a character, becoming more confident in himself. He's the level headed character, and the best fit for a leader. - Covelle will work with Benam towards a common goal. They'll be in direct conflict at first, but work out differences once they face a common enemy. It'll not be a road without bumps, though. Style, pacing I liked your style, I was sold in the first paragraph. However, I feel the pacing is too slow at some points. For instance, you describe Ahma's day almost step by step (pg 3). I understand that you wanted to give us a glimpse of the setting and also touch on some plot points like her motivation, casters, but I wonder if you couldn't do that in a different way. It felt too sparse, because the character wasn't fully invested in what she was doing (so I wasn't), and I can't see the relevance of some of her daily tasks to the plot. I, as a read, would be completely okay with you telling what she did in a concise way, particularly if you manage to weave it into the ongoing narrative. I know it goes completely against the "show, don't tell!" convention, but there are times when telling is useful, being a fantastic tool to mark the passing of time or even inject some emotion. Pg 4: I missed Ahma thoughts on casters. Is she curious? Does she fears them? Feels revulsion? The ladies clearly despise them. How does Ahma feels about their reaction? Does she agree, disagree, doesn't know, finds amusing, is bored by it? You're signaling it's relevant to the plot, but it's not relevant to the POV character. Once you switched to other POVs the story picked up more speed. Pg 17: The ending was unsatisfying. My understanding is that they were magically transported; my issue is not exactly ending in a cliffhanger, but how it came out of nowhere. Even the lack of a transition works as a transition ("I blinked and we where somewhere else"). Covelle led them to where? Back to the room? How would he not notice the change of scenery? No light change, no new scents, temperature drop, different acoustics. No double take. I missed the character reaction there, you simply dropped the bomb, telling exactly what the bomb was, then cut. I can't get a good grip on some of your sentences, they twist away and I end skimming. One of the reasons, I believe, is that some of them are trying to do too much at once. Example (pg 10): He’d have preferred not to run up four flights of stairs from the old quayside, but it was no strain, spending one’s adolescence in the rigging did that for a man, and he hadn’t squandered his fitness since. That sentence told me: He ran 4 flight of stairs (but he'd rather not) From the old quayside (but he's not tired; simultaneous implication that he's fit) He spent his adolescence in the rigging He's fit because he still trains That's a lot of information at once. It didn't allow me to properly catch my breath, and it has a beefy "middle" over which I invariably skim. Twisty sentences don't have a clear hierarchy of information, and they also create a fatigue that affects how you perceive the following sentences. They affected how I perceived the pacing. Characters Ahma - She had a romantic air when going about her routine. Having multiple occupations to raise enough money to achieve her goal earned her some points, but the effect was cancelled by the passiveness of her daydreams. I suspect it felt this way because she didn't actually made plans. Pg 3: "One day she would have a fine horse like the stallions the dukes provided to carry the mail. Then she could travel." sounds passive. Random active version: "One day she would have a fine horse (...). Will I raise enough money before the next horse fair? I wonder if that x horse race merchant will be there this year. She decided she'd buy a horse this time. He offered excellent deals, and she could rent the horse to someone to (...)" Placing leaves in her book to mark the passing of time is passive again, particularly if she's been doing that for years (and the leaf-book thing is what gave her a romantic air). Because it's not a concrete countdown it makes her either look like an unusually calm and collected person, or a procrastinator. "Someday I'll travel..." These two "I wish..." passages in a row lowered her agency, and perhaps made her slightly more incompetent as well; she's been about it for so long and yet showed us no concrete progress. Pg 9: Then, she talks to Benam. The moment Ahma opened her mouth her likability plummeted. Lots of crossed signals here. Her daily life suggested she's clever and romantic, but she was crude. That could suggest intimacy between her and Benam, and their shared acquaintance increased this sensation, yet she was extremely tactless in her treatment of him. It didn't fit. She certainly didn't improve his mood or cared to improve it, she was self-serving instead. After the talk she came off as someone selfish, if not nearly cruel. A caveat (pet peeve): Benam - Came off as a modest veteran. I like him, and I feel sympathy for him. Covelle - I also like him. Possibly my favourite POV, simply because he does things out of curiosity and has some sense of humor. Overall, I enjoyed reading this chapter. I'm curious about the magic system, curious enough it would be the main hook to keep me reading the book at this point.

They're nearly symmetric, fundamentally mirrored sections. I suspect the third bone is the result of a misalignment accident. The corner skulls aren't perfect squares. If the top corner skulls were horizontal like the bottom ones there would be a random negative space underneath them, and the jaws would protrude right over the map, becoming a distraction. So the artist flipped the skull, what nudged the center of the pattern. That would be so noticeable at the sides he decided to cut/extend one bone to make up for it. He probably hoped people wouldn't take a closer look at a simple patterned frame. =P He could probably rework the pattern of the cut/extended bones so they looked like their original pattern, but you know... Deadline, the archenemy of perfection.