DREAD Reviews 7 (& a Poll)!
Dad Reads and Examines Authors while Distracted
DREAD Reviews Table of Contents (Searchable)
DREAD 5 DREAD 6 DREAD 7 DREAD 8 DREAD 9
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Why do we write? Well, as a historian, I find the answer to be quite simple: boredom. It’s been 10,000 years since the birth of agriculture and we still don’t really have a clue what to do with our free time.
It doesn't help that in just the past 2000 years the invention of sewers, steam engines, electricity, and refrigeration expanded the average free time from 50% to 98% of daylight hours. Heck, we had to find religion and invent the imaginary concept of currency just to get folks to stop spending the whole day mast…icating. Also, don’t underestimate the potato - bringing it to the old world ended one thousand years of population stagnancy in Europe. You can take my word for it or read 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (and its sequel - very imaginatively titled 1493. Just be prepared for two thirds of each book to be about potatoes).
2% of the population is doing all the hard work of establishing a paper-thin veneer of prosperity which is all that comes between between you and starving to death in 3 weeks. So, why not beat back this horrible thought and write? You may do it for fun, but deep, deep down, you still hope a shiny coin or two rolls your way, because let’s be honest; if the farmers ever quit, mom’s garden will only extend your withering misery a year or two.
On the topic of shiny coins, let’s watch a successful guru describe how to self-destruct your credibility and guarantee you will never have a future as a fiction writer with this one simple trick. Unlike him you are not a nonfiction clickbait artist, and even if you are, chances are high you won’t have the stamina to do absolutely nothing except invent baloney and grift year after year on substack. Mr. Pearce, God bless him, has been rewarded by his strong and consistent work ethic stretching back two years on substack and even more on LinkedIn. His entire post history targets desperate writers who want money and want it now. He rehashes synthesized research and promises neo-like insight into algorithms. Every post ends with a link selling a class that’s about to close - but wait, it’s open again. Sign up during this limited time!
“I talked to 21 best sellers” who?
“I analyzed 300 posts that did xyz” thorough examples please?
“Successful writers challenge a deeply held belief” Yes, this little gem comes up in every other post it seems. Let’s see real posts where this worked - and on posts where it didn’t, an analysis how they are different?
I would love to see this successful gentleman’s actual writing, too, I mean shoot, this guru must be writing something amazing somewhere! Why is he hiding it? Either he builds up his vast knowledge secretly on the side under a pen name, or he came screaming into this world knowing all about writing before he lifted one tiny baby finger (or maybe he learned it from writing resumes).
How about a poll! What do you think Mr. Pearce writes during his off time? Fiction or nonfiction? Wait, before you go down a search rabbit hole, I’ll post his profile picture - perhaps we can deduce it from this handsome mug alone. Oh man are you ready? just be warned, this gentleman leaves three buttons on his shirt open!
I’m betting the combined brainpower of all 3.5 of my readers nailed this poll! But why are we sitting around guessing? Go pay for his masterful teaching where I’m betting you’ll see his data and have all your questions answered. It’s only $197 $37! And look at this, next to it is a One-Time-Offer for a LinkedIn growth playbook for only $27 (with a little red flashy arrow pointing at it)! He’ll show you the secret to getting a remote dream job earning 100k a year where you’ll work only 30 minutes a day in your pajamas:
Ever hear the saying “I could kick your butt with one arm tied behind me?”. Well this particular monster laughs and says: “That’s lame!” It then sprouts vampire wings and leaps straight out of its legs (yup, just a torso now). Then it eats your organs (and your fetuses if you have any). If you’re lucky enough to survive, it’s only because it left you a chest-burster as a gift - it literally regurgitates a black chick into your mouth. Alien, you’ve got serious competition. Brilliant.
Jessica showed up on my feed to share this with me. She didn’t stop there, though, she wrote a short story about it too. Thanks to her, herpes isn’t what I’m most afraid of at seedy dive bars anymore. Wait… that came out wrong:
Need an inspiration pit stop? I have good news: the price tag for new tires of wow? Free. We live in a beautiful world - no, a beautiful universe - and Kenneth can screw it on for you in 7 seconds flat:
Max comes into your house. He seems winded, and his heart rate is elevated. He pulls out a sharp knife then says: "First we’ll go for a jog, then I’ll cut up your brain.” He’s doing you a favor, he explains, and his argument is convincing:
Ah, marching out wet into the great outdoors with nothing but a damp towel to protect your balls from the freezing cold. Clancy demonstrates how men will do whatever it takes - even behave like sad, lost puppies - to find love:
Ignore the clickbait title as the maleness of vain rage topic won’t be approached a single time here. Instead, dive in for a sincerely fascinating account of a car crash and how it reminds us that fortunately Darth Vader didn’t raise Luke and Leia:
Killing me softly with her song... IN SPACE:
Wow, I’m a jerk in this! And it’s totally accurate: I’m practical, protective, blunt, and greatly concerned about things like time travel and financial stability. I try my very best to protect my loved ones from falling into quantum wormholes - you never know where you’ll end up. You could appear on the deck the day the Titanic sunk! At least Emma’s only having a fling with some chum named Emmerson, whew! Imagine if I had to compete with a young Leonardo DiCaprio:
Remember that nerdy four-eyes you bullied in school who then went on to start a tech company, made millions, then married and divorced four different women over a span of 15 years with each one being five years younger than the last? Man, I hated that kid, too. Giving him wedgies with you was what I most looked forward to every morning.
We’re much older and more mature now. Plus, he has at least three retired special operators in his security detail (I’m pretty certain that fourth guy just got hired for his size). That’s why we don’t pull that kind of prank anymore. But being so poor makes me miss the old days! Wait, Jane has an idea:
This might as well come at the end as a self-promotion. Where would we be without jerks like Fritz Zwicky? I mean just look at his name, you just know he’s a giant son of a gun. Even I’m jealous how many consonants his name has in it. I admire men like this who won’t leave well enough alone, sometimes I call them “poop disturbers:”
What would the world be like if in the future we used virtual reality for something besides pornography? Not much better, it would seem:
It’s cold outside, and Graeme's ex boyfriend changed the locks on the doors again:
You should click this because everyone loves Seven Samurai. But you should stay for the ted talk:
For issue 7, I used the most objective procedure possible to determine the top (bottom) spot. I produced this result through a weighted adjacency matrix of narrative impact. Importantly, I leveraged graph-based algorithms and reinforcement learning AI to help analyze semantic networks, syntactic coherence, and thematic resonance to iteratively rank all fourteen inputs I promise I did NOT shake a box full of printouts causing Andy’s Vote Control to randomly settle beneath the others.
I’m confident my small subscriber base has a 100% overlap with Andy and his much, much larger subscriber base. I believe that makes me a small time vassal holding a title to one of his many fiefdoms. Regardless, if Andy Futuro blew a horn and called the realm to war, I’d feel strongly motivated to mount my horse and gather my paltry levy. It’s too bad my readers are all going to die - all three-and-a-half of you haven’t been showing up to shield wall drills like you should.
But the fact approximately 100% of you have read it already won’t stop me from DREADing him anyway. If Soviet retro future dystopia authors had enjoyed the freedom to write to their heart’s true desires, their stories would have looked something like this.
You thought AI was stealing artists’ jobs? Well here’s Andy just adding to the problem. Watch him describe a comic so vividly that graphic artists everywhere threw up their arms and tossed their pencils in angry despair:
This is it, DREAD outpaced my stuff I can self-promote! Fortunately I have two-week’s worth of content I can promote after tomorrow. Meanwhile, here’s chapter 19 from my unpublished book Deupawn: Burning Angels. Grince really wanted to fly a fighter in space, it turns out all it took to qualify was receive a concussion after seeing his friends die in a fire:
Thanks for reading!
DREAD Reviews Table of Contents (Searchable)
DREAD 5 DREAD 6 DREAD 7 DREAD 8 DREAD 9
Participate (Self-promote) HERE
Yeah you tend to get locked out of the house when you run round it screaming: "I have met the star queen, the lord of the east wind, and the evil Knight of the decaff coffee in THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KIIINNNGGGG AHHHHH AHHH"
Ahaha Derek’s on the Dave Ramsey program, Emma’s not. Thanks for the review!