Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

The Carian Codex | #amquerying
Ancient Omens | WIP ch 9 | Speculative History Adventure Mysteries
| Member: Writers' League of Texas | #EpicMystery

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

At its heart, The Carian Codex is a story of friendship, sacrifice, and identity. Three people are bound together by the discovery and exploration of an ancient astrolabe that should not exist. It touches each of their lives differently, offering a solution to an archaeologist at a breaking point in his career, a curator’s search for the next groundbreaking display, and an intelligence’s exploration of friendship and loyalty. Yet its implications run far deeper.

#TheCarianCodex #AdventureMystery #SpeculativeFiction #BookTeaser #AmQuerying

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

It is called pre-selection bias.
Agents want to be successful so they provide what the publishers want.

Publishers want low risk, friction free, short novels (commercial thrillers, horror and romance novels). Not because they are the next Lord of the RIngs (Tolkien) or Dune (Herbert) or other upmarket epic. But because they are cheap to procure and sell to the public. They want something at low risk and friction free.

The public is left with what the publishers publish... Also they want something clear cut and no mystery to solve. Think McDonald's (Fast Food) vs Ruth Chris Steak House (Experience).

OR the public has to wade through cheap self-published works and hope for the best. The quality there is so variable.

Most "readers" are there to read the whole book that evening and always know what happens and then don't have to think about it.

A jaundiced view to be sure, but realistic. They want their books like their movies - short, straight forward and obvious (commercial). One person POV and usually written in first person.

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@amazing_physics It's called mercury poisoning.

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@ElChandler Do what all literary agents do...
"Thank you so much for asking me to beta read your novel. This seems like an intriguing concept, however I don't think it is a good fit for my beta reading skills at the present time. I hope you the best!"

Yes, I am in the querying process.

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@AuthorGoodwin When you say it does.
I know that it sounds trite, but same thing with editing. I probably did 20 full manuscript edits. ...and I am still going back and adding things as I am querying.

It took Tolkien 10 years of revising LOTR before he submitted it to his publishers.

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

This is how I am approaching mine:

Front cover Top or upper third THE CARIAN CODEX The title should be the largest and most immediately readable element.

Near the title, in smaller type Book One of The Keeper Odyssey I prefer below, because the reader encounters the individual book before the larger series.

Central visual field The primary artwork—the artifact, symbol, landscape, manuscript, astrolabe, or other compelling image that creates curiosity and signals speculative history, archaeology, and mystery. Bottom portion

RON CRANDALL Large enough to be readable in a thumbnail, but subordinate to the title. Author symbol My author's mark: I am still trying to imagine where it would be in relation to my name, like an author seal. I am thinking to the left. OR incorporated into the artwork or border like a find Waldo, since mine is an upmarket speculative history mystery OR in a consistent corner position like upper left (I am actually leaning toward this).

I think consistency from novel one is key. I have no experience with KDP. So. Not much help.

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@LOTR_Daily_ Yes. It promised to be something it wasn't. It would have been accepted on its own merits, but it claimed to be part of Tolkiens legendarium.

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

Well if no one is going to vote. I will. I have almost completed my epigraph upgrade.

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@SintonCrane My question would be why?

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

I just got my dream handle! @RonCrandall from the X Handle Marketplace! Get your own at https://t.co/71gqBfgVln
#writerscommunity #epicmystery

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@LNHolmeswriter I have a strong allergy to offering my novels free to anyone. My work is of value. Full stop.

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@Mimiiben1 5, without pen and paper.

7x7=49. 9x9=81 3x3=9. So
top number is 10. 2x2=4. So bottom number is 2. So 5 is the answer!

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@Lordoftheringsu The original in the novel was much better. The elves at Helms deep was so unorganic in the novel.

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

Happy Fourth!

As you all well know, this is a special Fourth: the 250th Anniversary of American Independence and the founding of the United States of America.

Our freedom is not free. Today, we remember and thank those who have committed their lives—and whose families have sacrificed alongside them—in service to our country.

Yes, protest is a right protected by this country. But protesting current policies is not the same as serving the country. Criticizing from the safety provided by others is not the same as wearing the uniform, enforcing the law, guarding the border, running toward danger, or risking your life for the nation.

Today, my gratitude is with those who serve, protect, defend, and sacrifice.

God Bless America.
#writerscommunity #EpicMystery

[LOTR Universe @Lordoftheringsu]

Christopher Tolkien hated Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films.

Christopher Tolkien strongly disliked Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, viewing them as commercialized action films that "eviscerated" his father’s work. He felt the adaptations stripped away the deep, spiritual, and philosophical beauty of the books to target a young audience, ultimately turning his father's art into a "monster".

Speaking about The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, he once said with clear disappointment that the movies had “eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25.”

For Christopher, the issue was not simply that changes were made. He felt the deeper spirit of J. R. R. Tolkien had been lost. The mythology, language, and philosophical depth that defined Middle-earth, in his view, were overshadowed by spectacle and blockbuster storytelling.

He even described the phenomenon of Tolkien’s worldwide fame as something bittersweet, saying the work had been “devoured by its own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time.”

To him, the growing commercialization of Middle-earth diminished the aesthetic and intellectual weight of the original creation.

In the end, Christopher chose the only response he felt he could take.

He turned his head away from the films.

Do you think Christopher Tolkien’s approach to the LOTR films was right or wrong?

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@deriniko9 Poland (if this is a present day map)

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@ElChandler A ghost assassin.

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@themaddierune My take is that they are both that is what causes them to be timeless. Accept them both!

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@hwjohnston7 Isn't that a little self defeating?

[Ron Crandall - Author 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @RonCrandall]

@Angelamac33367 @PichaelMarkes Epic Mystery