Art or Merchandise

Fiction is art… but as publishing it is a business. As art, it is whatever the writer wants to write. As business it is the making of a product that can be sold.

I am an artist. I write fiction. I illustrate the covers and create the title fonts. I sell books but so few my self-publishing cannot be claimed as a business.

If I, by some miracle, became a published author, it is extremely unlikely that my covers or fonts would be used. As an employee, I would have no say in the matter. If my books sold, I would be glad for the money. The income would make my life easier.

I work in fast food and retail. The income pays my bills and gives me spending money. The hours are long and the labor exhausting, but so is the writing of books and the illustrating of covers.

I would rather write books entirely my own way, using the covers I illustrate myself. It is what I am doing already.

I would love to be rich writing books and illustrating the covers… so long as my art is the priority. That can only happen if I am the only one who has a say… and that is not how business works in this world. Then again, the world is uninterested in my work as of yet. Time shall tell what we can only guess.

I shall be busy as an artist in the meantime.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Shawn-OToole/author/B07C28S75Z?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Fantastic Realism

Fiction is make-believe. The readers or viewers know it is fake… but believe it anyway. A story is “immersive” when what is imagined seems strangely real. The reader or viewer feels as if in the universe of the fiction.

The setting of my novel Sorcerer of the Realm is this planet as a different world. Like Middle-earth (The Lord of the Rings) and the Hyborian Age (Conan), it is historical fiction customized by its author into fantasy. It is not the magic in all these universes that divorces them from history. It is the alternate history itself.

Middle-earth is Europe… but not really. The Hyborean Age is the Dark Ages… but not really. Sorcerer of the Realm is about World War 2… but not really.

J.R.R. Tolkien wanted an alternate history of the Anglo Saxons as a horse culture. Robert E. Howard wanted ancient Egypt and ancient Greece to be contemporaries of the Cossacks, Renaissance Italy, 18^th Century Pirates and the American Wild West. I was fascinated by the idea of the Confederate States of America and the 3^rd Reich as contemporaries in the modern day.

Tolkien and Howard wrote classics. People study their lore as if researching authentic history.

Like in The Lord of the Rings and the Conan stories, the reality that inspired Sorcerer of the Realm is recognized, and the recognition gives the fantasy credibility. The realism must be respected, or the fiction is discredited. The fantastic must be tempered accordingly.