there are some very interesting people out there in the world of authors - not all good. millions of books are being put on amazon, a thousand a day; it's rapidly coming to dominate the book market. as one who just plunks down $10/mo. for kindle unlimited (my only investment in the authoring gig), i now get to read all kinds of things in whatever order i want. i don't read the highest tier of books - they don't need to be on kindle unlimited - but i read some pretty good ones and occasionally i find up-and-coming authors like myself who write really good things and they're just floating out there - they need people to be reading theirs just as i need them to be reading mine.

so my main audience at this point is still other authors. i rely on them to read mine while i read theirs and it works out ok. but here are a few that i've found.

one guy has a kind of fantasy empire. he does a lot of d & d, and i think he has a lot of friends in that world. so he builds his worlds off of their worlds, and everyone loves it. he's a pretty good writer too, though he makes a lot of non-sentences, and that, to tell you the truth, drives me nuts. but i'm finding it a lot more common these days. people don't have much of a sense of sentence vs. non-sentence and they just belt it out there. he does well, though - has a huge fan base, everyone gives him fives, they wait for his last word.

i've read two vampire books in which the vampires were the good guys. i was totally surprised by this. but, both writers were good writers. i fell right into their thing, and i enjoyed them, and i came to like the vampires. now i never thought that was possible, or at least, at one time, i always thought vampires were the bad guys, werewolves too. but times change. it's possible to love a vampire.

there's one guy, had a stroke a few years back, has invested an enormous amount of energy into recovering. his mind, he figures, is what makes him or breaks him. he's quite a bit older than i am and still writing books. he just puts them out there, and i respect him for that. i actually like him more for the fact that he's a pittsburgh jew than for his writing skill, hope that doesn't give it away. but really i like him, and i admire anyone who can write a book six years after a crippling stroke.

i have a friend in england. she's about the best match for me, in terms of skill, i think. she's a good writer, and i've enjoyed everything she's written. in addition, due to the nature of what we're doing, we do get to communicate a little. in fact i need her, as i've written a book for my relatives that include that little area of england where she lives, which i mistakenly called "southeast england" (looks southeast to me) but which she would call "lower midlands" or some such thing. i need to get these things straight if i'm going to write non-fiction, even if it is for my family.

one guy, also british, wrote a book in which he accused over fifty people of conspiring to torture him and get him locked up in britain, for what appears to be the smallest of crimes. i can't figure out if it's a parody or if he really thinks they'd go to that much trouble just to get him. he seems to be a reckless sort - young, drifting from job to job, that kind of thing, but i readily believe him that he didn't really commit any crime against the state. so why would they go to this much trouble? i can't imagine. so i leave the book on my shalf and read others.

such is my life. life is short and i don't want to keep reading things i'm not crazy about. i've found some really really good authors - and i'll read theirs anytime - but aside from that, i'm saving what's left of my vision for the things i really like.