 Well it's that time of year again, the time of year when I must once again humble myself and remind everyone of the failure that was my self-published fantasy series. The architects of The Gifted, what was to be a four book series that kind of got the guillotine after book two. Fun fact, I still have a Word document with a fair bit of book number three actually written. Never to see the light of day, unless. What's shaking? My name's Cam. Back to another video. Ah, so yeah, here's the short version. When I was young, dumb and full of common ramen noodles, I wrote and published two books in what was to be a four book urban fantasy YA series. I maintain to this day that the writing itself wasn't terrible. That's not why I took them down. When I took these books down and made them unavailable to purchase anymore, I did it with one promise. This is it. This is my one and only blank slate card. This is the only time I'm allowed to do this where I can take down my stuff. I made a lot of mistakes writing this series that at the time I didn't really care to look into because, well, because I was naive. I thought at the time, eh, I've read a lot, I've done courses on writing. I know what I'm doing. I didn't. The purpose of this video isn't to go through all of the very specific writing mistakes that I made because I already made a video on that kind of roasting myself. But the writing will be at least a small part of it. What I want to do is list down all of the ingredients that went into this cauldron of crap soup. Before I do, I just want to make one thing very clear. I don't hate myself for writing these books or publishing these books. I don't even necessarily regret it, I think. Although I was definitely too overconfident, I had to learn the hard way that I still had a lot to learn. Publishing these books did make one thing very clear to me. I can do this. I can write and publish books. The question was, can I do it better? There were a lot of reasons that I took the books down, primarily because I wrote myself into a corner that I just, I wasn't able to fix and I didn't want people to be able to purchase a series that I didn't have any intention of finishing. But I don't want to pretend that they never happened. Anytime someone asks me for my favorite writing tip or my number one writing advice, I have one very clear and dominant answer. What you might not know is that the reason that answer is so clear and dominant to me is because of this failed fantasy series. The tip is, don't rush it. I remember I wrote The Scarlet Reaper over a number of years on and off. It wasn't a quick process by any means. At that point it was just a pipe dream. Publishing this, it didn't seem like a real thing, like a real idea. But I remember it was a pretty unremarkable day where I just kind of sat down and I was just writing for a long time and then I realized, it's done. I did, I finished it. And at that point I thought to myself, you know what, I'm just going to do it. I'll just publish it, what's the worst that could happen? And initially I did plan to do it properly, you know, step by step with all of the professional editing and the professional work that goes into a book to polish it and make it good, or at least as good as it can be, aside from the story itself. All of that fell apart on the first week. I'm pretty sure it was like a couple of days and as soon as I'd formatted the word document and realized, I'm really doing this. At some point in the near future, I'm really going to have a book in my hands that I created and that to me, it just, it was almost too much. Unfortunately, that was the moment that I was doomed to fail because as soon as I realized that I was going to do this, I rushed through the rest like the cop from, you know, Cloutie with a I couldn't afford at that point to get the manuscript professionally edited so I just didn't. I could have waited, I could have saved up my money and done that, but I didn't and it was a mistake. Now the second book, The Whisper War, that was an even worse situation, even though technically I think this is a much better book. This book was published and for sale about three weeks after the first draft was finished. Yeah, I know. I had a problem that I think a lot of first-time self-published authors will have and that is being way too keen to get the book out there, to get it done, to get it into your hands. I know it's not really about the money, it's just that you want to do it. You are excited, you just want to do it and that's fine, but don't rush it because you will regret it, trust me. I may have taken these books down but that doesn't mean that they don't exist or that people will forget all of the typos and the fact that the text was not justified. What the hell was I thinking? Not justified, looks terrible. There's another tip for you, justify the text before you finish formatting. But the thing is, I don't want people to forget about these, I don't want people to forget that I messed up. That's why I'm creating this video so that I can remind myself more than anyone else that sometimes you have to take a step back from what you've created. Here is a writing-related point as far as the stories inside the covers go. A writing point that did play a pretty big part in me taking down the books. See, the thing is, like I said before, I wrote myself into a corner. It was during the writing of book three that I realized I'd created way too many plot holes and random subplots that I just couldn't tie up and the whole thing ended up being pretty much doomed to fail. Of all the poor choices that I made with the actual story itself, the biggest I think is that I had the first story jump from major story beat to major story beat with nearly no time to breathe. It's basically the don't rush it point again, but this time with the story and the writing rather than the publishing. I like to think that I'm pretty good at writing big action sequences, that's just where I kind of shine in my opinion. Unfortunately, what that means is in the first book, I was focusing pretty much entirely on the stuff that I thought I was good at and not spending any time and attention on the stuff that I could probably get better at. That means there was very little character development and emotionally driven elements of the story, which are very important. It was meant to be a fun little cozy adventure quest story, with a small group of people that become a family that become very strongly bonded. But looking back on it, they barely had any time together or any dialogue together outside of all of the fighting and the running. And sure, you can make characters bond pretty hard over protecting each other in physical altercations, but if you don't have them slowed down every now and then and connect on a more emotional level, the reader's not going to care. I also, another huge thing is I also sidelined the love interest and, well, she was the driving force for the whole plot for the entire story. That is though one of the very few things I'm willing to kind of forgive myself for. I was inexperienced and I was trying way too hard to create your classic damsel in distress story. We were supposed to believe that our hero, Carter, was willing to risk his life for the girl that he loves, although we had little to no build up or exposure to that love before she was whisked away and put into danger. Not great. I know the whole damsel in distress thing, it's it's very outdated. But young Cam has still had a few years ahead of him before he would become more cynical before his outlook on love would become a little less optimistic. You know, enjoy it while you can, dickhead. So I'm going to read for you now the opening for the very first book. So the first thing you see, the very first thing that you read. Few people know the truth about the remarkable beings that live and walk among us. History has always seen them turned into fantasy or erased altogether. Even fewer still know how those beings came to be. The reason for our existence has been given many names and many faces through time all over the world. But the truth is that at the very beginning of all things, before conscious thought was even remotely existent, there was a great empty universe. It was beautiful in its isolation. There was no noise, no stars, no light and no color. It was a nothingness that can simply not be fathomed. There is no reason for this and there is no need for one. Things remained like this for a moment or a millennia. There is no way to truly know. But eventually, just as simply as there was nothing, a spark ignited in the vast emptiness. Just like that, it was the birth of something remarkable. An entity that can barely be described as alive, but at the same time was a mixture of everything and anything that could and would ever be. No words can describe this entity. It is simply energy at its purest. They are the cosmic architects that built us and put away the blueprint. They are the Demiagos. As you are now painfully aware, the story starts with a very dense info dump. Right from the get-go. Bad idea. Don't do that. With writing fantasy now, the new fantasy series that I'm working on that I'm super excited about by the way, it's so much fun. I've made a real point of trying to teach the reader about the world and about the lore and this fantasy place through the characters. When a character in the story learns something, so does the reader. Now you do have to be careful with that because if you have one character explaining to another character something that that character should already know or if it just doesn't feel natural it's just kind of stilted and very obvious that the author is just trying to tell you something. If it ends up as an info dump you will get what is called the as you know bob trope. As you know bob, at the beginning of time there was a great empty nothingness blah blah blah. Sometimes you can provide info directly from the narrator or as a character's internal monologue but you really shouldn't overdo that sir. Knowing when it's a good time to pass on some exposition and how to make that feel natural is part of what is going to make you look like a competent or even a good author. Don't make the books in the series different sizes. I didn't do that. I'm just telling you that you shouldn't either. One really big thing that I've learned from writing these books although it took me way too long to realize it is to not go too big on the first book. Spoiler alert but in the first book leading up to the climax our heroes come across an army of creatures and enemies outside of a massive fortress that has the big bad or the first big bad of the series. Sounds pretty cool right? It's a big epic moment. The problem is I kind of went all in on that first big epic battle and that was only the first book. That means in the second book it has to ramp up even more and then for the next one and the next one. I think I did manage that with book two pretty well. Rather than just a small group going up against an army that small group now has an army of their own. There were more interesting characters with different powers etc etc. But what about book three? God forbid what about book four? Those are some of the corners I mentioned that I was backing myself into. Something I've learned to do is that if I have a cool idea for an action sequence during my writing rather than finding a way to involve that idea immediately into the story I will note it down and once I've noted it down I have to keep writing as if I hadn't had that idea until a time comes that that idea can be used naturally. I shouldn't have ended the first book with a massive war style battle. It wasn't even necessary in retrospect. I think it would have made a lot more sense and actually been better to have a more subtle approach for the ending of the first book. The point is it was too big for the story that I was telling. A series should ideally ramp up like this. Like that. It shouldn't really be ramping up like this. You know? That is the height of showing people how to write books right there. If this doesn't make sense I don't know what will. I would like to revisit these stories one day and rewrite them because I think the general concept is actually really good and funnily enough I'm super attached to a lot of the characters in here. The three main characters that you spend a lot of the time with Carter Becker, Arthur and Griffin they're characters that I've been kind of workshopping since I was like in primary school, literally. The series does mean a lot to me so I do want to get back to it at some point and I don't regret making these. I learned a lot doing it. I've had a lot of people tell me that taking these down was a mistake or even that these having existed at all will damage my chances of being traditionally published in the future and to that I have to say I don't care. I'm like okay I don't think that's true but even if it was I don't care. I don't know what to tell you man. I don't care. It happened. There's nothing I can do about it. It's the past. I had to learn the hard way that as a writer I can always improve and I should always be trying to. I know I still have ways to go but at this point in time I know I'm a much better writer than I was back then. I know at no point in time am I ever going to be as good as I could possibly be so every time I write a book I just have to try and be the best that I can be right then. Hey have you had any failed projects? Expose yourself in the comments. Not like. Thanks so much for watching especially for watching through the whole video. I really do appreciate it and hey go do some writing. Catch ya.