Category: Darmenzi

Princess Serani profile is up, and an announcement about old chapters

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

The princess of the Salenth Kingdom, Serani, gets her own profile page! She’s headstrong and not going to take anything from anyone and the gossip corner has all sorts of rumors about her and also the protagonist of Wandering Fortunes maybe wants to give her a smooch

ANYWAY, I’ve taken down old in-progress chapters for Slubes and Darmenzi. They’re old and I dunno that I want them public. They’re each *one dollar* as an ebook so it’s not a big deal. The previews of the final book are still up, though. It’s just that I’ve improved so much since these in-progress chapters I want to look forward. I don’t know if I’ll do this regularly, like every book’s serial release will eventually be made unavailable, maybe at some point they’ll be so good that I won’t even mind them being up. And at some point maybe Slubes and Darmenzi will just become free ebooks all the time. Who knows what the future holds!

However if I do hide unfinished Wandering Fortunes chapters they’ll still be available for patrons on Patreon. Slubes and Darmenzi would be too but I wasn’t posting chapters directly into Patreon back then it seems so those are just links to pages that don’t exist now. Anyway, speaking of Patreon, I’m gonna post another new profile on there today if you’re interested, and of course the next chapter is already available for patrons, so check it out if you have an interest in reading things and then reading more things!

Darmenzi is one year old today!

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Well, in about a month it will b…

…

Wait, really? I released it one year ago today??? I thought that was next month! Well, fig!

So yeah, one year ago today I released the Darmenzi as an ebook on Smashwords. Maybe the February date was me thinking of the physical book’s release, which came a bit later on Lulu. This was all a little over a year after I’d put an in-progress version up for free online; you can still read that, too! It’s nowhere near as good as the final book, which is like, only a dollar on Smashwords anyway.

So, yeah, that’s a thing! You know, legally, this book is eligible for awards. Which awards? I don’t know I honestly have never paid attention to any awards for anything ever. Okay that’s a lie I paid attention to the Nintendo Power awards but there’s no way those weren’t rigged. In terms of books… not really. I should maybe fix that. It doesn’t help that I’m generally about 30 years behind on books. But I digress.

I’d wanted to have a special preview of something for this date, but that was when I thought it was in February! So, uh, an audiobook of Darmenzi is still planned to be made. So far we have only hit one major snag. And that’s… that… I haven’t… made… Dangeresque 3 yet. No but for real I apparently talked about doing some initial recording well over a year ago now and that’s just absolutely INSANE. So much gets in the way–my forgetful memory, which I’ve tried to alleviate with a gigantic two whole lines in my agenda of nothing but AUDIOBOOK over and over, but eventually even that just kind of… becomes part of the noise. Even when I do remember, well, both I and the guy I’m recording it with run into problems, schedule conflicts, technology issues, and general low spirits and sickness. Even if it’s a bit past the exciting time of release, this audiobook is going to be produced… even if it might not be until the second anniversary.

This month’s new profile is… a rerun?? How about just some end-of-year plans instead?

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Okay so this is hilarious and dumb. This month I was going to post a new species profile for Help Blocks. They’re not really a species but as a special type of robot I figured I would detail them. After I put it up for Patreon–$3+ patrons get to read those things early–I realized… I already had a profile page up for them! Somehow I’d missed that and typed them in as still needing one! I didn’t realize this until after writing a new one, but the new one was better so I put that up, so it’s still new in a way! (That said, it appears to have not been added to the Species page, so… what am I even doing????? Did I never make it public? Did I just not add it to that page? My head hurts. Moving on.)

So anyway you might be wondering why the font is different. WELL. WordPress used to not carry the font over from word documents, where I copy chapters and stories from, but it did take other formatting such as italics. Well now it takes the font, so either I have to start using the font I use in word documents (Corbel) or remove the font every time I post a new chapter. So this is my way of saying, hey, guess what, you’re going to start reading everything in Corbel! Uh, let me know if it’s worse. It seems kind of thinner, but that might be because it’s sans-serif, and I’ve read that it’s easier to read sans-serif on computer screens than serif anyway. Maybe at some point I’ll get around to updating older pages with the font change, and I really should because it’ll look bad being different at places, I wonder actually if there’s a way to just set it to automatically make everything the same font, in fact let me look right now… Okay it looks like there might be but it doesn’t have Corbel so bleah. To do so otherwise might be to dig through code and let me be honest I would rather brute force it than mess with code. My head hurts enough as it is.

SO. ANYWAY. I said I was going to discuss plans for the rest of the year! November 1st is not a new Wandering Fortunes chapter, but instead I’ll be posting a new short story! We’ll be visit some old friends, or enemies, or acquaintances, or something. It’s sad and lonely and lava. Should be fun! Then, in December, an intermission for Wandering Fortunes. It’s not a full chapter, and in fact it’s really short, so the end of the year might be a bit light on content, but on the flipside I’m hoping to have another one of those Top! Interruptus! scene thingies. The Wandering Fortunes intermission will actually go up on Patreon November 1st, a month early–with this, I’m going to start putting chapters up a full month early instead of half a month, so patrons get an even better bonus! (I’m also considering rearranging some rewards, but more on that when I get to it.)

Anyway, that’s about that. Might also have a small chance of a preview for another project before the year’s end, but honestly, don’t hold your breath, it’s had quite a few snags along the way–but I’m really hoping to have at least a preview by February, the one-year anniversary of Darmenzi‘s full release…

Physical Darmenzi book! Patreon changes! KO-FI!

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

The physical book version of Darmenzi is now available for purchase on Lulu.com! It’s even better than my first book Slubes, and I’m excited to finally have a second book in physical form. Now I can show people TWO things and they’ll go “whaaaa, you’re dedicated to this??” It’s $12 on Lulu and it’s amazing and formatted and just take a look at what the critics may or may not have said!

“I laughed! I cried! I ate a banana!”

“If you only read one book this year, you should read more. What’s this about a Darmenzi story?”

“The title character is truly the greatest villain of our time. Even if Duth is a charlatan who skews how I–I mean, he looks.”

To go along with this announcement there’s been some changes to my Patreon, although some of it is just cleaning up. The most immediate change is to the $2 and $3 reward tiers, which no longer has the “give for a million months and get a name in book”. I really don’t like having rewards that require someone to sustain giving over a period of time, because not everyone can do that.

Instead, those are now a part of my Ko-fi page! I’ll still be on Patreon but they will generally focus on different things–Patreon in the prog chapters I post for free each month (you can see them early or see excerpts from what I’m working on at the time, for example), and Ko-fi on the final products:

$3 gets you an ebook copy of one of my books, $18 gets you not only a signed physical copy in the mail but also an exclusive bookmark, and $30 gets your name in the next figgin book, wow!

Think of Patreon as helping fund my creative process, and Ko-fi as being closer to me. Somehow. I also plan to add goals to Ko-fi that I feel are things I don’t necessarily need to make a monthly income as the prerequisite for doing, although I can’t guarantee that none of them are going to be jokes.

That’s about it for now! New Ko-fi, continuing Patreon, physical Darmenzi book. See you in about a week for the next profile (and don’t forget that $3+ patreons get to read the next chapter early).

New book, Darmenzi releases tomorrow, January 17th!

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Oh dang! It’s the second book release! Darmenzi is finally here, tomorrow! I’m excited, and definitely not just woke up and wanting to get all this stuff said before it’s too night and everybody normal is asleep!

It’s a sequel to my first book, Slubes, which is still available and stars an anxious pile of frayed nerves pulled into an adventure where he tries to prove himself to his love while dealing with his ridiculous world while an intergalactic invader sends destructive, sneaky, and ridiculous enemies to steal a crystal of immense powers. Darmenzi features the return of that anxious pile of frayed nerves, a little braver, a little more confident, still a flopping jitterbug, face off against the authoritative conqueror’s return and a manipulative force of chaos. It has slugs, giant crabs, robots, mechs, magic, caves, ghosts, pirates, ancient ruins, monsters, a dragon, silliness, seriousness, a library, insanity, deep-sea exploration, space exploration, a hotel, a bratty kid with a gun, jail time, a car crash, and sad magma!

The final preview chapter is here, and you can see where all three are at the Darmenzi page. The book will be available at Smashwords, and it has been pre-ordable or whatever at Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Kobo. I hope you like the book!

Also, work on a physical copy is under way, I should have more information on that next week.

Duth Olec’s 2017 Retrospective

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It’s cool to do this, right? Actually I might have done these sort of things in past years too. I don’t remember. But let’s take a look at what I’ve done this year, assuming I do remember!

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  • Began posting the prog version of Wandering Fortunes online: on my website, on Wattpad, and for the first time on Medium. At the rate of one chapter a month, I’ve gotten twelve of these chapters up. That puts me at about a third through the story. This story is actually somewhat special to me–the first two novels were partly based off ideas I had years and years ago, but Wandering Fortunes is the first story I came up with after I decided to go into noveling (authorial term). Furthermore, the main characters, and many other characters, are based off characters I used to use in collaborative stories I wrote with some old internet friends. Were it not for those pals I would never have gotten into writing, so I thank them profusely. (Also some characters in Wandering Fortunes are inspired by some of their characters, too! Don’t worry, I got their permission.)
  • I continued the Pokecomic, which started when Pokemon Sun and Moon released last year. The first comic of this year was 39, and on the 30th I’ll post number 89, so that’s fifty comics this year. At that rate I’ll finish it in 2019, probably sometime after the 8th generation of Pokemon comes out. I’m actually rather surprised and proud I’ve been able to keep this comic up, considering these side projects involving art usually peter out for me pretty early, but this is something I’d wanted to do for over 5 years, probably since the 5th generation of Pokemon games came out.
  • In April began a new Twitter account for the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos where theoretical tweets from major CCC characters are made, using trending hashtags or responding to other tweets or simply posting about their lives. Shortly after announcing the Darmenzi release date I started posting theoretical messages from during the story. It’s been fun! I like coming up with stuff for the characters to say, such as on Thanksgiving, every character I’m using posted what they’re thankful for. Here’s a few highlights:
  • I released two pieces focusing on the premise of the character Top from Wandering Fortunes interrupting an existing story, with Lord of the Rings and Magic Banquet. (See also Wattpad here and here, and Medium here and here.) This is a premise I’d actually come up with earlier while reading a different story (which is yet to be used) and I was just like “man what if Top just showed up instead and distracted this bad guy”. I really like the idea because I really like Top and they’re basically the poster child for the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos, but it turns out I’ve had a bit of trouble coming up with more scenes to use, though that’s mostly because I don’t think about it while reading a book and then afterwards I don’t remember the book well enough to fit Top somewhere. But gaddfern it, I am GOING to find a way to shove Top into Charles Dickens one of these days!
  • I announced the ebook release date of Darmenzi, which isn’t until 2018 but still I announced it in 2017. This involved a lot of stuff that’s stressful for me. That press release? I tried to send it out to press places. I actually contacted people, trying to promote it. I still have more time to work on promoting it. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DOOOO but I’m going to try anyway. I’m not expecting a miracle but. like. you know. a burgeoning fanbase would be nice. Whoa! This 2017 retrospective just got real…ly dumb. uh.
  • I posted a super special Christmas-themed “short story”! It’s a giant satire of religion and the bible. I could definitely being the most controversial thing I’ve posted, but I also see it as one of the best because I get to be oddtastic and write nonsense. There’s even some Seuss-esque rhymes! It’s on my website here, Wattpad, and Medium.

DISASTERS

  • well most of the year for everybody and everything but ME SPECIFICALLY…
  • The beginning of the year sucked because as usual I was working at Bloom Insurance Agency, but even worse, it was customer service! For an incompetent company (not Bloom, they contract with insurance companies to do sales, it was the client who was pretty bad) in a badly-set-up system and also this is all redundant because it’s health insurance. The exception to health insurance is a company that’s not garbage in all ways. However, this wasn’t much of a disaster so much as par for the course over the past several years because I always start the year working since it’s their busy season and then after the first of the month I go on furlough when there’s not as much work and I can do good work. However…
  • I returned in mid-August and it was… weird, at first. I was put on a program without a lot of real training, but it was a program winding down, we were calling insurance agents, not customers, and again, it was winding down, so for the most part we just called answering machines, calling people who were called before, or just waited for no one to ever call. There ended up being so much downtime that people could often go home early. However, that ended, and then I went to an actual program for actually selling health insurance… and… oh Gourd, what was that company called? I’ve forgotten! Hang on… Aetna, I think? Pretty sure it was Aetna. DANG, did I get a pompous vibe from them. Anyway there was so much garbage terrible and finally I snapped at work. I described it at length here. As I say there, there was just a lot of really skeevy capitalist garbage that is totally legal and fine and okay but makes want to figgin PUKE, and I hate health insurance, I hate talking on the phones, I hate sales (making it all the harder for me to promote my book, but I’m still tryin’!), and I finally realized I could not help this rude person, and not just they were so rude, but my being there was a figgin detriment to every person who called and got me. To survive in capitalism I was having to make the world overall WORSE.
    I would rather die.
  • Continuing the theme of I Can’t Hold Down A Job Anymore, Basic Guaranteed Universal Income Or I Will Be Forced To Make The World A Worse Place To Survive And It Will Be You Stupid Conservative And Libertarians’ Fault So Good Job On That, Would You Rather I Die, at the end of November I applied to a job with my local paper as a night mailroom inserter or something or other. It was basically just placing newspapers in machines so they get sorted and ads and papers are placed in them right. Turns out because I have a garbage body I can’t do physical labor, certainly can’t do it at any decent speed, absolutely not at a decent speed needed for most jobs, and therefore just cross out physical labor with Talking to Customers on the list of jobs I can’t do. I forget how much I talked about this but basically the job was about 5 hours a night and after half of that I was nearly faint and couldn’t continue. I had to quit. After half a night. So that little experiment failed.
  • net neutrality repeal but again that’s something regarding the entire country, you don’t need me to tell you about that. Although after the repeal vote I actually called my reps about it, and note that after the calls I wanted to curl up under a chair so yeah phones suck die die die phones
  • Oh I guess the Patreon debacle was a slight disaster but Patreon walked it back so I think it’s gonna be okay.
  • Aaaand that’s really all the disasters of the year, my personal disasters totaled two, everything else was fairly fantastic, and those two disasters were both ME TRYING TO WORK A REGULAR JOB. Seriously, what do you want from me, world? But let’s move on from these sad parts and look forward to…

PLANS FOR 2018

  • Obviously I mentioned Darmenzi releases next year. It comes out Wednesday, January 17th. If I can get some selling I’ll be happy. I’ll pretty much take any number over zero, but I’d like double-digits. (I’d be ecstatic over triple.) Currently only the ebook is set; I don’t want to use Createspace because it’s owned by Amazon (which is why I’m reluctant to do anything related to Goodreads), so I’m going to try out other self-publish websites. I’ll keep you posted on that. I do truly believe this book is better than the first, and it begins to bring up questions about the creator and narrator with the antagonist, Darmenzi. Some closure, some sadness, and some some fantastic villain interaction. But with a few weeks left I still need to work on promoting it…
  • I want to start a new daily project in 2018. I don’t want to reveal too much yet, for some reason, but it’s totally ripped off from inspired by something KC Green is doing. It also means this blaargablog will pick up by about… Whoa wait I had at least one post a day from the 15th to the 20th! That’s pretty good. anyway lotsa %.
  • I’ve gotten a Mastodon account! I really would like to stop Twittering but whoops I need to build an online presence and using websites that have traffic is a slight requirement, sorry. I’m still not sure how I want to do this but I might just give up and post at both places equally with the same things, which would also involve making a second Mastodon account equivalent to the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos Twitter.
  • Might get a Ko-Fi. A cocoa-wifi. After the Patreon thing happened I was like “huh, maybe i’d rather make my goals just flat amounts to reach towards instead of monthly givings goals.” Now, I changed that idea because most of my current Patreon goals are actually recurring things that I would want a continuing stream of income to help with (posting more chapters a month, the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmail which to be fair I mostly want to wait to do because I want a big enough fanbase to get a steady stream of questions but I’d also like to pay my artist friends for drawing the comics so yeah), but there are some that could work as an accumulation of everything donated (special stories, comic/graphic versions of short stories, that Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos Online RPG idea I wanna do someday), kinda like mini-Kickstarters except there’s no guarantee and you give money even if it takes 5000 years to reach the goal, since it’s more of a “thank you!!!” than an actual end goal. Maybe. I dunno.
  • There are at least one or two short stories I will post here next year, and I’d also like to write more and maybe finish some and maybe even finish some that I could submit to publications! I’ve sent one to a few places but it hasn’t been accepted, though to be fair it’s a character-centric story that probably works as being posted here first anyway. I have an idea for a short story I’m going to begin working on soon that might work.
  • Continue Wandering Fortunes! Continue the pokecomic! The former I hope to pass the halfway point on in 2018, and the Pokecomic to, who knows, maybe get to the 3/4 point.
  • Darmenzi audiobook. Work on it is a bit slow because I’m a bit slow, but the idea has been in the making for a little while now and some recording has been done. Some more recording needs to be done and then editing will be discussed. No promises or predictions on when this will start–I can only give myself a deadline.
  • Some freelance writing/editing? Look I clearly suck at holding down a Regular Job, and selling books takes more time than society will allow for survival, so I might have to look to that to have an income.
  • Be the best Duth I can be.
  • And at least a functioning Jeremy.

I think that about wraps it up. See you in a few days for my Clichemas post, and come January 1st I should be starting that new daily project I mentioned.

Preview of Darmenzi chapter 1 and pre-orders are a go!

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

The preview of the final version of the first chapter of Darmenzi is now up to read. You can see just how much three years improves! Our protagonists and their home is introduced, and a new challenger approaches.

And excellent news as well in that the pre-orders are now live, I believe! You can pre-order the book on Barnes & Noble, iTunes, or Kobo!

Though as usual if you give money to my Patreon you’ll not only get the book but you can get the book and read it before everyone else! You can also get other cool things through that. Like the warm knowledge that you’re helping a writer survive??

Tomorrow we’ll take a break from all this Darmenzi news though with the posting of a very special story. It will be special, and very, and story. See you then!

Darmenzi releases Wednesday, January 17th, 2018! In one month!

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As you can see by the press release I just posted, I finally have a release date set for Darmenzi. It’s been a long time coming… though maybe not as long as Slubes was. The ebook can be seen here and will be $1, just like Slubes, except Slubes is currently free for December on Smashwords.

Pre-ordering will be available once Smashwords approves the book and sends it to the websites that allow that; I will keep everyone informed as to when this happens as soon as it does. Keep in mind that if you pledge to my Patreon you get the book upon release, and if you pledge $3 or more you’ll get it BEFORE release!

As you may notice, the book has had a bit of a makeover, centering text and making the smaller text easier to read. To go with this is a new book description, which you can see both on the novel page of this website and the Smashwords page for the book. There is also a preview of the final book you can read here, with more chapter previews coming over the next few weeks before the book’s release.

Now then. You’ll notice I only mentioned the ebook. A physical book will be coming, but I do not know if it will come on the same day. I’m going to look into different physical book publishers from Createspace, and so that might take a bit of time to settle on one that I’ll want to use (unless the first one I try is great in which case swell!) I’ll keep you up-to-date on that as well.

In summary: Darmenzi releases January 17th, preview here, donate on Patreon to get a copy early, physical book news later.

Darmenzi Press Release

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NEW BOOK RELEASE IN JANUARY: DARMENZI; THE HERO TO SAVE THE WORLD AN ANXIOUS BUNDLE OF NERVES

Internet Author Duth Olec Releases Novel About Nervous Hero Fighting Authoritative Conqueror and Manipulative Force of Chaos, Sequel to Previous Novel Slubes

Bloomington, IN/The Internet. December 17, 2017—Bloomington and internet author Duth Olec will release his second novel, Darmenzi, on January 17, 2018. A humorous science fiction/fantasy novel with an unusual hero—Numer, ever nervous and timid, consistently flops his way to victory with his friends by his side. Thrust into a role he’s afraid of, allied with a love he can’t work with, Numer challenges The Conqueror, an intergalactic invader, and Darmenzi, a demon who delights in destruction.

While Darmenzi releases in a month, pre-orders at Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo begin today, Sunday, December 17. The book will be available to purchase and read Wednesday, January 17, including at Smashwords, where it is published. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/769197 Darmenzi is a sequel to Duth’s first book, Slubes, which is also available at Smashwords, normally priced at $1.00 but free for December with code CX69H at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/323919

Slube, in fact, is the name of Numer’s species—you won’t find any humans here! The books take place on the planet Mintop, a world not unlike Earth but filled with a wide variety of colorful alien species, with the squishy, noodly, sluggy slubes just one of many. To go with this variety of species comes a wide variety of colorful characters, with their humorous interactions a highlight of the book. If you’re looking for a human, though, you can turn to the creator himself, Duth Olec, though he be more enigmatic than anyone else—just ask the narrator, Wally Plotch, hired by Duth to record these events into a book. If you ever get lost, don’t worry: Wally is right there lost with you.

Raised in Ellettsville and Bloomington, Indiana, Duth Olec now lives in the internet. The housing is a little cramped but the transportation services are excellent. He has been writing stories for thirteen years, and his first novel was published in March 2016. He spends his time making up worlds (like Mintop) and words (like oddtastic). He can be contacted at duth olec at gmail dot com. More writing can be found at https://dutholeccuckooland.wordpress.com/ https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DuthOlec https://www.patreon.com/dutholec Slubes and Darmenzi are/will be available on Smashwords, iBooks, Barnes & Noble (US and UK), Scribd, Kobo, Blio, Inktera, and Amazon.

Contact

Duth Olec

duth olec at gmail dot com

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