Saengard's Speakeasy

As you may have read in my earlier character study of Greycloud, there was a period of my life that was pretty rough, at least for me. I didn't go into too many details in that previous post, since the main topic was how the character Greycloud got his name. You can read about that in the link above.  But now that I've kind of opened that door, I thought I should share something a little more personal with you. I don't know if you'd even care to hear about it. I mean, we all have our own problems and something that was profound to me, may be inconsequential to you. It's far too easy to compare the size and depth of scars without simply acknowledging that they're both scars. Before you read further, please know this - there are two ways to handle those moments where injury occurred. You can wallow in the misery of it as an eternal victim of circumstance, (effectively trying to keep the wound open so it never heals), or you can come to terms with the fact that it ...

  It's difficult out there!     As soon as you put something of any modest value out into the world, there will be those sharks out there who smell blood in the water. Somehow, they think you have money that they can siphon off by offering fake services, fake clout, and fake advertising for.      Now, I'm certainly not writing with any real thought about "getting paid". Of course, it would be nice, but if there's one thing I've learned in life is - Never be Desperate. As soon as you put emotion into any trade or deal, you have lost perspective. And that is probably the most dangerous thing to lose.      So, I've released a book onto Amazon. I'd like for as many people as possible to see it and hopefully to read it. If my work resonates with people, then maybe money will come, but that isn't what I'm after. I have a story that's been burning in my mind for decades. I have to get it out into the world. And I want to make it the best, most enj...

  Saengard ~  I'm not sure if it will come as a surprise, but Saengard is indeed a pen name. I have elected to use a pen name to hopefully create a degree of anonymity for myself out in the public square. In this day and age, any kind of buffer between the strange world of the internet and the real world is a blessing. I fully recognize that I haven't separated my real information from this persona diligently enough and it is likely not too difficult to find me. That said, I wish to remain in the shadows as best I can. I did not select a pen name to hide from my family. They all know about the pseudonym. I have no reason to hide from them, and if I did, I certainly wouldn't admit to it. But even though I wish to have an arm's length of distance between you and I, I feel I still owe you something. People connect with people. We all want to know what oddity is hiding behind the curtain. The more someone protests, the more we want to push to find out. Often, what you find ...

I'm putting this out there for the new author and for the reader who's curious on what it takes for an author to 'get seen'. I'm also writing this for myself, so I can remember what I did, what I think worked, and what didn't. If no one else reads this, I know it will at least be helpful for me. (I may be updating this particular post regularly!) I didn't know much when I completed my first book in November last year (by completed, I mean  written, edited and had an advanced reader or two, created a cover, etc). To be honest, I still don't know much, but this is what I'm doing and I'm happy with the results so far. (results at the end) In November 2025, I created an Amazon account... googling the heck out of everything about the process. I think it took me most of November to feel confident about everything so that I could launch on November 29th. The only reason I chose that day was because Thanksgiving was over, the house was clean and I felt l...

One of those famous folks once said, (paraphrased of course) that if you can't boil down a complex idea into it's simplest analogy, then you don't have a good grasp of the idea. What's left unsaid is the high degree of earned insight or intelligence to confront the complex idea in its true unfiltered form and go on a path of discovery to distill it into common parlance. It takes a uniquely talented mind to be able to climb to the top limb of the tree and pluck the highest fruit of insight they can reach and then bring it back down and hand that hard work to a passerby so they can taste the fruit without the effort of reaching it. In some ways, it is our nature and perhaps our duty to do this. For the many who find the fruit disagreeable, there are some who enjoy it. For those who enjoy it, there are fewer still who want to know where the fruit came from and fewer still who want to go get it themselves... In search of a taller tree, a higher limb to climb, to see what un...

I was on X (I still call it Twitter irl), and came across yet another post of Elon's where he tauts UBI with no discussion of how that could ever actually become a real, beneficial, benevolent utopian system by which we all get paid to eat and breathe and enjoy a societal retirement without any negative effects.  In short, ridiculously optimistic. Never had such a thing existed and I find no reason for the trend of human society to ever change in that regard. If there's anything that stories teach us, is that we crave conflict. Without it, we actually go insane. We have to create conflict, even if it's in our own heads.  With that in mind, I tried to ask Grok some profound questions, but it's currently gatekept behind a paywall.  So I asked Chatgpt instead. And yes, it's probably an older model, and yes there may be better answers from other AI's, and yes, the irony is not lost on me that I'm 'asking AI' a hypothetical question that is basically ...

Today's post is about world building!      I don't know about you, but when I come across a writer or artist that wants to talk about 'world building', I kind of roll my eyes and feel just a little ... I don't know... bored? Put out? Artists and writers live inside their own heads for a large portion of their lives. They sit with the different bits and pieces of an imaginary world, refining it little by little, until one day, they produce a piece of work that you get to see or read. Only after they've refined their vision well enough, do you get to see a complete world that is presented in the service of the story they want to tell (either visually or written). People who truly love the vision that is presented in that story, think they want to see more about that world. In truth, it takes a very rare... almost fanatical zealot... who actually, truly, deeply loves to learn more about the rules and designs of the universe they enjoyed in your story. The only grou...