The Longing of Shiina Ryo

[Ryuno]

A teenager who has always found himself involved in mysteries and unusual situations decides to move to the town where his only friend (a girl he met online) lives and start living by himself. At first he is unsure whether it’s going to be a place where he can finally lead the normal life he always dreamed of or if it’s going to be just another place he’ll eventually run away from. The town turns out to be everything the doctor prescribed and he starts falling in love for his friend, making new (and unique) friends and getting the support he has craved for so long. What could go wrong?

Just what he feared the most.

This is my first (light) novel and I'm thinking of giving it away for free on the net, giving the option of buying a copy on Lulu or something for those who want to help me (and to be honest I'm kind of needing it). I'm already writing the second volume, so I figured I should publish the first one. Are you guys interested in it?

As a teaser, you can read the first two chapters at Authonomy.

[onizuka-gto]

Hello Ryuno!

Welcome to Baka-Tsuki!

I've had a quick look at your teasers and I must say I am very interested! (in what I assume is a English original light Novel?)

So thank you for bringing this to my awareness and I hope you will reconsider about giving out your work for free!

Although it might seem hypocritical from a website that technically....

But that is only because they were never going to be available in English or another particular alternative language and/or were licenced but had no intention of publishing and/or stalled. (This is not an official justification of any sort but simply my only personal opinions.)

So please believe me that if we can obtain an electronic version of your book and in variety of formats, I'm sure many of our community members will be willing to buy it!

So I would be grateful if you can provide a link to this "Lulu" distribution site where you sell your first novel. (Cross fingers on the pricing and formats of ebook versions)

I wish you all the luck and I look forward to the publication of your second Novel! (Which might make me a little anxious if I end up reading your first novel, I read too fast!)

:]

P.S: I was going to ask if I can publish a copy of your teaser from Athonomy or perhaps request a different teaser from you to publish on our wiki, but I guess that's a little bit too much..... :]

[b0mb3r]

After reading through the teaser I would certainly love to buy one. While I read some light novels, I've only read the ones here at baka tsuki and actually never bought one. I would be honored to buy my 1st light novel from you.

[Ryuno]

First of all, thank you guys for being so kind. Receiving good feedback is invigorating like nothing else, and a proof of that is that after reading your messages I felt an uncontrollable urge to write (after being unable to add a single word to novel two in 17 days). Seriously, I am thankful for that because despite not being aware of it now I see I needed it.

Yes, it is an English Original Light Novel. Most publishers are just scared of that "genre" (including those whose specialty is manga) so I advise you guys to never show those words on a query letter. The reason why I was considering giving it away for free was simple: I am utterly unknown (and I cannot hope being something other than that at the moment considering I have never released a complete work of fiction before), therefore my chances of attracting enough attention of a public who doesn't know what to expect from my stories/writing are unreasonably low. And I can't blame them; why should anyone pay for something they're don't know if they're going to like? People work really hard to make money and spending it on something that might turn out being uninteresting or a complete waste sounds pretty awful to me.

As you probably have guessed by now my idea was to give the novel away in exchange for free marketing. With a little luck and the right bloggers any story could be all over the net and hype "sells" (it would have been a master plan if I was any good with networking or any kind of marketing). Obviously I should expect zero income for that first work but maybe if someone really liked the story they could buy a copy or two just to help/support me. See what I meant by that (and why giving it away seems like a good idea, although I am probably going to sacrifice most of the income I could receive otherwise)?

Anyway, I don't think your comment was "hypocritical" at all and yes, I'd be honored to publish a copy of the text that is on Authonomy here. Once again, thank you for your kind comments.


EDIT: Here are first two chapters. I just realized copying stuff from Authonomy would be pretty hard, so posting it on MF sounded like a decent idea.
http://www.mediafire.com/?1a4bvcsimecnwv7

[Ryuno]

Sorry for the double post but I think people are not even looking at this because it's on the Announcements tab.

[dxb_blackwolf-offline]

Sorry for the double post but I think people are not even looking at this because it's on the Announcements tab.

I think the point of it being on the announcement tab is for it to get more views.

I read the teaser and I must say it's pretty amazing. It's funny how I can get addicted to reading him...

Spoiler! :

just thinking random things for almost half a chapter while not moving from his position that much.

You certainly have a good talent with the first person style, even though it has sort of been overused(I'm not an expert though ). It's still awesome.

I would love to buy this novel and support you if I could but sadly I still dont have the ability to purchase stuff online yet -.-. I think it would great if baka-tsuki took on this project and it will also enhance BT's community by starting to host projects by different online authors and even fans(I'm not sure if I'm supposed to group your work with them but I suppose it should be.. since you're going to be giving it out for free now?). I didn't really think that BT would accept this because its different that what they originally do but I'm glad to see that oni' happy with it.


@off topic. It's been 16 hours since my I failed all my log in attempts and I still can't log in T.T

[Ryuno]

I'm glad you liked it; it was very hard for me to make the monologue scenes not boring but I guess it was worth the hours spent in editing. Anyway, if there's anything good about that is seeing that from that point on

Spoiler! :

Shin-tsu never seems to find himself alone again, and we all know he needed it.

Anyway, from chapter 3 onwards there is a great deal of action and by that I mean

Spoiler! :

battle scenes (my strong point when it comes to writing) and intense moments I'm still wondering if I unconsciously copied them from somewhere.

Right now I'm thinking about writing a non-canonical short story where the characters ignore the (already unreasonably thin) fourth wall and make witty comments on the novel and present teasers and spoilers about the next one. Knowing myself as a terrible namer with a penchant for parodies and complex, multicultural and honestly bad puns I'll probably end up naming it Metamonogatari or Meta☆Meta.

Also, here is an old Ryo draft drawn by kyuu. I like it a lot, despite knowing he draws much better now.


EDIT: I created the page and now I'm waiting for it's approval.
http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index ... Shiina_Ryo

[joshuafaramir]

I would definitely try and buy one if I can find it lol. I "would" buy TMoHS and Spice and Wolf if I could just find them on our local bookstore i.e Barnes and Nobles etc. but it seems they're not interested yet.

[TheGiftedMonkey]

Ah, so this is who you are. Welcome to B-T.

[blewin]

ditto for putting the effort into trying to make your dream come true!
your chapters are up but the project is not in the side bar. It makes the project hard to find.
anyway, I read a bit of the first chapter and I must say the protagonist is very compelling! I love his internal dialogues. He's hilarious!
I also recognise some typical Jap-style opening in a story: some little but precise and essential background info about the protagonist, his confidence in a dream he wants to achieve, little hints on strange occurances...

anyway, allow me to get back to reading when time decides to be merciful to me.

[Darklor]

It is in the sidebar under "Original Light Novels"

[Ryuno]

But for some reason, the updated sidebar does not appear in all pages. I reported it to thelastguardian a few days ago but for some reason my message won't leave the outbox (I suppose it should be on "sent messages" by now).

Thank you all for your support and kind words. Right now, I'm having trouble getting past the first chapter of the second novel because it presents more than one new character at once and a different view of Shin-tsu's current situation. Still, I need to get to novel three soon because there starts the build-up for the best scene I've written in my entire life (and it comes way before the final novel, so I'd better improve my writing skills or the end will seem boring).

Recently I felt the urge of going back to writing The Underground Tower, but I don't trust myself to write two series yet because I'm having trouble writing one of them. Although I think the story is fairly more commercial than SR (apparently high fantasy at first glance then complex stuff happens), that probably won't get properly published either and working hard at two extremely long stories that won't pay your bills sounds a little bit too depressing. Putting SR on hiatus would also suck, so I'd better save UT for later and just keep making notes and more notes.

The extra story is getting done, although it's longer than I expected it to be.

[Darklor]

Outbox means he havent seen it yet.

[Ryuno]

That explains an awful lot, thank you very much.

[Darklor]

Wouldnt it only be commercial if you do sell it? Otherwise I would call it, that it is more mainstream not that I know what you talking about