SuccubusSherry, on 01 February 2019 - 05:50 PM, said:
feel free to discuss what you think about giving out occult information through fiction.
I like it. Art is at its best, perhaps, when it takes aim at
truth per se. Inasmuch as magic is a function of inspiration, good fiction can be instructive with or without being magically-themed.
I know a couple of people who started out with the intent of publishing occult non-fiction, but who transitioned to primarily writing fiction for very practical reasons. For one, publishing deals in the occult non-fiction market are notoriously one-sided in favor of the publishers. There are exceptions but the fairer publishers are also associated with radically reduced circulation. The bottom line is that if one cares more about being read than being paid, the big houses will publish and sell well-written works. And then, good, bad, or indifferent; they'll publish even if it's largely a repackaging/rephrasing of material they've previously published several times over. The bigger houses tend to aim at the entry-level seeker, because its a constantly renewing market, where the market for advance occult studies work is utterly tiny. To complete the picture, some of these houses will obligate authors to some amount of promotional activity, and will arrange promotional tours, but it turns out the author has to finance the travel expenses themselves. It's not uncommon for a writer to spend more money in the release year than they make on a book in their lifetime. Getting a better deal in occult non-fiction generally takes several good-selling works for very little profit to the author, and then a really good agent.
So, fiction is better in a lot of ways. There's a wider range of publishers that offer better deals. A challenge is that with rare exception the big houses don't take author-direct submissions: one needs an agent to break into that scene, and often having an agent they already know is key. If a big house believes in the work, however, they're much better about advances and the marketing and promotional expenses. .
So, a savvy magician with a knack for creative writing can transmit a lot of usable instruction in a fictional context, if that's their intention. However, as one of my friends who's working along those lines put it,
real magic is boring compared to Harry Potter magic, so it's tricky, and it won't pay to be snooty about blending in fantasy that isn't part of the day to day magic of lifestylers like ourselves. One of the more successful stories along these lines that I've read, though it isn't published to date, was just a good story about people, some of whom were
lifestylers like ourselves. The only place where fantasy came into play in the story was where one of the characters tended to make outlandish claims about what her magic was doing, and by and by her mistaken beliefs left her shocked by the way events unfolded. What I loved about the story was that by the end, what seemed like little unrelated threads here and there were all along conspiring to culminate in a truly fantastic result: basically the
nature of things, as it were, turned out to be most awe-inspiring and magical.
SuccubusSherry, on 01 February 2019 - 05:50 PM, said:
What do you think about channelling some of my books?
There's at least two ways to think of that: at the level of the story, if its good its good and the process that produced it is secondary for the reader. For an occult-oriented discussion site, the process is interesting for its own sake. I'm certainly interested in what you might have to say about that process.
Edited by R. Eugene Laughlin, 02 February 2019 - 04:26 PM.
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