[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

amphibian, on 31 May 2018 - 09:19 PM, said:

Macros, on 31 May 2018 - 08:14 PM, said:

i was wondering my self if it was just an arbitrary number Amph had thrown out or if there was a super secret calculation we should all know about for an authors potential output

Took Lawrence's output and divided 94 by that to get the minimal number of Lawrence clones who could write that many books.

I think the real number is much higher - probably double that - but it could be theoretically possible to find eight Lawrence clones, pay them a living wage, and keep them all quiet and willing to give up striking out on their own for years and years.

Mark Lawrence really isn't a fair comparison.
1. He writes high-quality prose with interesting, complex plots. From the snippets quoted in reviews of her books, Forrest's prose is dreadful and her plotting and characterization are fairly hackneyed and simplistic.
2. He spends a lot of time taking care of his disabled child. As of her 2012 interview she didn't have any children or other family members she needed to take care of. (This is especially true if she doesn't exist, or she's AI....)

[amphibian]

I picked Lawrence because he had a day job that was able to pay his bills, yet give him the space to write. We know his production because he's shown us it with everything he's published.

I think we're blessed that he's writing high quality stuff, but I'm more interested in the amount he was able to write as a non-full time writer.

That's the comparison I'm making to draw my conclusions about how many people would be required to put out 94 novels in less than seven years. It's an extremely difficult pace and it would be harder with each member of the collective realizing that they have an ability to sell books. Holding that team together and/or bringing in new ghostwriters to replace departed ones becomes hard.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

amphibian, on 31 May 2018 - 11:07 PM, said:

I picked Lawrence because he had a day job that was able to pay his bills, yet give him the space to write. We know his production because he's shown us it with everything he's published.

I think we're blessed that he's writing high quality stuff, but I'm more interested in the amount he was able to write as a non-full time writer.

That's the comparison I'm making to draw my conclusions about how many people would be required to put out 94 novels in less than seven years. It's an extremely difficult pace and it would be harder with each member of the collective realizing that they have an ability to sell books. Holding that team together and/or bringing in new ghostwriters to replace departed ones becomes hard.

You know, Mark Lawrence has a PhD in mathematics.

So you could ask him to calculate how many books he could have written if he didn't have any children and dgaf about quality (beyond what might sell well... incidentally while he does seem to make some questionable and suboptimally implemented concessions to the market in KoT, which may have been too hastily written, EoT is excellent---granted I just finished that audiobook and I'm only halfway through PoF now; if I'm lucky maybe he'll complete the Book of the Ancestor series before I finish listening to all his other work (edit: he says he actually finished the entire BoA before publishing RS, but it appears the last book won't be released until April 2019)).

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 01 June 2018 - 03:30 AM

[Macros]

I think you've over set the marker.
Mark writes quality books. I imagine the vampire series are mass produced unedited, uninspired, carbon copy garbage

[Morgoth]

I would quite enjoy reading Mark Lawrence's Vampire Romance though.

[acesn8s]

I wonder if she uses a voice-to-text program to speed things along, or hires a transcriber to type out drafts that she has dictated... I heard that Kevin Anderson does that.

[Gabriele]

Morgoth, on 01 June 2018 - 05:53 AM, said:

I would quite enjoy reading Mark Lawrence's Vampire Romance though.

His vampires wouldn't sparkle and angst, for sure.

[RACHEL]

Mark Lawrence also wrote the web serial Gunlaw (you can read it for free on Wattpad). It is rumored that Mark Lawrence and another author combined forces and came up with the pen name Mazarkis Williams to write The Tower and Knife trilogy. The first in the trilogy, The Emperor's Knife came out in 2011. I'm not sure if it is true that he is part author of these books and I haven't read them but if its true he is more prolific than you are giving him credit for.

[Salt-Man Z]

RACHEL, on 02 June 2018 - 03:08 PM, said:

It is rumored that Mark Lawrence and another author combined forces and came up with the pen name Mazarkis Williams to write The Tower and Knife trilogy.

Hunh. The Google blurb for Mazarkis Williams certainly reads like a pseudonym for two people:

Quote

Mazarkis Williams is a writer with roots in both the United States and the United Kingdom, having worked in and been educated in both countries. He has degrees in history and physics. He splits his time between Boston, Massachusetts, and Bristol, England.