The Force is Middlling in this One (and Other Ruminations from the Outskirts of the Empire) by Robert A. Kroese

I gave up on this one.

I’d read his Mercury series (two books and an interstitial short story), which was… okay. Here’s a bit from an article on self-publishing in The Independant:

Robert Kroese, author of Self-Publish Your Novel: Lessons from an Indie Publishing Success Story, decided to publish his own work because he thought traditional publishing was “like trying to get into an exclusive club”. You’re not, he said, “even sure what’s in the club, and there are some people who are coming out of it and saying ‘well, that wasn’t worth it’.” His first novel, Mercury Falls, sold about 5,000 copies, in print and e-book, in six months. Then it caught the attention of the publishing arm of Amazon, who re-released it, and it sold 50,000 more.

The problem is that Kroese is trying very, very hard to be like Douglas Adams. He is trying very hard to be funny. And while he might, in fact, be a funny person, he is simply trying too hard. The catch with self-publishing is, I’m not sure there’s anyone around to tell him so. Maybe there is. Maybe they’re just not very good at it. Or maybe they’re afraid they won’t get his cash if they do so, because he’ll go to another self-publishing house.

He comes across as that person at the party who says something absurd, and then says, “Don’t mind me, I’m a little bit craaazy!” and you nod and smile and say, “yeeaaah.”

I can’t read a whole book full of that. I don’t even go to parties very much anymore. Maybe I’m out of practice.