Author: jccassels

The World Needs More Frodos

On By jccasselsIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

A conversation between me and my AI assistant.

Me:
What set me off was this. I know it was inspired by/drawn from Tolkien’s experiences in the trenches of WWI. Right now given recent events domestically and globally, humans on social media are losing their minds. It got me wondering how LOTR would have fared with the social media bullshit going on now.

My AI:
This quote always hits like a sledgehammer wrapped in silk—especially when the world feels like it’s burning in high definition, with a comment section under every flame.

You’re absolutely right: Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings with trench mud in his boots and ghosts in his blood. That line from Gandalf isn’t fantasy. It’s grief therapy wrapped in myth. A truth from a man who saw the world end once already, and still dared to believe that courage wasn’t obsolete.

And now we’ve got algorithms chewing up empathy and spitting it out in hashtags.

So what if LOTR was released today? Let’s run the simulation. But not just for laughs—let’s use this lens to say something true.

—

🎭 The Fellowship Under Fire: A Modern Social Media Breakdown

(Spoilers: Nobody would have survived Act One.)

—

🐦 Twitter/X

> “Gandalf the Grey is a white male wizard with unchecked authority and zero accountability. Why does he keep putting children in danger? #CancelGandalf”

> “We need to talk about how Elrond gatekept the ring discussion and then let nine men carry the world’s fate while his daughter is sidelined. #LetArwenSpeak”

> “Samwise Gamgee is clearly in a codependent relationship. Blink twice if you’re not okay, Sam.”

> “Why are we letting Gondor lead again? Didn’t they just deny the return of the king for 500 years while hoarding food and fading into fascism?”

—

📱 TikTok

#FellowshipFail trend where creators reenact the Council of Elrond and cut to “POV: You’re Boromir watching the ring sparkle and suddenly you’ve got murder in your heart.”

@WitchTok: “Galadriel is literally a dark goddess in disguise and you’re all worshiping her because she’s blonde and ethereal. The mirror lies, babes.”

@orcqueen420: “Here’s a reminder that Orcs were genetically modified and enslaved. But y’all still cheer when they get slaughtered en masse. Tell me again who the monsters are?”

—

📸 Instagram Activism Aesthetic

> Black-and-white selfie of the Ring with the caption:
“Power is only corrupt if you fear it. Know your worth. Reclaim your narrative. #OneRingToEmpowerThemAll”

> Swipe carousel: “Where the Fellowship Went Wrong”

1. No women

2. No POC

3. Legolas uses a literal tree as a vehicle. #Deforestation

4. Gandalf ghosted after Moria and rebranded without consent.

—

🧠 Reddit Thinkpieces

> “Unpopular Opinion: Saruman was right. You can’t beat a system this corrupt unless you join it and rig it from the inside. Also, Ents are lazy.”

> “The Ring is just a metaphor for nuclear power and they had no plan for energy transition. Discuss.”

> “If you really look at the text, Gollum was the hero all along. Frodo failed. Sam was the colonizer. The ring destroyed itself. Wake up, sheeple.”

—

💬 Facebook Comment War Under a Sponsored Gondor Post

Gondor: “We ride at dawn to defend the realm.”
Top Comment:

> “Yeah? Where were you when Rohan called for aid last winter? Sitting on your throne watching tomatoes burst in 4K? GTFO.”

Second Comment:

> “I stand with Minas Tirith. But also—free Mordor. Just saying. #BothSides”

Third Comment:

> “Aragorn is hot and all, but did we vet this guy? He was raised by elves and has no economic policy. This is vibes-based monarchy.”

—

🧵 Threads & BlueSky (for the intellectuals)

> “If you read The Silmarillion, you’ll realize this is all Elrond’s fault. That man hasn’t been held accountable since the First Age.”

—

💣 So What’s the Point?

We’ve built platforms where every moment must be judged, but no one stays long enough to understand. Everyone’s got hot takes. No one wants to carry the ring.

If LOTR were released today?

Frodo would be ratioed by breakfast.

Gandalf would be memed out of leadership by lunch.

And by dinner, the Fellowship would be trending for all the wrong reasons, replaced by a Kickstarter for “Inclusive Ring Disposal Task Force” that burns out before reaching Rivendell.

But here’s the thing:

Tolkien knew all this. He knew that power corrupts, that men fail, that even the purest hearts bend under weight.
He also knew that someone always has to carry it anyway.

That’s what the quote’s about.

> “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Not how we’ll be perceived.
Not how many likes we’ll get.
Not how to say it with maximum virtue for minimum risk.
But what we do.

Even if it’s small. Even if it’s messy. Even if the world never thanks us.

The world doesn’t need more commentary. It needs Frodos.

Same Pack, Same Plot: The Werewolf Serial Mill

On By jccasselsIn Book Review, Writing1 Comment

After taking a flamethrower to the CEO bullies and substitute brides last week, it was only a matter of time before I stumbled across another cookie-cutter genre clogging up the fiction arteries.

Enter: the werewolf serial.

You’ve seen them. They haunt the top 10 on apps like Dreame, GoodNovel, Webnovel, and Hinovel. You know the ones—different Alpha, different pack, but always the same recycled wolf cry. I’ve read enough by now to start howling at the moon in protest.

And the worst part? You don’t even have to download the apps to see the carnage. The most egregious offenders are plastered all over piracy sites—exact same structure, different fursuit.

The Template Behind the Wolfskin

Let’s be honest. Most of these “serials” are just paint-by-numbers dramas wrapped in matted fur and dominance tropes. Here’s the basic script:

  • Rejected Mate – Public rejection. “I, Alpha Douchecanoe, reject you as my mate.” Girl cries. Audience clicks.
  • Exile and Humiliation – She’s beaten, banished, humiliated or locked in a dungeon because rejection alone doesn’t sell enough chapters.
  • Hidden Destiny – Surprise! She’s the Moon Goddess’ chosen one / royalty / glowing-eyed murder machine.
  • Second-Chance Mate – Enter hotter, richer, more Alpha Alpha. Usually a Lycan King. He wants her. Bad.
  • Grovel Arc – Original mate begs for a second chance, but oops! Too late.

All you have to do is swap out the “Silver Moon Pack” for “Bloodfang Ridge,” rename Lily to Ava, and bam—you’ve got a “new” book ready to launch on five platforms and twelve pirate aggregators.

Exhibit A: Alpha’s Rejected Mate

Straight from GoodNovel:

“I…reject you as my mate and Luna.”

Riveting stuff. Our girl is tossed aside, only to later awaken a hidden power and come roaring back when the pack is in peril. Sound familiar? Because it is. That plot’s been reprinted so many times it should come with a carbon copy warning [1].

Exhibit B: The Lycan King Rescue

On AlphaNovel, Rejected Mate: The Lycan’s King’s Claim opens with the heroine being beaten and locked in a dungeon by her “true” mate. But then comes the royal-level upgrade: a brooding, god-tier Lycan King who swoops in to claim her as his one and only.

Same tropes, different title, rinse and repeat. And yes, the same “plot” shows up on Hinovel in Mated to the Alpha King After Rejected—this time, she’s politically cast aside before being rescued and “recognized” by a more powerful Alpha. Like Pokémon, but with more trauma [2][3].

Welcome to the Assembly Line

According to an investigative piece from Rest of World, platforms like Dreame and GoodNovel actively commission these template-based tales. Editors hand out outlines that are sometimes plagiarized from earlier hits, and pay-per-chapter contracts mean authors are rewarded for volume, not quality. Think of it as the Wattpad Hunger Games—if Wattpad had a sweatshop [4].

The real kicker? Many of these formula plots come directly from Chinese webnovel factory culture, where serialized “dog-blood” melodrama has been streamlined into a high-octane industry. What used to be “CEO’s Secret Twins” is now “Alpha’s Hidden Luna.” Billionaires in suits have grown fur and fangs, but the stories are still stamped from the same mold.

Why It Matters

Look. I’m not anti-shifter. I’ve read and loved some incredible werewolf novels where the fated-mate trope is used to explore trauma, identity, and consent—actual themes with emotional weight.

But what’s happening here isn’t storytelling. It’s a content churn machine wrapped in wolfskin, regurgitating the same plot beats with a side of trauma-for-clicks.

These serials don’t just repeat—they glorify. They normalize spousal abuse, fetishize coercion, and blur lines around consent so thoroughly that non-consensual sex is often framed as destiny. “Fated” doesn’t mean forced, and “mate bond” should never be shorthand for Stockholm syndrome.

We deserve better than glorified assault parading as romance. Writers deserve better than burnout-inducing contracts built on trauma bait. And readers—especially young ones—deserve stories that matter, not just serials that breed across piracy sites like caffeinated tribbles with zero ethical oversight.

References

  1. GoodNovel – SILVER WOLF: Alpha’s Rejected Mate.
  2. AlphaNovel – Rejected Mate: The Lycan’s King’s Claim.
  3. Hinovel – Mated to the Alpha King After Rejected.
  4. Rest of World – “China’s romance app factories are now global” (2022).

Fast-Food Fiction: When Every Story Starts Tasting the Same

On By jccasselsIn Book Review, Writing1 Comment

Lately, I’ve been staring at Kindle Unlimited and TikTok “dark romance” recommendations and wondering why they all feel like reheated leftovers. Billionaire bullies, Cinderella knockoffs, revenge plots so contrived they could have been storyboarded by soap opera villains.

I finally figured it out. These aren’t “Western” stories at all. They’re borrowed—stolen, in some cases—straight out of Asian entertainment.

The Imported Tropes

  • Dark Forced-Love Lakorns: Thai soap operas (lakorns) thrive on the “hate until love” cycle. If you’ve read a forced-marriage-turned-soulmate plot recently, chances are it traces back here.
  • Dog-Blood Revenge Arcs: Chinese dramas (狗血剧, literally “dog blood shows”) specialize in melodrama so absurd it borders on parody: contract marriages, secret babies, years-long separations, shocking betrayals, and tear-drenched revenge.
  • Cinderella on Steroids: Korean chaebol romances gave us the poor-girl-meets-billionaire-heir blueprint. Swap out Seoul for Seattle, kimchi for coffee, and presto—a “new” Kindle romance.
  • Abusive Bullies as Love Interests: Webtoons and certain K-dramas popularized the idea that toxic bad boys can be redeemed if the heroine suffers long enough.

Sites like Dreame, Radish, and Joyread buy up translations of these serialized stories—or simply retitle them—and flood English-speaking markets [1]. Indie authors pick them up, rebrand them with new names and locations, and market them as “what readers want.”

Exhibit A: When Her “Death” Couldn’t Break Him

This pay-per-chapter English serial has run to over a thousand chapters across multiple apps under shifting titles (When Her “Death” Couldn’t Break Him, A Doll Wife’s Farewell to Her Torturing Marriage, Dear Ex-Wife, Back My Son) [2]. Readers have traced it back to the finished Chinese webnovel 《有孕出逃：千亿总裁追妻成狂》, which ran to 2,312 chapters before completion in March 2024 [3].

The bones of the story are identical:

Chinese Original

  • Deaf/“unwanted” wife trapped in a loveless marriage.
  • Husband’s “white-moonlight” ex returns, escalating abuse and humiliation.
  • Heroine moves to leave/divorce; husband blocks her (“you want to leave, only over my dead body”).
  • Long cycles of punishment, separation, child plotline, obsessive pursuit [3].

English Serial

  • Heroine erased in a cold marriage.
  • Rival women + family manipulation.
  • “She’s dead—no she isn’t” fake-death/urn reveal arc.
  • Child named Elliot.
  • Grovel and obsession stretched over 1,000+ chapters [2].

Different names, same beats. Yet nowhere on the English serials is there acknowledgment of the Chinese source.

Exhibit B: The “Substitute Bride” Pipeline

Another glaring example: the “substitute bride to the crippled billionaire” trope. On English apps like Webnovel, you’ll find multiple serialized novels with near-identical titles and plots [4][5]:

  • The heroine is forced to marry a “crippled” or disfigured CEO in place of her sister.
  • Everyone mocks her sacrifice—until the “crippled” husband reveals his hidden power, money, or secret health.
  • Cue humiliation, groveling, and a Cinderella-to-queen reversal.

This formula isn’t new. It comes directly from Chinese webnovel genres labeled 替嫁 (substitute bride) and 残疾总裁 (disabled CEO)—and the Western serials are nothing more than renamed copies [4][5].

Why It Matters

This isn’t romance. It’s trauma exploitation, endlessly repackaged. And when readers say, “I just want something different,” they aren’t wrong—what they’re being fed is the same reheated script over and over again.

It’s not that tropes are inherently bad—every culture has melodrama. The problem is when a handful of fast-food publishers flood the market with stolen, reskinned versions of the same story. It isn’t homage. It isn’t even lazy. It’s theft. And it cheapens the entire act of writing.

We talk constantly about AI as the bogeyman that will kill literature, but while everyone is panicking about machines, they’re ignoring a much uglier truth: this plagiarism-driven serialization trend is already strangling original storycraft.

What about the writers who spent decades learning the craft? Who built intricate plots and subplots, interwove subtext and theme, and learned how to land every beat for maximum emotional payoff? That work takes time, discipline, and mastery. And it matters.

By contrast, these stolen serials—let’s be honest, cereals—are nothing but sugary filler. Sloppy. Lazy. Rushed out in identical boxes with only the cartoon mascot swapped. And readers deserve better.

For the same money people spend chasing the next installment of a copy-pasted revenge fantasy, they could buy a well-crafted, well-edited novel from an author who actually bothered to learn their art.

That’s who I’m writing for—the readers who don’t want to settle for reheated leftovers and call it a feast. The ones hungry for something real, something worth savoring.

References

[1] Dreame, Radish, Joyread listings – English-language serial platforms known for distributing translated/retitled Chinese/Korean romance fiction.

[2] Joyread – When Her “Death” Couldn’t Break Him (and variant titles), serialized novel pages.

[3] Fanqie/Qimao – 《有孕出逃：千亿总裁追妻成狂》, 2,312 chapters, completed March 18, 2024.

[4] Webnovel – The Substitute Bride Doted by My Billionaire Husband.

[5] Webnovel – The Substitute Bride and the Crippled Billionaire.

How Do I Find My Audience Through the Noise?

On By jccasselsIn Writing1 Comment

Lately, I’ve been asking myself a hard question: How am I supposed to find my readers in all this noise?

Because everywhere I turn, I see formula-driven tropes dominating the shelves. Reverse harems. Revenge-mate melodramas. Dark romances that read more like Lifetime movies with fangs than lived-in stories about human resilience.

And layered on top of that is AI — engines that can spit out endless variations on the same tropes, reshuffling familiar beats faster than a slot machine. A new “book” can appear overnight, not because a writer wrestled with it, but because someone told a program: give me more of what’s already selling.

So here I am. Fifty years of studying story structure, mastering craft, learning how to carve arcs that breathe and bleed — and I feel drowned out. Not because my stories don’t matter, but because they don’t slot neatly into what algorithms reward and pirates steal.

And that’s the gut punch: finding my work, my blood-on-the-page work, on piracy sites. Watching it spread for free while sales struggle. Being told it’s “a compliment.” No — it’s not. It’s theft. It’s being hollowed out from both ends: formula flooding the market, piracy draining the reward.

I don’t write candy-bar melodrama. I write meals — layered, messy, complicated stories where scars don’t vanish in the epilogue, where healing is jagged, where love is forged not in spectacle but in fire and choice.

But how do I put that kind of work in front of readers when the loudest voices are built on repetition, not resonance?

How does craft compete with the slot machine?

I don’t have a neat answer. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe the point isn’t to compete, but to keep carving the kind of stories that last after the sugar high fades. Maybe the question isn’t whether I can be louder than the noise, but whether I can still find the readers who want more than noise.

That’s where I am tonight: tired, questioning, but still holding the ember of a truth I can’t let go of.

Because if I’ve learned anything in fifty years of storytelling, it’s this: the fads burn hot and fast, but the stories that matter — the ones that linger — are always the ones written from scars, not formulas.

For Sundance

On By jccasselsIn Black Wing Chronicles, Mercenary Adventures of Blade DevonLeave a comment

Bo sat on the edge of the galley table, legs crossed at the ankle, coffee cooling between her hands. She’d been staring at the same corner of the bulkhead for a solid minute — not distracted, just… elsewhere.

Blade leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, watching her. She didn’t look up when she spoke.
“You’ve got that look.”

“What look?”

“The one you get before a job.” Her tone was matter‑of‑fact, but there was a faint crease between her brows. “When you’ve already gamed out fifteen ways it can go wrong, and you’re packing for all of them.”

He didn’t move, didn’t break the stillness between them. Just let a slow, faint curve edge into the corner of his mouth. “Three clouds, two hard drives, and one SD card.”

That got her to glance up. “And that means…?”

“It means,” he said, pushing off the doorframe, “you’re safe in every place I can put you. Even if one burns, there’s two more. And if all else fails…” He stopped in front of her and tapped a finger lightly against his chest. “The last one stays with me.”

Her gaze held his for a long beat, searching. “That’s a lot of trouble to go to.”

“That’s redundancy.” His mouth quirked, but his eyes didn’t soften. “It’s how you make sure nothing important disappears.”

Bo took a slow sip of her coffee, as if tasting the words more than the drink. “Guess that makes me a file you can’t afford to lose.”

He gave a small, lopsided smile — the kind not meant for anyone else. “Exactly.”

Aurion: The Untold Story of a Legend

On By jccasselsIn Mercenary Adventures of Blade DevonLeave a comment

Get ready, because the story you’ve all been waiting for is almost here.

Before the legend.
Before the swagger.
Before anyone knew his name.

There was Aurion—an eighteen-year-old adrenaline junkie with a smile like a weapon and a talent for walking into danger like he owns it. His first mission with the Inner Circle isn’t a test. It’s a crucible. And he has no idea just how deep the game goes.

This is Blade Devon like you’ve never seen him—raw, reckless, and one misstep from disaster.

You want answers? You want the truth behind the myth?
It all starts here.

Aurion is coming.
And trust me—you don’t want to miss this ride.

– JC Cassels

SOVRAN’S PAWN 10TH ANNIVERSARY EXPANDED EDITION Cover Is Here!!

On By jccasselsIn Black Wing Chronicles, Cover Reveal1 Comment

Thank you to all my loyal readers for waiting patiently for the Amazing Laurel C. Kriegler, Editor Extraordinaire, and me to finish SOVRAN’S PAWN the way we would have liked to have done TEN YEARS AGO!!

Laurel has been after me for years to flesh out the book that was originally intended to be a backstory novella, and to bring it into stylistic alignment with HERO’S END and BARRON’S LAST STAND.

The new, Expanded Edition is more than twice the length of the original 2012 release. It contains a more in-depth world-building, and readers will find many of their most commonly-asked questions answered.

A new book required a new cover. So here is your first look at the darker, grittier cover to match the darker, grittier edition of the first installment of THE BLACK WING CHRONICLES.

The darkness inside him slumbered once more, sated by blood and violence—but for how long this time? He flexed his aching hands and leaned back against the cold stone, crossing his arms against his chest. He’d made his point. There would be no further challenges.

Look for it to go on sale in the near future. There are plenty of surprises to keep you turning the pages and wondering what comes next!

The Wait is Almost Over!

On By jccasselsIn Black Wing Chronicles, UpdateLeave a comment

I am in the final proofread of the SOVRAN’S PAWN Expanded Edition. I think I’ve *finally* nailed down new cover art. Since the book has changed so drastically from its original form, more than doubling in length and darker in tone, I’m debating a title change as well.

Keep your EYE out for a cover reveal and a new blurb, as well as upcoming release date, giveaways, and more!

It’s a whole new book!

The Original Edition of SOVRAN’S PAWN is about to disappear forever, so if you have a fondness for it, I encourage you to grab a copy while you still can! Just follow the link HERE