Quote:
Originally Posted by Dubnjoy000
A few notes on The Drift, Once a Gambler part 2 :
- Definitely an enjoyable journey, one which sees our hero go through the promised rollercoaster ride And like it has been mentioned a few times by different sources, you catch yourself saying, as hero is about to step into yet another pit/downfall, : "no man, don't do it ". Of course, most of us poker players have been down a similar path - if not as pronounced... - and can thus easily relate.
- Interesting and fun insight into the northern European poker scene during the lated 2000s boom.
- I told you this before Miikka, but you definitely have a knack for spontaneous/surrealistic wall of texts I thought the narrative/style to be simple, yet effective. If there is anything I would criticize about the writing, is just that, its simplicity (despite you making the most of it). I would of liked to see more a poetic feel to it... Perhaps some added semantic fields, dreamlike sequences or metaphors, maybe... Really liked the description about you passing out with the hotdog licking your face in the morning, for instance
- Man, you are the king of cliff hangers
- That is definitely an interesting life that you experienced, thx for sharing Looking forward to the third instalment, when will it be released?
edit : forgot to add, but would be really curious to read some other project of yours with a different structure/narrative (that is not as autobiographic) and how your writing style transpires in such a project... I think you mentioned in your PG & C about a screen play (was it?)...
Hey and thanks for writing a review, I really appreciate taking the time to do so.
-I'm glad you enjoyed the scandi poker boom insight - I've been pretty lucky to be around both early boom kids (Ziigmund, Lodden, LarsLuzak) and the late ones (Jeans89 etc), I always thought including them would be one of the biggest reasons why people might find the book interesting. One morning you wake up in Portugal with Jens after a drunken night out, the next he's the biggest winner of all time on PokerStars. Crazy stuff.
-Re: writing style - basically, when I started writing the book, I knew pretty much exactly what story I wanted to tell, and how to tell it. My writing background is all in journalism (I had never even tried to write fiction until this year), and I was confident I could tell a captivating story using the style I ultimately chose. I'm a huge fan of the things you mentioned, and man I'd love to be able to be the guy who added dream sequences to his memoir and made it work. But I just wasn't comfortable enough with experimenting with that stuff for this project. Whenever I publish something fictional, I'm sure going to experiment a lot, but since this is already a 600-page autobiography of a relative nobody, it just didn't seem like the time and place for it. I mean, it is a pretty good story as it is, and I didn't want to risk ruining it by trying to make it something it's just not. I do agree with you that it could be even better by adding stuff you mentioned if done right, but I just wasn't comfortable and didn't want to reach for things I wasn't sure I could pull off.
As it is, I think OAG is a pretty entertaining read, people usually say they read through the whole thing in a couple of days. While my long-term goal is to create something that would take longer to digest, with regards to this project specifically, I'm actually pretty happy with it just being enjoyable reading.
-Haha yeah, pretty brutal cliffhanger eh? It'll get sorted in part 3, I promise... which is due at some point in early 2017, as is the paperback version of the whole book. I think that cliffhangers can generally come across a bit cheap, which is why I didn't do it for part 1 (the ending of that book, imo, is really great and leaves virtually nothing open), but I thought it worked pretty well here.
-Re: next projects, I don't yet know what my next "big" project will be - I've written a long script this year that I may or may not try to get some execs to read at some point (still needs some fine-tuning though). I think I'm writing approximately 7 novels and short stories at the same time as well, but I don't really have a goal or one precise project I'd be working on. We'll see what happens. The only thing I'm actively publishing now is the article series on UpswingPoker, which should be somewhat weekly.
Thanks again for writing the review!
Miikka