An interesting history YouTube channel

I have an interest in history.  There’s the standard WWII and ancient Rome, but also the history of spaceflight, technology, and anything dealing with the hundred or so other minor interests I have.  As such, I follow I don’t know how many YouTube history channels.  But for this post, I want to talk about one in particular: Cambrian Chronicles, the “number one Welsh history channel on YouTube.”

It was probably about a year ago, I was on some video and I scrolled down to read some comments, when one of the recommended videos on the side caught my eye.  I forget what it was, but it was probably something like “The Lost Welsh Kingdom.” I’ve never taken one of those DNA tests to see where I’m from, but growing up I heard my family was mostly German with some Irish and English.  So there’s probably some Welsh in there as well.  And for some reason, at the time the idea of a lost kingdom or whatever sounded interesting.  So I checked out the video, enjoyed it, and followed a new channel.

I would say that a “typical” Cambrian Chronicles video would be there’s a manuscript from the year 750 that names a dozen Welsh kings.  We have “good” historical records for ten of them.  Here’s the best evidence/theory for the other two.  And we go through five or six other ancient manuscripts to piece together how something was likely mistranslated or the truth is likely right out in the open, but nobody noticed.  A good actual video is The Royal Title that No One Can Remember.  Basically, there’s a list of a dozen or so people with a “title” that can’t be translated.  We don’t know why these people were called it, or why other similar people weren’t. 

All of this is interesting, but why talk about it in a blog about writing?  For one, someone could easily write a story where that Royal Title just meant that they were aliens, and nobody could argue about it because the historical record doesn’t say otherwise.  But more importantly, hearing about kings or kingdoms that – a thousand years later – we only know existed because of some scraps of parchment, is a reminder of how … temporary our existence is.  Hell, given enough time, Shakespeare will be forgotten.  I believe most people know that, on some level, but few have come to grips with that reality.  And right now, too many people are ignoring reality for all our detriment.

Random Writing Tips – Repost your stories

 

Ten or fifteen years ago, I came across a site where you would post a blog/story/whatever, and for every view it got you would get a penny.  So I started posting whatever I could thing of to get some money.  In the following few years, I found a dozen or so such sites.  Some I actually did get money from, but others would have like a $5 payout minimum, and I’d be at $4.50 and they’d go belly-up.  All the sites I knew of eventually died, and I don’t know if such sites still exist.  I imagine they’d be quickly overrun by AI crap. 

Anyway, besides all the general posts about movies and society and whatnot, I also posted some of my stories.  For the simple reason that if someone read one and liked it, maybe they’d go and buy some of my books.  I don’t know how successful that was, but it did lead to some issues.  For one, most publishers won’t take previously published works.  Even stories posted on little known sites that died after three months, count as previously published. 

So what to do with a bunch of stories I can’t submit to publishers?  Some I republished myself as part of a collection.  But that still leaves a bunch of stories.  These may not be the very best of my writing – since those stories I put in collections – but they’re not garbage.  Well, most of them aren’t garbage, hopefully.  But instead of letting them gather dust in a forgotten corner of my hard drive, I’ve started reposting them, mostly on my blogs.  Because the main reason I still post stories is to give a free taste of my writing so maybe someone will check out and buy one my books.  And while writing a new story each month for my blog would be fantastic, there is this thing called life that often gets in the way.  So these okay stories that I can’t really do much else with, are prefect to fill in the busy months.  I spent who knows how much time working on them, I might as well get as much use from them as I can.

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Image from Pixabay.