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I subscribe to David Farland's email newsletter. He wrote a bunch of fantasy books (not my genre, I tried to read them and didn't like them), his wife is also an author, and he writes a lot of "how to" writing books. He's a judge on the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest.
He also writes under Dave Wolverton (his real name) and published science-fiction and historical fiction.
He pimps his courses HARD in his email newsletter. I've never taken one. He pushes his BYU roots hard, too, and that's a massive turn-off for me (I'm not religious and I don't see what being a Mormon has to do with any of this, so why bring it up?).
I signed up for his Apex membership and find it one of the best digital products I've ever bought. There are some issues but overall his courses are well-structured and contain a lot of valuable storytelling advice I've never heard anywhere else before. I also signed up for his upcoming 318R class that starts in September (Brandon Sanderson, Stephanie Meyer, Dan Wells and James Dashner all attended the same class).
As for his BYU roots, Mormons treat their religion more seriously. I don't care about it, either and I don't see it being pushy as he (thankfully) doesn't push any religious views on anyone when he teaches how to write fiction. By the way, all three hosts of Writing excuses are Mormons, too. For some reasons, many Mormons from Utah are very successful authors.
He brags ALL THE TIME that Stephanie Meyer (Twilight) was a student of his, as well as claiming to have been the person to tell the publishing house to go ahead with Harry Potter. He says he was approached by Blizzard and is the one that recommended the third race (Zerg) in Starcraft, and that made it a massive success. Same with Brandon Sanderson, James Dashner (The Maze Runner).
Well if I had such students I would definitely brag about them all the time as well LOL. Also, Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells (both of his students) do mention him often in their podcast as well and have a lot of respect for him (he was a guest many times) so it's not just empty bragging.
Zergs are based on a creature from his series The Runelords and here's the back story:
Just after I wrote the first Runelords novel, in fact, I began working for a small videogame company called Saffire in Utah. My first job was to land a contract for StarCraft’s Brood War, which I did. I was then asked to be the co-leader of the design team, and I came up with a lot of fun things for the game. I even threw my “Reavers” into the game. (If you’ve played, the Zerg Lurkers were based on my reavers.)
While he seems to have an impressive resume, he's pretty full of himself for someone that nobody's ever heard of.
I have a feeling he enjoys teaching and being a judge in writing contests more than he wants to be super well known. He's definitely very knowledgeable and in my email interactions with him I sensed nothing but wanting to help.
As for nobody hearing of him, his prime time was in the late 90s and early 00s.
To give a related example, probably few people know about Hugh Howey today even though his Silo series published back in 2011-2013 were hugely successful and he was perhaps the biggest self-published star then. Not all authors stay super relevant for decades but it doesn't matter they can't teach how to tell stories (though perhaps they don't understand how to market books these days).
I'd bet with you that he makes WAY more money on courses than his own fiction.
Possibly but I wouldn't be 100% sure. He said in one of his books published years ago he had made at least 2 million from his fiction, and approaching 3 million. So he has probably already crossed 3 million from fiction alone which is IMO pretty successful. There are a little over 400 people in his Apex group so that's just $100k a year assuming they all stay on for years.
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