about me

Ilya Kralinsky is, as many have said, one of the finest human beings in existence today. With three published novels to his credit, Ilya is a writer, painter and composer who lives in Coastal Texas with his wife and two children. Kralinsky's work deals with the nature of existence, the role of the individual in the universe, the governance of civilizations and character-driven self-empowerment through stories crafted to be unreadable drivel of the worst sort. When you receive a review from Ilya, the honesty resembles a kick to the groin no matter what your gender.

"I do not write exposition. I design characters to tell the story, and I do not write books to be the mouthpiece for my crappy voice to butt into an otherwise wonderful story. It is character driven, novel length fiction that entertains and enlightens ... unless you're already enlightened, that is ... you know ... what was the question again? Right! No crap, no boredom! We're writers ... competing with movies and television and Internet for the collective attention of the people. Excelsior, my friend ... excelsior."

And there you have it.

Another note: I do not kiss asses in reviews. These websites do have a tendency to cater to those who are too scared to be honest for fear publishers will think they're jerks, or snitty rebuttals for honest reviews because the author doesn't see it as business yet, but as birthing of a different type of children. Let's not play that game; we're here to improve. Writing, being an isolative act, makes writers socially retarded, so these websites are horrible indicators of talent, as very few actually have the confidence in their own work to offer meaningful praise or criticism. My personal philosophy is that writers should elevate one another's knowledge, skills and abilities if they truly wish success to another writer, and this means being completely honest and objective. I have learned the most from some of the most upsetting criticism and not from blind praise. And another note: I have seen some very convincing arguments for potting a whole manuscript here, and having had a book stolen by a fake agent is the early 1990s has made me a bit wary, but I present one full manuscript to show follow-through with a story, but the others are reserved for serious inquiries.

favourite books

Mine. I usually skip through anything I read because of the lengthy, relatively meaningless little facts droning on in passive voice and wasted words. Ha! My novel, Saint, is currently published and available everywhere, and two more titles will hit markets soon. Because of my planning process (and 25 years of experience), I can generally produce a novel from general idea to fully matured manuscript in roughly a month and a half to two months, meaning I fully intend to achieve market over-saturation by year's end

Favorite Books:.

Dune by Frank Herbert (not so much the ones after)

Vladimir Nabokov (any book)

Stephen King's early works (although even they major in minors sometimes and need to be skimmed through)

The later Harry Potter books

And here's what I loathe:

Tom Clancy -- he doesn't even write his own books, and who needs to know all that technical crap about nuclear subs; are YOU going to operate a sub? No. Not likely. He sells because someone said, "Ooh, Tom Clancy ... now there's a good, 8,000 page book," and audiences fall for that.

Michael Crichton -- God rest his soul, he needed to keep recycling that one plot about some alteration of nature going bad and then let someone else write it. If we snagged his typewriter, the keys W A S E R would be worn out for was/were. Well, he made money, didn't he?

Stephen King's later works -- "I, er-ahhhh, could wipe my ass on a piece-a papah and people would buy it." He started to believe that, you know. Part of editing is cutting unnecessary stuff, not just putting out what pops up in your head, Steve.

Unregulated writing of any type -- Now, don't get me wrong, I can tell the difference between flow-of-consciousness breeziness masterfully crafted to keep a reader intrigued and someone just slathering BS all over the page. Your ability to kill a few hundred pages with 50,000-100,000 words does not make you a writer; your ability to craft a character-driven, forward-momentum tale that keeps the attention for those 50,000-100,000 words does.

my websites

http://www.ilyakralinsky.webs.com     http://ilyakralinsky.deviantart.com/