Weekly Update - 10/2 - 3 years! (Patreon)

What an absolutely wild and weird week it has been, so let's just get into it. Those of you who are less interested in how the sausage is made, this may not interest all of you, but I wanted to take a bit and sort of look at where we are, how we got here and where we're going.

I know that CARP ending felt like it took me forever to get out there, but I wrote about 20k words that I ended up throwing away, trying to get it to land the way I wanted to. And I'm super happy with how it turned out. To answer the question, there are no plans to return to that storyline at any point in the near future, but who knows what the long term holds.

Now, let's talk about all the things that happened while I was working on finishing CARP, 'cause it's a lot...

A week ago, I got invited into the Patreon offices and found out that while I'm not great at drawing in new users, I am fantastic at keeping people around, which was nice to hear. They had a bunch of questions for me, how I got started, where my audience came from and what I delivered. It was sort of a nice set up for the weekend.

On Thursday, I headed to a writer's conference where after two years of working together, I finally met BreakTheBar. He's quite the big guy, and I'm glad we spent a decent amount of time sitting, otherwise I suspect my neck might've hurt from looking up all weekend. We've been working together on the Quaranteam project for a couple of years now, so the meeting was long overdue, but he's a charming fellow and it was good to have a partner in crime.

One of the things that became immediately obvious to us was that we weren't being looked at funny because we were erotica writers - no, that seemed like it was totally fine - it was that we were full-time professionals, that this was all we do for a living, basically.

As it turns out, our business model is basically unlike anything else our kin were doing, and that sort of became obvious the more and more we talked to people, although a lot of people were eager to listen. Early on, both Break and I heard a lot of talk about the rift between 'traditional' and 'indie,' and how five years ago, the indie kids were sort of scoffed at, but now it's whatever works. That said, almost everyone's still focusing on complete projects, while people like Break and I are very much serial fiction writers. (There was a serial fiction writing panel that Break went to and I skipped, because it sort of became clear early on that a lot of the panels were just focused on people much earlier on in their writing journeys than we were. He told me I didn't really miss much.)

In a lot of ways, I think Break and I would be excellent speakers for some of these conferences, mostly because we sort of found a different way in, and we're operating in a different style than most of our colleagues. Despite all their talk about 'traditional' vs. 'indie,' the problem is they still put out their content the same way - as completed large chunks. I felt like a couple of guys trying to tell the movie industry about this thing called television.

People kept coming back to the same point over and over again. "You have monthly income?" And we were like, "Yep." Then they'd say, "Enough to live off of?" And we're like, "uh, yeah?" So while stood out, we were pretty welcomed. Break, in his breakdown (ha ha), compared us to visiting professional golfers attending a smaller local tournament, which is entirely fair.

I signed up for a 'pitch' slot for one of books I have sitting in my drawer that's complete, and I truly didn't know what to expect, considering I haven't pitched for an agent or a publisher in half a decade, but the night before I'd read the opening of this book at the 'open mic night,' and Break tells me there were people laughing and applauding (but I was sort of tunnel vision in focused on my reading) which makes me feel better.

The pitch went surprisingly well, and it's going to distract a little bit of this week, because the agent wants a full pitch with a copy of the manuscript, albeit 25k words lighter than it currently is, so I've got to do some cutting over the next few days. If that ends up moving forward, we'll revisit what it would take in terms of maybe having a second pseudonym for that book, or maybe just letting people know the real name behind all the stories. I'm still on a fence about that, but the advantage is that I'm still a million miles away from it being important to have decided. If the agent likes it, and they decide to represent it, it might take 6-12 months to sell the book, assuming someone wants to buy it, and then it's probably another 8-16 month beyond that before it sees publication.

The book in question is one of my favorite projects sitting on the shelf - a semi-autobiographical story about my time spent driving for Uber from 2015-2017. It's full of all sorts of weird shit that I went through during that time, but it's also sort of the story of what it means to be good at doing something you hate and what it takes to get you free of that.

In between trying to get caught up on writing, I'm going to be spending some time shaving portions off that book and getting it ready to submit, because the sooner I have it in front of the agent, the more professional I look. And, generally, taking words out is easier than putting words in.

I'm not great at socializing with complete strangers, but there were a couple of welcoming faces who sort of went out of their way to making both Break and I feel better, one of whom was named ZS Diamanti, who's apparently sold 10k books mostly through TikTock. He's an actual full-time writer, so he and the two of us had lots we could sort of empathize with, and while I haven't checked any of his stuff out yet (I think he described his books as 'cozy fantasy') so I'll probably pick one up and see where it goes from there. The conversation we had with him over dinner was more useful than any of the panels I went to, because it was someone else who'd sort of done it their way (although he admitted how much he'd love to stop doing the direct sales through TikTock, so it was nice to be envied for how we're doing things.)

Both Break and I came away from the conference feeling a lot better about how we're doing things, because, at the end of the day, this is us. We do what we do, and we're full-time writers for a living, and that's thanks to all of you, which we'll never probably stop saying thank you for.

We talked a bit about the Quaranteam project, where I'm planning on heading with it, where he's taking NorthWest, what kind of stories we're delighted to be reading from our fellow writers and things where we'd love to see people starting to play around, and I'm hoping it'll continue to grow, but maybe in a way where we can manage the load a bit better. I'm going to try and get a bit more hands on earlier in the process again, but only if I can keep it at a manageable level. It's very hard to tell when people are going to want to write Quaranteam stories, and what to do tell them about how what it takes to do one right. I think that's why I think Break and I could both be very good panelists - we both have a bit of teacher in us.

And, at the end of the day, we're both still figuring out how to give the audience exactly what they want. I described us as "story-first erotica" and Break later pitched as writers of "romance for men," and I think both of those things are equally valid. I'm going to start doing some polls over the next month or so, just to learn a bit more about you folks as an audience, and sort of gauge what's working and where there's room for improvement.

Honestly, I really like you all as readers, and even when I screw up, y'all are willing to tell me what you think I should be doing without being demanding about it. (Break himself was giving me a bit of stick for a few characters in QT not getting enough screen time lately, so believe you me when I tell you, I hear you, and I'm working on it.) Those of you who aren't on the Discord, if you feel like you'd like to get a little more involved in the discussion, hop on and feel free to throw your opinions into the pot. The feedback means a lot to me, and is the reason I started the Patreon a little over 3 years ago, when I felt like it was probably just going to fail. It didn't, and as Sally Fields once said, "You like me! You really like me!" I hope to keep delivering stories you all like for a long time moving forward.

Okay, so it's 100+ degrees here today, and I've been doing my best not to sweat my balls off today. Tomorrow is set aside for just getting somewhat caught up on commissions, so don't expect to see a new story post until Friday, but I'm going to start writing like a madman ahead of my upcoming vacation from Oct. 18th-30th, and even during then, I'll try and still get content out. I'll bring my laptop with me to New Zealand, and I promise to do a newspost each Wednesday at the VERY least, hopefully with a bunch of very pretty pictures.

With the writer's conference last week, I forgot to upload stuff to public sites, so I'll do a double batch either tonight after I get back from poker night or tomorrow after I get up, while I'm trying to duck the heat.

The public release schedule looks like this:  10/5 - Neon Stonehenge 6, QTAA 10 (conclusion), Pack 11, QTUM 2; 10/12 - QT2:22, CARP 9; 10/19 - QT2:23; 10/26 - The Stacked Deck (Silversmith 4). 

I know I say thank you a lot, but truly, from the bottom of my heart. When I started this journey 3 years ago, I was scared as hell. And I'm super stoked you're all with me.

And people asked me to start pasting music again, so here's something international for you - Dragon Ash (from Japan) just dropped a new single. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3adSm_e2q0&pp=ygUKZHJhZ29uIGFzaA%3D%3D