Essay--the Next Book

I have dozens of works in progress in various states of completion. Many are stories that have been started multiple times and died multiple times. They’re sitting in disgrace gathering digital dust on my hard drives and are all but forgotten. Until they’re not.

After finishing An Ancient Trap, I took a couple of days off from writing. I treated myself to stupid games, reading silly things, recording chapters, and vegging. During that time, I’d go and peruse the WiP pile looking for something to catch my eye. In truth, I have plenty to finish up. The final installment of The Black series, Extinction remains 70% finished, Quantum Personality Disorder, a novel about Dr. Xi from The Derelict Saga is about 20% finished, Red and Blue, novellas about those two S&R ships and the role they played in The Derelict Saga are about 20% complete, unfinished Garaaga stories, and there are even a couple of Fiends novels in various states of abandonment.

In short, there’s no shortage of stories to complete. The sad part is, there’s no shortage of new stories in my brain either. So how do I decide what I’m going to write?

I’m not foolish enough to consider myself an “artist” (sounds too damned pretentious), but there are labors of love I want to create that simply will not sell. They are important to me and to many of my readers/listeners. However, let me say this again— they will not sell.

There aren’t many folks that want to read about succubi/incubi during the Crusades (too much history) or a cadre of succubi that service the French Aristocracy just before the French Revolution—too much sex, too much history. Not many folks that necessarily want to read Urban Fantasy lite where there isn’t a complete underworld of fantastical creatures and forgotten magic, but instead a smattering of supernatural entities living around the world—too minimalist.

Those novels await their turn because I literally can’t afford to write them. My living, such as it is, is mainly derived from The Derelict Saga and The Black. Some of the other books, like Station 3, have also made a small amount of money and more or less paid for themselves. However, they’re still not putting much food on the table or paying the mounting bills nor denting the debt.

The podcast makes little to no money at all. It either brings people into Patreon/BMAC/Ko-fi, or they end up spending a little money at the store now and then. Maybe they even purchase the books on Amazon or Audible. Regardless, the podcast is a money pit reserved for marketing and marketing alone. However, my Patreon/BMAC/Ko-Fi subscribers might disagree. Most of them join up to hear me read my books aloud, terrible diction and all, and clamor for the next chapter. Patreon also accounts for a significant portion of my annual income (~$5k - 6k). That figure is already public, so I don’t feel as though I’m sharing private information here.

Fortunately, my subscribers just want their content. Whatever it is I’m writing, they want to know about it, and want to hear it. At the same time, however, I want to give them what they signed up for which is harrowing monsters, conflicts, and bizarre situations. Whether it’s sci-fi, a crime thriller, or a traditional horror novel, they keep putting money in the kitty and I keep being able to afford my 40 year old house.

But to attract new folks, I need to write books they want to read and listen to. That goes for both the subscription services and the distribution outlets. For someone who’s not genre monogamous, this can be a nightmare.

My process thus far has not been “write to market” but “choose the story you think might sell.” I don’t write to market because, frankly, I don’t even know what that means apart from writing Vampires when they’re popular, or werewolves, or witches, or whatever, when they start to burn the charts. I’m not sure I could write a decent novel if I shoe-horned that kind of nonsense into it.

So what do I do? How do I choose?

While I was rifling through the WiPs, I found a little document that I didn’t remember writing. It was an outline for the first two books that take place after The Derelict Saga. The outline, written by some previous incarnation of Paul E Cooley who was some kind of wunderkind, included details of what needed to happen in each scene along with a general feel for the plot. I don’t know who that guy is or when he put this together, but I could kiss him.

Rather than jump into a new universe where I have to start everything from scratch, I picked up the tale, Gravity’s Bane, and began writing. And writing. And writing.

The original story only stood at ~6k words. It’s now over 18k and rising pretty quickly. In fact, yesterday was a 5k day (haven’t had one of those in a while). I’m hopeful I can squeak out another 3-5 today. We’ll see.

Gravity’s Bane has no publisher at this time, so I’m writing it, once again, without an advance or any plan for how I’m going to make money from it. Severed Press, who owns the publishing rights to The Derelict Saga, might not want it. We’ll see.

Most of the time, I want to write a story that doesn’t exist. I write it because the movie hasn’t been made, the story hasn’t been written and published, and I want to read it. Since no one else is writing it, I will. That’s more or less what’s driven my writing career thus far. And I want to know more about these characters and where their stories end.

That said, I don’t feel as though this will be the only story I’ll be working on. There are a couple of other, more personal tales kicking around my head that deserve a little time as well. If nothing else, they serve as a sort of palate cleanser. Tales in question are some of the ones I mentioned previously. Ahem.

Terry Mixon, my longtime co-host at DRS says I have to be a stripper to afford college. The metaphor might be a cliche at this point, but it’s more or less dead on. So for every labor of love I know won’t sell, I have to write a few books that pay the bills. Perhaps I should just give up on writing full time, and it’s quite possible it’ll get to that point. Maybe I’m already there.

Regardless, An Ancient Trap is the next beast I have to figure out what to do with. Hopefully y’all will enjoy the hell out of it because I enjoyed writing it.

Cheers.

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