Most writers around this time of year post about their NaNoWriMo progress, and word counts. I know that readers don’t give a shit about word counts. You only care about stories, so that’s what I’m going to talk about.
A story is not dependent on its length. It can be a single page, it can be thousands of pages long. All that matters is that it’s a complete story that touches someone’s heart.
I tried out the Kindle Unlimited program again, just to get it out of my system. It was lackluster, to say the least. The books are coming out of it by the end of November and I’m putting them wide again. All except the GameLit books, there seems to be an audience there for them.
Now, I understand the frustration for a KU reader when something isn’t available there, I really do. But you need to understand that the exclusivity clause is ridding the chance of other people enjoying the same stories. Not everyone uses Amazon, and not everyone likes Amazon. So, I gave it a shot, and decided it’s not for me. Again, I completely understand how some people might get pissed. I watch Netflix, and I hate it when some show I wanna watch isn’t on there. But that’s not similar at all. I think Netflix doesn’t require exclusivity and you can have regional streaming services carrying the same show. It’s more like the stupidity of the upcoming Disney streaming service, which will take the Marvel shows, yes, your superhero shows, out of Netflix and demand that everybody signs up for the Disney service as well. Doing it just because they can, because they’re the biggest and baddest around. That’s what KU is. A bully.
To be done with that topic, I’ll be making everything but the GameLit stories available wide once again by early December. I’m also partnering up with Publish Drive which will also help me get into smaller stores around Europe, like BookShout (Spain,) Ciando (Germany,) Ekonyv (Hungary,) Elefant (Romania,) TookBook (Croatia,) and a bunch of others.
What, never heard of those bookstores? Me neither. But I wanna be available there, because the world is big, much bigger than US and Amazon. I’ll slowly make the shift and hopefully everything will be available by Christmas.
As for the Inktober insanity, if you followed me on social media you must have seen the stories I put up here. I used the Inktober sketches from two artists, philtomato and bloodsplach, (make sure you check them out,) and wrote a story based on those. It’s been fun. Exhausting, but extremely fun. I gathered all those stories up on an illustrated book called Sketch and Story, you can get it here.
This habit carried on with more stories, I publish them every day on this blog. I’m not sure if I can keep it up, but I’ll try. I’m already at 7 stories posted until now. I want to keep this up every day, just like beeple does, but things get in the way. We’ll see, but I’ll definitely try. Unfortunately, a story is not like a drawing. You need both the idea and a plot. You can have a great idea and lack the appropriate plot to make it shine. Up until today, I’ve managed to churn ideas into finished stories almost every day. Let’s see if I can keep it up.
One of those stories was the Halloween Raid, which I wrote taking inspiration from beeple’s art, then used it as a cover.
That one was a lot of fun to write. It all clicked together immediately. If people like it I might expand it sometime next year.
As for other news, Astropithecus and 7 Deadly Roommates is soon coming out in audio.
And the sequel, 7 Deadly Passengers is on preorder.
Regarding my plans for 2019, I’m thinking for maintaining the same speed. Frequent short stories up on my blog, some of them will make it to publication. I call them spitwrites. Do you like them? If so, leave a comment or share them with your friends, that’s the whole point of me posting these. I’m also thinking about putting those in collections, I’ll see to that too.
I’m ditching my Patreon, for now at least. It seems it requires a level of fame which I haven’t reached yet, and I’m not sure I even want to. There are a myriad ways for fans to support me if they want, buying stories, subscribing to the newsletter, sharing stories online.
I’ll carry on alternating between GameLit stories and others. I’m having lots of fun writing them and they are popular, so I’ll keep dipping back into that genre constantly. As I said, my GameLit stories will be left in KU for now.
I’m pushing audio hard, every worthwhile story is up for grabs on ACX for producers. I’m working with the people I’ve singled out while also looking for new talent.
I’ll definitely put my stories wide, available on all bookstores. I try to link to the major ones on the Buy Links page, but they’re too many to list, really. Just search for my name on your favourite regional bookstore, and the stories will show up for you.
And that’s the plan for now. I’ll think about it more as the year comes to an end, I’m sure.
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