Author's Note: Life, Money, and SoulDive

This post goes a bit into my recent health stuff, my financial situation, and some plans for SoulDive which is related to the financial stuff and how it hasn't exactly been doing that well over on RoyalRoad and ScribbleHub.

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First off, as I noted in a previous Author’s Note, I’ve been going to physical therapy for pain in my tailbone. After five or so weeks of PT, my tailbone is doing better and I will be seeing my doctor again early next week. So given what the Physical Therapist has told me, things should likely clear up with a few more weeks of therapy (fingers crossed, I remember my mom had some kind of tailbone issue that needed actual work done, but that it not what this seems to be). The therapy has messed with my writing time, but I won’t try and say I have been perfect with my upload schedule to begin with and I’ve still managed to get chapters up day of (though the SoulDive chapters this week came a day later than I’d prefer). Though of course as a final bit on the whole tailbone thing.

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Now, money. Over the weekend I got some stressful news. I try not to talk about my financial situation too much. As with many people, this year has been hard. So, with Patreon as my primary source of income? Well, it dropped by hundreds of dollars at the beginning of the year ( Shout out to those who have been here through it all! ). Still, I managed. However, next year? Not only will the usual stuff go up (screw rent), but one of my other sources of income will be cut off. It wasn’t much, just a hundred a month, but yeah.

I will not be raising the price of the tiers. They are what they are. So, I have a few things I plan to do. Though if any of you have ideas for what extra stuff you would pay for, I’m open for ideas. Anyway, I will be putting more stuff on Amazon. A good example of this is that I plan to do another editing pass of my short story Black Dust & Blue Plasma, stubbing it on RoyalRoad (which is actually the only place it is because I’ve been busy and didn’t get around to uploading it here or on ScribbleHub), and then uploading it to Amazon for a few bucks. There will also be other similar stories to come. If only because I have a bunch of ideas I’ve come up with over time and if I’m inspired, I can crank out a story of four to eight thousand words. Which seems to work for Chuck Tingle, so maybe it will work for me. Though maybe the fact that my stories aren’t erotic might limit my earning potential. Not that I haven’t thought of that, though it wouldn’t be uploaded to this Patreon as the company Patreon is a bit touchy about that stuff, especially with the current climate and nonsense going down with the payment processors deciding what adults are allowed to spend their money on.

On top of that, while the highest tier allows someone to buy an extra chapter of the story they want (or commission their own story), it is a bit much to expect one person to pay for that. So, I’m going to figure out a way to allow everyone to chip in for extra chapters, including those on RoyalRoad and ScribbleHub. Hopefully, some people will take me up on that, if only so I can build up my savings a little.

Besides that, I have actually been looking for a new job for months now. Part-time or Full-time. I don’t know. I understand that the current time to find a full-time job is 6 months to forever (there are people who lost a job during covid and still haven’t found one). However, I’ve always had a problem even just getting interviews. At this point, I suspect something is showing up when people do background checks on me or something (maybe my autism?). That or my resume has something horribly wrong with my resume? Except my most recent resume was put together with my sister, who did some hiring while working as a bank manager. So yeah. And before that? I was assisted putting my resume together by professionals working for a big tech company where an uncle of mine used to work. I actually did a thing through the place because they were doing an autism outreach program to help those with ASD find a job in the tech industry. Like, I do have an associates degree in computers, but it is almost a decade out of date at this point.

Honestly, I need a new place to live as well. My current place is not cheap, but it is cheap for where I live. If I was to move into the same apartment I am in today? The rent would be 3 or 4 hundred dollars more, mostly because I’ve been living here for years now. Likely the best option would be to move into a place with someone (or multiple someones) to split the rent. Except I don’t know anyone local. I’ve moved a couple times, and combined with my autism and not having a local place to hang out? I do not have a local friend group yet. Not that I don’t have friends, just no one local. Also, no one close enough that I could justify crossing state lines to couch surf with. Though given the group, I’m sure someone would offer me a couch if I needed it. I wish I felt comfortable moving back in with my mother. I wish I could tell her a bunch of things. Given my stories, especially SoulDive, most of you should have a good feeling for the kind of person I am and I would not feel safe sharing my stories with my mother. Which would make moving back in with her (even if she was up for it, which she does not seem be) very uncomfortable at best.

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Which brings us to SoulDive. I planned out ten novelettes for the story and we are currently 3/4ths of the way through the sixth. The problem is that SoulDive did not take off over on RoyalRoad or ScribbleHub (and isn’t doing that well here either, but that is hard to judge since I have Patreon send out the entire post in the email). I even took out an ad on RR for the story, though I certainly could have done better on getting the story out there. If you know more about doing that kind of thing, comment below, because yeah, I need all the help I can get.

So yeah, while there are 4 sections to go, I might end up cutting two of those. That way I can have the story finished by the end of this year. This would cut out some of the character growth I had planned and a couple events, but it would still come to a proper conclusion. This is very much a situation where if you're enjoying SoulDive, leaving a comment on this post. And if you use RoyalRoad or ScribbleHub? It needs a bunch of 5 star reviews to reach new people. I do try to push leaving reviews in the author notes over there, but I swear, that gets worse percentages than requests to go to an author's Patreon or site.

Then for the next story, I will be doing more to make sure it does better numbers. In particular, within a few days I’m going to put up a post with a few of the prompts and ideas I’ve had for my next story and see what people would like to see. That way I can get started on it when I have time so there is a bunch of chapters I can upload at once as that seems the best way to get followers on RR and SH.