Author's Note: This One Is A Bit Heavy

I repeat, this one is a bit heavy. So for those of you not up for it, I've turned off the option for the entire post to be in your email. Feel free to skip.

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I'm going to be honest, this was a long time coming. Things just kind of came to a head recently. However! I will not be changing how much I'm writing any time soon. I will keep chugging away, though some things outside of writing will change.

My current expenses will become unsustainable next year. Rent has just gone up and in the US everything seems to have just jumped in price. Up until now, things have been on the up and up. Not quickly, but enough that even with rising costs and rent, I was still able to save up some money every month.

Last year was my best year yet and I am so thankful for it because I had a number of emergency expenses. I managed to not dip below what I started the year with despite about a thousand in surprise expenses. However, already with just the few months, things aren't looking good and for some reason I doubt putting Banished Talent up on Amazon will magically fix things.

So, I will be looking for a full time job. Preferably in IT, which I have an associates for, even if it is almost a decade out of date. Honestly, I should have done this years ago. I was saving money, but not enough money. And honestly? The place I work part time right now pays below what the local average is. I've mostly stayed because it is only a few minutes drive, let me read books when not busy (closing on the weekends will give you a good bit of leeway), and I am bad with change. I'm autistic and I have been sick to my stomach over the last week because of the change I see coming. Literally laid out and unable to sit up without feeling like I would throw up.

Now, I said I wouldn't be writing less and that is 100% true. In fact, if anything I might start writing more. In particular, I might make a couple of high dollar tiers specifically for people who would like one story or another pushed forward even faster. I've seen other writers do it. Something like a $50 tier to get an extra 2000 words of one story or another. I wouldn't even necessarily restrict it to current stories, allowing what are basically commissioned short stories or even full stories for those who don't mind a slower release. After all, I still need to write my usual stories. Of course, any such tier would be limited because I'm not promising to write more in a month than I can handle.

On top of that, SoulDive will be going up on Kindle. I'll of course be first posting it to RoyalRoad and ScribbleHub, but I'm hoping it gains some traction because I'm honestly not feeling too hopeful about finding a job. Both from articles (yeah, not exactly going to trust that right out of the gate) and from people I know personally (kind of hard to doubt someone when they still don't have a new job). I have heard it can take half a year to find a job and that can extend to over a year of searching. My associates degree is years out of date in the field of IT and I'm having a shockingly hard time of getting work references. Like, I asked 3 people today and two of them didn't want people calling their phones while the manager apparently wasn't allowed to be used as a work reference. Which if true, is toxic as all get out. So I can see this taking a good long while.

I'm not expecting to write my way out of this, though that would be nice. Rather, I'm hoping to up my income enough so that if next year does come around without a new job, I won't be in the red. My life has honestly been incredibly lucky in some ways. Not perfect, but I was content with what I had. I miss the friend group I had up in Michigan before I even started writing and I'm all by myself. Not that I'm looking for an significant other, but I've been binge watching a bunch of episodes from Markiplier's podcast and it would be so awesome to have friends like he has in Wade and Bob. Though this is getting outside of what I intended to go over. I've always been an introvert so the occasional meetup with local groups has worked out fine for me so far.

Now, back to Kindle, since I just reread things and realized I didn't go over what specifically that means. Note, I did not say Kindle Unlimited. I've read a bunch on it as of late (because of Banished Talent) and KU seems to be a bit of bad idea. Despite what most people believe, KU doesn't actually give you an advantage. What it does, is count every download as a sale in the algorithm. So yeah, if you have a shiny cover or something people can't help but download, even if no one actually reads it, you'll get a big boost. Of course, you get paid by the page read and the pay is not transparent as well as not exactly the best.

Now, while I will not be selling through KU, that does not mean I'll keep the story up in full everywhere. I'm still going to stub the story over on RR and SH so people will buy or sub. I don't like this. Part of why NeoRealm and Dungeon's Path weren't put up on KU way back in the past is because that just didn't jive well with me. You know, I might not even stub the first book, that whole "first one is free" sort of thing so people will want to go and buy the next book of SD.

Oh, and back to that rent thing. No one believed me when I told them I had no clue what went into getting an apartment. I am too poor to move? Which is apparently a thing. I live in an apartment so I guess some people assumed I was exaggerating. I wasn't! Most of my life I lived with my family, then I was in a dorm, and finally once I didn't have to live in said dorm, my mom got me a place. She came to me and was like "here's an apartment I found!", I went and walked around one, smelled of cig smoke and so I was shown another and chose that one. Then I started paying rent. Didn't touch the deposit (though I did know about that) or any of the other things you have to do. This one I honestly just find a bit silly on my part. I should have looked into it. Guess I need to save more money before I can save money by moving somewhere cheaper. Blarg.

Anyway, I could probably keep writing, so I'll leave it at this. Comments appreciated.