November* Anniversary Patreon Update

It's technically November in Australia when this is posted. The real reason I'm posting this is that people will (hopefully) be preoccupied listening to my audiobooks for a while and I'll likely be busy for much of the week myself.

News will be brief. As promised last time, I'm answering questions as it's been two years since Heretic Spellblade was published and November is my author anniversary. If you have any questions of your own, leave them in a comment, and I'll answer them.

First, news:

• Neural Wraith audiobook tomorrow (Nov 1st). This one took forever for Audible to approve for some reason, and I think the Whispersync is taking a while too. I actually listened to this entire thing (mostly on planes) and quite enjoyed it. For whatever reason, I enjoy rereading Neural Wraith more than my other books. Hopefully everyone enjoys this.
• Emperor Forged audiobook on the 7th. I'll admit, after the disaster with the first Demon's Throne edition, I was a little leery about another duet narration, but this series is first person. Gabriel and Katana did a fantastic job imo. It's on the shorter side (even for its word count) but I hope you give it a listen.
• Demon's Throne 1 audio by Steph on the 21st. This has just gone up on Audible. As the MP3s arrived while I was in Sapporo, I've only been able to give it a cursory listen for certain character voices. Vallis as a young Spanish girl (her last name is Tornnes) is a vast improvement over the old edition and one of my surprise favorite voices, and Steph's rendition of Darus makes me wish I gave them more scenes (like, way more). I can also safely say that Grigor no longer sounds like a muppet or an Igor, for those concerned. I'm certain Steph put in a lot of work for the different accents, which I hope brings out the varied nature of the archipelago.
• I'm working on Neural Wraith 2, but I can't say it's on track given I'm not focusing on it. The ending to the Unseen Banking short story didn't get much response, so I'm thinking about how much of it I carry forward into the main book.
• Finally, I'll be switching the Patreon over to subscription/anniversary billing shortly. This means new patrons (and you, if you leave and come back) pledge for 30(ish)-day periods, instead of calendar months. So no more double charging at the end of month for new patrons.
  
  The downside is that I can't give out free months after this. Patreon's method of pausing billing on this system is fucked (it blocks all new patrons). I might add a discount annual rate now though, as if I can't do free months then I might as well offer an entire year at a discount rate.

Anyway, onto the meat of the update.

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So we’re now at roughly three years since I published my first book and two since Heretic Spellblade arguably made me a successful author. I’ve been able to go full-time, focus primarily on writing stories I enjoy, and while there are some ups and downs, I certainly can’t complain much. I’ve basically been able to accomplish what I want to do as an author, while avoiding the parts that I strongly dislike (including the types of people that I don’t really like dealing with).

I’m writing this while on a break, so that helps me to focus on the positive side. It’s been easy to look at some of the more negative aspects of this year (and there are a lot, in many ways) so I’ll try to steer away from that.

First, I’ll answer the questions people asked last month. Then I’ll add a little spiel at the end.

1. What's your typical writing day look like? Do you write a specific amount of days each week?

So I don’t really stick to a schedule or try to force a 9 to 5. That works for some people (maybe even most people), but I think it’s important to play to one’s strengths. Mine involves having some downtime to think and not simply “forcing creativity” at all costs, or churning out reams of garbage and saying “she’ll do.” I mean, sometimes that still happens, but often slowing down to think makes for a better story. It doesn’t always make for a more profitable story though, but I don’t cringe when reading my books, so I rate that as a win.

When I was still an office drone, I chafed against the 9 to 5 a lot. For any reasonably complex problem, or a paper, or even just a well-crafted email, sometimes time to think is more important than just trying to “smash it out.” Presenteeism is a bit of a plague in professional work (at least, where it isn’t outcome-based) and if I’m my own boss, I really don’t want to force that on myself.

What writing looks like for me is very much peaks and troughs. There are phases of books that are always slower or faster. Either because they require more thinking, more research, more rereading of past books, or because I just don’t like writing that sort of thing (but it’s necessary anyway). The downside is that I sometimes get stuck in ruts when I hit a particularly frustrating part of a book and can’t find a way to rework it to my satisfaction. Sometimes brilliance does not strike.

Those down days are when some of the more interesting ideas hit, or when I can devote more energy to particular scenes. I’d wager you can tell whether I “forced creativity” for a battle scene in many cases. I’m not as sure about the obviousness of when I’ve done the same for certain dialogue or politics scenes.

However, entire ideas like Fyre, Tharban being mindwiped, a certain someone getting PoV chapters in Book 5, Argran showing up in Demon’s Throne, and the specific way the merc scene in Neural Wraith played out – these only happened because of the extra time I allow in my writing process. The books still would have been written without them, but they’d be missing some exciting ideas, be a little more improvisational, or simply use the original, inferior idea. Not all ideas are made equal.

And that’s not even getting into the worldbuilding elements.

Anyway, my ideal writing day starts early. I usually write in three sessions (one after each meal), and the most productive is usually the first one. Except when I’m on the final stretch of an editing or writing pass, at which point I’m usually doing an 18-hour day and the last session ends when I’m either done or can’t do any more.

My crazier days are effectively: wake up, have breakfast (and coffee), write, sneak in lunch sometime, write, dinner, write some more, collapse late at night (or early morning). Sometimes I do this for a few days in a row, but it’s not a sustainable pattern and of my last 5 books, only Spellblade 4 had multiple days of it (due to Christmas events getting in the way of perfectly good writing days).

Slower days might just be writing of a morning or an afternoon, or a day of downtime while I replot something (or just take a day off to avoid burnout, because I don’t really value the whole 24/7 robot thing).

As for days per week, I typically write or edit every day when I’m actively working on a novel. There are times when I’m in a planning/research phase, or post-release, and I’m mostly playing with ideas or putting down notes, however. Sometimes I have a break day when I need to coalesce lots of ideas or need to rework the book (e.g. I lost some time while deciding who got the PoV chapter in early Spellblade 5).

Finally, I believe that weekends are important for a healthy mind. I did my fair share of long hours, late nights, work weekends etc as a professional. Hell, I was effectively on-call as a consultant due to the constant slew of emails and shit that’d never stop outside of office hours – nothing quite like seeing an urgent email at 11pm to fix something due for a client meeting at 8am.

Again, if I’m my own boss and I’m financially stable, then I’d rather maintain a healthy pace. So even though I don’t stop writing on weekends, I do avoid a lot of publishing nonsense (e.g. putting off emails until Monday) and often reduce my writing hours.

2. What kind of research do you typically do?

There are different kinds of research I do. Market research is something I have to constantly do in the background as an author, so I won’t go into it. But for the books themselves, I break my research up into multiple categories.

First, because I typically mess with a lot of tropes and define character arcs, I do some dedicated character research. This is more than trying to find 1:1 analogs. Rather, it’s about finding some character archetypes I find interesting and developing a character arc that both has some maturity to it (I go out of my way to avoid “coming of age” tropes, because the genre could use stuff less YA-focused) and allows the character to play off the MC and others. Ideally, good character arcs tie into the larger plot.

Setting research is done both actively and passively. I actively research history or ideas for the sort of place I’m trying to make (e.g. Trafaumh was 1700s France; Neo Babylon is a cleaner cyberpunk setting). While writing the book, I often need to add nitty-gritty – stuff like titles, or names (e.g. what to call the castle of Soreaux), or even what places should look like.

Passive setting research involves going out and consuming material related to either the themes or history I’m working with. When I knew I’d be doing the Fyre prophet stuff and a French Revolution situation in Trafaumh, I went back over a lot of civil war and revolution stuff (this started during Spellblade 4, FYI). I’ve been doing much the same with cyberpunk, and as mentioned in the AI art post, testing random technology to give myself ideas. Even the news helps sometimes.

Plot research isn’t that different to setting research, but takes different forms. Sometimes I have a hole and I’m looking for a particular piece of history to slot into it (effectively trying to flavor my idea with realism, to make it less pulled out of my ass). Other times, something I read or watch gives me the idea. Neural Wraith 2’s general plot is influenced by a particular cult classic movie from the 90s (but will involve less dudes on skateboards).

If there’s one extra thing I’ll comment on here, it’s mostly the weird way that writing processes get talked about. A lot of authors are pantsers/discovery writers/whatever name they come up with because they don’t like their writing process being named after the act of pulling down somebody’s pants. Sometimes, they get a little… defensive about the way they write. I mean, I get it. When people talk about how they have long-term plans and scene ideas they’ve been working toward for literal years (or that they’ve written all the books and are just editing them, right Rothfuss?), and readers often eat that up, it’s a little offputting.

But it’s always weird to see other authors talk about how their stories or worlds are more genuine because they’re “along for the ride” while the characters and world create themselves. This isn’t really a unique phenomenon. I have plans, outlines, scenes ideas, objectives for the book etc while still letting the characters push and pull me. Part of the reason the books end up so long is exactly that reason. I largely relegated Sunstorm to a background Champion, and she elbowed her way back in.

A similar weird divide I see is between stories with good worldbuilding and good characters. To me, a good character should be tied into a good world. People are shaped by their pasts, their surroundings, and the things they know. So many conversations in my books are reflections on the things characters deal with, know, or remember, because it gives them more density than their tropes. The flipside is that tropes are a fair easier method to make the audience familiar with a character – fictional shorthand that requires minimal attention to be paid while skimming. Not that tropes are bad, but if a character is nothing but tropes, then yeah, that’s bad.

These elements complicate character research a little, as if I want a character to behave a particular way, I need them to have a particular background to ground their actions. For an example of an ancillary character I did that to, look at Otto in Spellblade 5.

Anyway, I got a little off topic.

3. Do you like Farscape or Firefly?

I liked them when I watched them, but it’s been a long time. Farscape was a show that was on cable (or at least, cable in Australia) when I was a teenager and it was a fun, if sometimes very strange, watch. I’ll admit that I remember Chiana the most. Firefly aired later but I never got quite as into it as some folks online. I think the issue is that by the time I became aware of it (around the time Serenity was released), I was getting into anime and that largely drowned out a lot of other stuff for a while.

Firefly did eventually influence me to create a down-to-earth scifi setting ages ago, though. I don’t remember much about it, because a lot of its ideas got sucked into later scifi setting ideas (much like with Gauron, which is my kitchen sink setting, I have some unpublished scifi settings).

4. Do you think you might do a sci fi books (catgirls, foxgirls & kitsunes in space) in the future?

So, my fundamental issue with much of harem scifi is that they don’t really do anything interesting. If I’m writing something, I want something special to keep me interested, or to make it different. A lot of my ideas get shelved for that reason. The book needs to be more than just “harem, IN SPAAAAAAACE” for me to want to write it.

I do have scifi setting ideas. Some of them involve catgirls etc as either “alien” species or genetically modified humans. The issue is coming up with an interesting story to tell in a setting.

One old idea has been kicking around in my skull for a while now, mostly because I keep coming back to ideas for some sort of lowkey, easy to write series between my bigger books. I don’t know I that’ll scratch your itch, though. I’m not sure I’ll ever write proper military scifi or space opera.

I do have a super wacky idea for an anime-esque scifi series (a few, in fact) that would sell terribly and probably should go under a separate pen name. But given how overcommitted I am, those are very low priority. I suspect I’ll only have room for one new series next year as is, and it will likely be Billions.

So the short answer is “no.” The longer answer is “not for a couple of years, at minimum.”

5. Do you think you could do character lists like in Heretic 5 in all your books?

I definitely plan to add these into all future books. I also really need to add in a short plot summary, but part of what I struggle with is trimming it down to be short. The complexity of my books works against me here.

*SPOILERS FOR HERETIC SPELLBLADE 5*

Do you plan to introduce the previous world's champions as messengers like you did with Jafeila as Artemis?

No.

There are a bunch of reasons for this, some in-universe and some related to more authorly topics.

If you’re at all familiar with gacha games, you’ll know all about Alter versions of characters (they have different names in different games). While all these different characters versions can be interesting, they all come with a major downside: they suck the air out of the original character(s) and distract from the plot.

In-universe, there simply aren’t any other Champions of importance to come back as Messengers. Astra’s largely resisted the call, much like the Hound. I wrote off the possibility of Ciana being involved (due to the Fyre thing). Narime would refuse. Any Vala that might be involved wouldn’t be Nathan’s Vala (and is therefore kind of pointless to involve).

I did have plans to involve alternate versions of Champions as agents of Siv or other Messengers initially, before I realized this would need way too much screentime. An Alter Reine was going to be Siv’s agent, and Sunstorm would have shown up.

For other reasons, the simple fact is that Artemis works as a fun surprise and a bit of a gut punch. But if I overuse the gimmick, it loses its potency (for much the same reason that nobody really cares about the endless Pirate Shinigami Councils of 13 in every shounen series).

Artemis herself ties into a lot of story and character elements. Fei has deep insecurities about her alternate self, and now here she is, bigger, badder, cooler, and wilder. Nathan has been able to move on, confident that his old lovers are dead, and now he’s being tested. Artemis’s personal goal, as well as the nature of the partner, ties into the current power arc of Nathan, too. Even the Twins will be feeling the heat, as Artemis is a new Messenger with her own intentions for Nathan, and they’ve just started to settle in with him.

Without all of those elements coming together, I probably wouldn’t have risked introducing Artemis at all. She’s a dangerous element in a series that already has a lot going on. Hell, committing to her on top of a lot of other stuff I did in Book 5 makes it much harder to satisfactorily end the series in Book 7, even if I’m worried about the series overstaying its welcome.

*END OF SPOILERS FOR HERETIC SPELLBLADE 5*

End of Questions

I suppose it’s time for the more unscripted part of the update.

It feels cliché to say that being an author is my dream job, but it is. Not because of the money, or the passive income, or the nonsense that’s frequently spouted in certain writing corners (or self-publishing adjacent corners that start with “h”) but because I get to write stories I enjoy. There are some bumps along the road, but constraints are arguably good for innovation – being forced to bump into some barriers is frustrating, but that also forces me to step back and think about things, often leading me to improve my writing or try new stuff.

It's also a career that’s ripe with comparison, and to use another cliché, that’s the thief of joy. I’m guilty of the problem myself, even though I try to force myself to look at the bigger picture (and sometimes get IRL shocks that force to realize I’m very fortunate, even if it’s easy to get trapped in the “keeping up with the Joneses” cycle).

That comparison element is intentionally built into the platform. Amazon doesn’t publish sales ranks for the buyers, but the prospective sellers (authors, marketplace participants etc). You can be excited over your own release, then see somebody else outstrip it with ease (and sometimes other stuff I won’t talk about). When a new author explodes out of the gate (even if they’re not actually a new author), it can be a bit galling, given I took a while to hit my stride in terms of sales and reviews.

Looking back, my first book did pretty badly by the standards of the genre. I think it had like 14 reviews by the time book 2 came out. You can basically slap a half-naked woman on a cover and get like 50 in harem even if the first page is ridden with typos, in case you want a benchmark. I came close to calling it quits in 2020, as I got busy with work again and didn’t have too much time to write.

Ironically, 2020 being one of the worst years of my life (until the end of the year) is the only reason I’m here writing this post. Australia largely dodged the pandemic at first, so I was still fairly busy in the office. But I got deployed to work on a pretty shit project, under an incredibly awful project manager, reached the end of my rope with my career as a consultant, and decided to pump out Heretic Spellblade before trying to career change again (probably into a contract business analyst role, if I’d needed to). The rest is basically history.

But the progression of my books’ success isn’t as clean as I suspect some people view it as. I don’t write to trend. No isekai, litrpg, cultivation, gamelit, urban fantasy, shifters, superheroes etc. This means I’m not as tied down by tropes, but it also means I don’t get those supercharged sales from people exclusively reading the flavor of the month.

It wasn’t until Demon’s Throne 2 that I became comfortable as an author. Before that, I felt much more vulnerable, and that showed in both release reception and sales. I felt like I still needed to be much more commercial and stick to the tried-and-true genre strategy of short, rapid releases. The worst was probably when Spellblade 2 was rocked by a false NTR accusation at the height of the NTR witchhunt by a certain section of the harem community, and the impact it had on sales was immediate and incredibly disillusioning.

On that comparison note, it’s kind of odd to see people refer to me as a large author in the genre. Part of the issue is that I know a bunch of authors who sell drastically more than me. On the other hand, I release much slower than many authors and still remain decently popular. I’m at a point where I’m less interested in growth, and more interested in writing the stories I’m interested in.

I have noticed that I’m probably an author whose tone (or at least comments) get mimicked, however. When I first started, I largely copied the way some larger authors spoke to their fans, because I had no clue how to do it. That’s normal, and happens in professional work as people find their feet, whether in a new job, new career, or new workplace.

But it’s when you see other big authors take notes from you that’s it’s notable. I published Neural Wraith in part to get away from my sourness after Demon’s Throne 3 and also because the gears had finally clicked together to make it real. It had been a project in the works for a year or so, and got stuck – a true passion project that I expected to flop. It did unexpectedly well, and then a bunch of other authors started calling everything a passion project. Even when they were talking about trend-chasing books they’d probably churned out that month. And while I’m far from the only person talking about burnout, it seems to be a buzzword among these types as well.

Again, I’m no stranger to this. In the corporate world, this sort of nonsense was fairly common. Executives and middle managers would ape the genuine concerns and passion of others, effectively attempting to masquerade as somebody who gave a shit. Authors do the same thing by feigning genuineness in their brand. I sometimes reflect on the line in Neural Wraith that “office culture never dies” as I see so much out in the wild. Perhaps it’s not office culture, but just people.

What I do seriously worry about is longevity. 3 years, or 2 successfully, isn’t very long. I did a decade as a professional and by the end of those years I looked back on my younger years pretty negatively. Self-publishing is pretty immature, and there’s not much time to really learn in the same way you do in a normal job. Things change rapidly. The reasons I became successful aren’t necessarily going to help a new author.

There was a youtube video I saw recently that commented on this. His advice to become a successful youtuber was to develop a time machine and make anime videos several years ago. That is the reality of selfpublishing. There are authors that remain big who are using methods that no sane new author would touch unless they want to fail. Hell, even my methods are probably insanity to most other authors. Part of the reason so many authors pump out so much so quickly is because of this problem – they want to ride the wave while they’re on it.

This is the harsh reality of selfpublishing. Or any career where you’re your own boss, with no financial security. The good comes with the bad. 2022 has had some good, but I’m wary of missing signs of the wave ending. Experience tells me that I can find my feet and simply write other stuff, but the question becomes more what that “other stuff” looks like. As I’ve alluded to in the past, harem may not be part of it given the broader genre trends.

There is a more positive flipside to that harsh reality, and that’s the fact I can just focus on writing, for the most part. I hate the marketing side of selfpublishing. Writing blurbs, doing marketing copy, networking, shilling my stuff and that of other authors in a circle etc. I hate that crap. Many authors consider it either a necessary evil, or even the real job of the selfpublisher – the books are just the vehicle for the marketing, in the eyes of some folks (especially if they don’t even write them).

But I love writing. Coming up with scenes and characters, developing worlds, putting together an outline and watching it morph as you come up with new and better ideas in the writing process. There are scenes and ideas that sometimes take me years to bring to fruition, and that’s a real joy to me. Characters and worlds live in my head long before you see them – and often you don’t see them.

Amazon’s algorithm largely lets me focus on that. I can publish a book and let it take care of most of the work. The vast majority of readers come through the algorithm, in my experience, although people recommending them helps a lot, obviously. I get to focus more on writing books that I think are good and stories I want to tell, instead of stressing over how to create some amazing publishing business – because I don’t really give a shit about being a publisher. I’m an author.

This approach runs anathema to how many selfpub authors do things. But if I’m going to take on all the shit of being self-employed, what’s the point if I don’t give myself some benefits? The whole idea of being my own boss is that I can choose what I do and don’t do. That’s why I don’t force myself to stick to a writing schedule, and it’s why I don’t bother with heavy self-promo. I’d probably sell more if I did, especially if I played nice with other authors and joined their clubs (although I suspect that ship has long sailed if I ever wanted to). The questionable path that a bunch of authors have trodden of becoming small publishers is also deeply uninteresting to me.

Ultimately, it’s my approach. I get to focus on writing, which I enjoy. I find it frustrating to market and network, so I don’t bother. Worked out well pretty far.

Audio is easily the one area I’m unhappy with. Audible remains a pain in the ass, and will probably never open up self-publishing more broadly (at this point, I can suspect the worst about why). That means I’m stuck with publishers. Podium’s been fine, which is why I stuck with them for Demon’s Throne. Royal Guard is doing Emperor, and the first book comes out on the 7th. I’m still not really an audiobook guy, but I’m trying to appreciate more of them.

However, Audiobook Guild ended up being a nasty stumble. Not going into the specifics still. But there were a lot of complaints about the narration – hell, I disliked the narration (it was so bad that I refused to even touch the third book). A few people may have even spotted that weird time an audiobook went up the same night I posted about it coming “Soon” without me even knowing. Finally, a lot of people just won’t leave Audible (and if you’re going to charge higher prices than Audible, the quality needs to be there).

This means I have a real flood of audiobooks entering the market over the next few months. We’ll see what impact having my entire catalog on Audible does, as I know a lot of people don’t look outside Audible. I’ve always been an ebook first author, as that’s been the format that reliably makes me a significant sum (especially through KU, as my books are long enough now that I get more from a full KU read than a purchase).

Looking forward (finally), there are three main checkpoints. Or whatever you want to call them.

First, I need to start wrapping up some of my existing series in a satisfactory manner. That means Spellblade and Emperor in the next six months (Emperor sooner). I don’t want to start a new series before I finish off Spellblade.

Second, move into a more consistent release pattern. I’m pretty sure this will be every 3 months. While the flexibility of working on a book “until it’s done” is nice, the reality is that people like to know when things are coming out. The mad scramble I tend to end up in close to release isn’t really sustainable, especially as although some very important changes get made last minute, there are always things I’d liked to have changed that don’t make it in.

Third, nail down exactly what I want to write and how that gels with audience expectations. My goal is to care a lot less in the future about frustrating genre conventions that mostly try to keep books as homogenous as possible. However, some of the stuff I like to write can go a bit off the rails and away from a lot of the audience preferences.

For the most part, I just want to make writing fun for myself. I loved writing Neural Wraith, but the times when I felt that about Demon’s Throne 3 or Spellblade 5 were far fewer. Part of that is the relative complexity, but a lot is because those series are tied up in a lot of “will this make people mad or stop reading the book?” I expected a lot more pushback over the ending of Spellblade 5 (and I suspect some people were upset over it) simply because of how angry people get over cliffhangers.

I have some ideas of what that might look like, but I need to finish my current series (sans Neural Wraith) to start putting those into action. And see whether harem is a genre that still wants me.

We’ll see where I am in another two years. I plan for 2023 to mostly be a year where I wrap stuff up and take stock. While I have no shortage of ideas, they probably need to stay in the cabinet for a little longer.

Again, if you have any questions of your own, feel free to ask below.