2023 comes to an end with quite a strong run of short stories drafted since October. These are all for the successor volume to Coyote in the Corner. They are shaping up nicely though there is more to write. My plan is to revise all of the drafts together once I have the bones of the collection assembled. I’m currently at around 85,000 words but that is first draft – it will expand a lot as I write the concluding stories and then contract again as I revise them. I’m happy with what I have so far so far as it goes; it leans heavily into climate change and also taps a bit more into the vampire mythos in ways that Coyote didn’t.
I have another project shaping up for 2024 that I’ll say more about in a later post. In essence, though, I aim to get something done relatively quickly and put it out at some point in 2024 as a wholly DIY publishing effort. It will almost certainly be self-published under a nom de plume and may be the first in a series if it comes off.
My expectation is that things going out under my own name will be properly edited and designed, but that is expensive and funds are tight. It isn’t lost on me, though, that a lot of stuff goes out that is not so fastidious about quality yet gets some traction. I want to see if I can tap into some of that. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested in quality or that I’ll be content with a slipshod job – I am and I won’t, but I do want to see what I can do under my own steam (without AI assistance) for as little financial outlay as possible.
So it is likely that anything that goes out under my own name will have money spent on it in terms of production values, while anything under a pseudonym will be a more DIY effort. Also, a pseudonym gives me freedom to try things with marketing that I don’t like doing under my own name, although I’m not sure what – social media doesn’t seem to get you very far because people tune it out. I continue to think that the best marketing is to get someone with zillions of followers like Neil Gaiman to recommend ones books, because even if only 1% take the bait, 1% of zillions is a substantial minority.
In the medium to long term, I have a new standalone novel taking shape and I also need to complete the Sanctuary sequence. I have outline notes for the latter but I need to work them up and turn them into 100,000 words. You’d think it would get easier, but it doesn’t, except insofar as I know that I can do it because I’ve done it three times before.
I remain on a learning curve about what works and what doesn’t in the world of self-publishing (and I’m pretty much committed to self publishing rather than getting into the commercial publishing business.) Essentially, I come back to something I internalised a long time ago but keep forgetting – all received wisdom must be challenged. There is no magic checklist of things to do if you want to achieve success and anyone who tells you that there is such a checklist is wrong: you can do all of it and still not attain ‘success.’
And, of course, that begs the question of what ‘success’ means. If you write to make money then the odds are that you will fail even if you are good; if you write to tell stories as best as you can, then you will likely succeed (and might, if you’re lucky, be noticed and achieve some commercial success too as a happy sidewind.)
My aim remains to write as well as I can, put it out there, then keep going with an eye to continuous improvement in terms of craft. If I come out of this with a shelf of books that I’ve written that I’m content with and proud of, then that will be success. Would I like also to make some money off my writing? Yes, of course; I would be lying to say that I wouldn’t. But in the end it isn’t why I write.
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