Just Because I'm Not Writing Novels, That Doesn't Mean I Stopped Writing Fiction

I announced a little while back in So My Novels Have Been Unpublished (For Now) that the 3 novels of mine that have been unpublished should start coming back into print under a new publisher sometime this fall, and with luck all three of them will be back on the market by the end of the year. In addition to those 3 novels, though, I have one self-published dagger-and-witchcraft novel, as well as a collection of short stories that are still in-print, and those are all the physical books of my work currently out in the world.

Over the past year and change, however, I've had more than a few folks ask me when I'm going to put out a new novel. Will I write another noir cat mystery? More grim sci fi? Or will I show up with an entirely new premise?

Sadly, it's unlikely that I'll be writing novels for several years to come, if at all, again. And I wanted to talk about why that is, while also mentioning that just because I'm not writing novels that doesn't mean I've stopped writing fiction.

If anything, I put out more of that than ever these days.

And even better, a lot of it is free!

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Struggles and Realities

Full disclosure for folks who don't know, and thought the name of my blog was just a quirky little joke, but I'm a professional writer. This is my job, day in, and day out. And over the past decade or so, my margins have gotten thinner, and thinner with regards to what kind of earnings I need to justify my time and energy. And I know that, for me, writing a novel takes anywhere from 8 to 12 months for the rough draft, another month or so to edit it, and then once I turn it over to the publisher I've got between 3 and 12 months before it hits the market.

So writing a novel is an investment of somewhere between a year and two years of effort. And given that I tend to write them at around 500 words at a time, well, that's not that big of a deal, is it? Can I just not find time for that in my packed schedule?

No, actually. I can't. Not anymore.

Let me run you through what goes on behind the scenes.

During an average day I spend several hours on social media promotion (honestly it's one of the most frustrating tasks that is one of the most necessary for paying my bills). Then I have to add material to the two tabletop RPG supplements I have to turn in every month (because those have both an up-front payment and a royalty attached to them, so they're a priority). I update one of the two blogs I run (which are funded through my Patreon, and whose links earn me additional money if I make a sale through them). I record/edit video for the Azukail Games YouTube channel, The A.L.I.C.E. Files, or sometimes both. If I have any time left at the end of the day, I will work on a fiction assignment for a client if I have one, because when I hand those in, there's a check in my hand.

With all of that, I have enough free time to eat a few meals a day, go to the downstairs gym 3 times a week, and attend my bi-weekly RPG session for 2 evenings out of the month. That's it. My day starts when I roll out of bed, and it doesn't end until somewhere between midnight and 1 in the morning, depending on when I put the final words on that day's last project.

Now, this isn't me saying that I don't want to write novels anymore, or that I'm just not up to the task. If anything, I'd love to crack my knuckles, sit down with an outline, and get back to work on a full-sized book again. And if my books find an audience when they're re-released? If a good marketing campaign causes a booktok stir, or for some reason everyone starts paying attention to them? Well, if I don't have to cram so much stuff into every, single day, then I might just be able to find a little bit of room in my schedule to start working on another book.

I've got outlines and plots for days. Somewhere between 20 and 30 of them, at last glance through my notebooks. I could do nothing but write novels between now and whenever I die, and I'd probably still have more I wanted to write... but thanks to capitalism, that's not going to happen without folks out there raising a clamor, boosting the signal, and getting their friends into my fan club.

A Novel's Worth of Text Has Gone Into "The A.L.I.C.E. Files"

While I've written at least 17 RPG supplements this year, as well as 4 short stories, and a slew of blog entries, one thing I've been pouring a lot of work into is the ongoing audio drama of The A.L.I.C.E. Files. I launched this YouTube channel with Alice Liddell earlier this year, and we were hoping to grow it into a monetized channel where we could tell stories, dramatize some parts of our own books, and provide a fun tale for listeners to follow.

Well, I just finished editing the final episode for Season 1, and by my calculations, there's at least a novel worth of text that's been put on the screen thus far... and that's just for the main series plot. Alice herself has narrated the entirety of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a companion piece, and she's just started in on Through The Looking Glass to make sure folks don't run out of things to enjoy.

I bring this up here for folks who wonder where I've been putting my efforts, and what I've been making, because this is a project that's free, a little experimental for me, and that I've put a lot of sweat and thought into. However, it's also on a ticking time clock. You see, we need to get 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours on this channel by the end of 2026, because in 2027, requirements to get a channel monetized are doubling. I mentioned more details in my recent post Thanks To YouTube's Recent Announced Changes, The A.L.I.C.E. Files Needs Your Help!, but I wanted to try to raise awareness of this again.

Especially since we're currently at 362 subscribers and we're just shy of 1,500 watched hours... so we really need folks to help us pull this one out before we run out of time, and find ourselves trapped between a rock and a hard place.

So if you could, please:

- Subscribe to The A.L.I.C.E. Files

- Watch all our episodes (preferably without a VPN or ad blocker on, as those hours get ignored by YT)

- Leave upvotes and comments (especially if you have theories on the ARG elements going on in the stories).

- Share the links on social media, and tell your friends about the series

I have plans for at least a second season of the show, where I'd like to expand the format, the cast, and more... but all of this is going to be dependent on audience interaction, demand, and whether we can hit our numbers.

So if you can help, please do! And if there are other small creators you want to see succeed, do these things for their channels as well. It makes a huge difference at the end of the day!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Thanks To YouTube's Recent Announced Changes, The A.L.I.C.E. Files NEEDS Your Help!

With the storms that ripped across the Midwest, I had to relocate and hunker down until crews could start fixing some of the damage in my town. And while I was trying to deal with all of that, I found out that YouTube has just announced new guidelines that have put a massive ticking time clock on our attempts to make The A.L.I.C.E. Files self-sustaining. So if you want to help myself and Alice Liddell claw down a little piece of the sky, and actually keep telling stories to our audience, we really need your help before these new "guidelines" kick in!

Time really is of the essence on this one.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

The Changes (And How They're Going To Screw Creators)

Before I explain what's changing, I need to explain the base line of what YouTube requires, and how tough that already is for creators to deal with. So, let's start there! Because there are 2 levels of monetization that creators already have. Those are:

- 500 Subscribers and 3,000 Watch Hours: This opens things like super fans and smaller forms of monetization, but creators don't actually get any of the ad revenue their videos generate.

- 1,000 Subscribers and 4,000 Watch Hours: This opens up the final tier, allowing creators to make ad revenue off their channels.

To break those things down, the first requires you to get roughly 8 hours of watched content a day, every day, for an entire year. To get the second level, you need 11 hours a day, every day, for an entire year. And I make that for a year part explicit because if you go over that 365 day limit, it starts dropping off previously earned hours so you have to try to make them up.

Basically for a small creator to get monetized they need to have some kind of viral success. Because those watch hours? Those don't count if the viewer has a VPN, or they use an ad blocker, etc. So in reality you're going to need 2-3 times that traffic just to squeak by in the first place.

So how is YouTube gonna fuck this up?

The recent announcement that YouTube put out, though, is they are doubling the requirements to earn ad revenue. So that's 8,000 watch hours (or 20 million short views, if that's your thing), which translates to something like 22 hours of people watching your content every, single day for 365 days in a row.

Details of the announcement, and how bad it is for creators, can be found here on Notebook Check.

We Need Your Help (And Here's How To Do It)

First and foremost, these changes go into effect at the end of January 2027, and according to YouTube those who are already partners with the program will be grandfathered in under the new rules. I am suspicious of this, but it gives us, essentially, 4 months to try to hit the current goals so we can get The A.L.I.C.E. Files monetized (which is going to be a necessity for Alice and I to keep it going, much less to expand our scope).

At time of writing, we have 346 subscribers, and we're just shy of 1,300 watch hours. So, essentially, we're about 1/3 of the way to where we need to be. So, the immediate triage that will help us is:

- Subscribe to The A.L.I.C.E. Files

- Watch the episodes (preferably without a VPN or ad blocker to be sure your views count)

- Share the links on your social media channels

- Leave comments and upvotes to help boost engagement so more folks can see us

But what if you want to stop YouTube from putting these restrictions in place, and moving the goal posts for basically any small creator looking to actually become profitable? Well, you can also do some things to yell at YouTube to make it clear how disappointed you are in this announcement, and their proposed policy shift.

- Cancel your YouTube premium membership, and let the site know why

- Yell at them on Twitter (@TeamYouTube and @YTChannelTeam seem to be the best places)

It is, at the end of the day, unlikely that YouTube is going to back off on this, barring some massive backlash from its viewers and larger content creators (and I suggested Twitter because unless you're already a YouTube partner, you can't get hold of them directly). Worse, there aren't really any other places that you can go to make video content and monetize it. I've been looking, and aside from Rumble (which I can't recommend professionally OR politically) there really isn't a website that doesn't use a tip/subscription-based option for paying creators, and people are stretched to the absolute limit as it is.

This is corporate greed, plain and simple. And while I encourage people to raise their voices and yell at the company about it, it's also important to lift up and support the smaller creators who are going to get trampled under this oncoming boot.

So watch things. Subscribe to things. Leave comments, tell your friends, and help all of us out there who are trying to slide under that descending steel door before we're locked out of program eligibility forever... because we're doing our best out here, but most of us aren't going to be able to keep projects like this running if there's no hope that it will ever turn some kind of profit.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

The A.L.I.C.E. Files Crosses A New Threshold (As We Get Closer To Our Season 1 Finale)

It's been 5 months and some change since the trailer debuted on The A.L.I.C.E. Files, and we've been fighting the algorithm every step of the way. Since the series started we've explored the Cthulhu Mythos, the world of Exalted, stories of Old Testament angels in modern-day Los Angeles, tales of Victorian horror, and more! And in addition to that, we also have announcements from the Carroll Institute's staff, and an independent rendition of the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

However, we recently crossed a rather important threshold that I wanted to tell folks about... and to ask those willing to listen to give us a hand up so we can blow past the next limit by the time we wrap up season 1!

Maybe two hands up... we're a lot further away than we'd like to be.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

1,000 Hours... Or 25% Of The Way To The Finish Line!

For those who haven't checked out the channel yet, The A.L.I.C.E. Files is an audio drama series with two separate but concurrent stories going on. The first story involves a young woman recruited by the Carroll Institute as a witness cataloger, and the job for the new "Alice" is to review the reports brought back by the Institute's agents from the other side of the rabbit hole... the colloquial name for the machine that opens rifts to other dimensions. The second track of stories are the reports themselves, where we see dramatized tales from these other dimensions, watching/listening to them right alongside Alice.

And we recently crossed the 1,000 hours benchmark!

Celebrate!

On the one hand, that's sort of a big deal. We've been recording, editing, and releasing stuff pretty regularly, and trying to get as many folks onboard for it as possible, so it's nice to get into that 4-digit range. On the other hand, though, YouTube's rules don't allow us to monetize any part of the channel until we have 3,000 watched hours, and 500 subscribers. We won't get a cut of the advertising revenue until we have 4,000 watched hours, and 1,000 subscribers.

 

We're currently at just over 1,000 watched hours, and we have 332 subscribers. Which isn't bad... but hoo boy do we have a long way to go from here!

So What's Happening Between Now And The Season Finale?

At time of writing, we're 11 chapters into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with 1 more to go, we're 9 episodes into Alice's experience in the Carroll Institute, and we have a couple of small asides and announcements from Director Harrington as he breaks the 4th wall to keep the audience updated on what's going on.

Such as his update on the real Alice's basement flooding during the 4th of July storms that tore across the Midwest.

So, that comes out to 24 videos, and a total of roughly 6 hours of content for folks who want to sit down and listen to everything. But there's more on the schedule, and I wanted to lay it out for folks who are interested.

Despite the flooding, Alice managed to get the final chapter of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland recorded, and it should be out August 8. We have two more "regular" episodes of Alice at the Institute (one that is a cross over with the SCP Foundation, and one that delves into the grim darkness of the far future), which will go up on August 1 and August 15 respectively. And once those three videos are up, we'll have the season finale which ties everything together, and sets Alice up for the events of Season 2.

To sum up, that's a month or so of solid releases from where we are now, and an outline of what we'd like to do going forward... but we won't be able to get there without all of you!

Which is why if you'd like to see the channel grow, please consider doing the following to help us out:

- Subscribe to The A.L.I.C.E. Files

- Watch the episodes we have up (many of which have clues for the sharp-eyed who enjoy playing ARGs)

- Like and comment on the episodes you like (and to leave your theories about what's happening)

- Share the episodes around on your social media pages so we can drag some more folks into our orbit

If we could get 668 people to subscribe to the channel, that would get us over the subscriber requirement. If all of those new folks watched all of our videos, that would put us well over the 4,000 watched hour requirement as well! Hell, even if all the new folks just watched the Carroll Institute playlist, that would put us only a few hundred hours away from the goal.

On the one hand, this would take a lot of eyeballs and a lot of people to get done... but on the other hand, it's theoretically possible that we could get all of this done by the end of August, and then we could stride into season 2 with the ability to turn this show into a genuine income stream... and it won't cost our listeners a single dime!

So please, if you haven't checked out the channel, we could really use your support. And if you have 1, 2, or maybe even 668 friends (in person or online) we would really appreciate you putting in a good word for us.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

You Don't Have To Write A Novel (There Are Other Kinds Of Books)

Writing a novel is a very particular skill set, and it combines a lot of different disciplines into a single piece of storytelling. You have to be able to create characters that get people invested, you need to set the scene, describe what's happening, and you need to be able to build a world, write a history, and construct a plot that isn't going to fall apart as your readers try to walk over it.

However, just because you want to be an author, that doesn't mean you have to be a novelist. Not every story needs to be a novel, and not every book needs to have a story. I say this to remind people there are all kinds of ways to write books, and you need to be honest with your own skills, as well as with your desires as a writer.

Don't fight yourself to create one thing when you might be happier creating something else entirely.

Seriously... there are ALL sorts of books out there!

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

You Can Make Whatever You Want

I have met a lot of writers over the course of my life. Some of them were novelists through and through... others, though, struggled to fit into that mold. They might have had a story in them, but it just wasn't a story that needed 90,000 words to tell. Others really loved to build worlds, but they didn't really have a plot that ran through the setting and its history. Some people loved to build characters, but they just didn't much care for constructing an entire setting all around them, or figuring out plots for those characters to get involved in.

That doesn't mean these people can't write books. It just means they might not be particularly good novelists.

As an example, consider the above video. Titled The Greatest Fantasy Game Never Made - The Venture of Vermis, it's by YouTuber Dogma, and discusses the books Vermis I and Vermis II, which are art books by the creator Plastiboo. Styled like video game guides for the old 32-bit era, these books discuss two dark fantasy video games, what one finds in them, and the paths that should be taken... but these games never existed. The books exist as relics of something that never was, making them highly suggestive of an experience one could have had, and providing a glimpse into a story and world, but without actually providing a through line, a plot, or even characters in the ways we're used to thinking about them.

That is what I mean when I say that not every author has to be a novelist. And even if you are a novelist, that doesn't mean that novels are the only things you're allowed to write.

So take a moment and ask what kinds of projects really make you happy, creatively. What do you like to write? Do you like to create characters? Do you like to make vast, complicated worlds? Do you create pantheons and mythologies? Do you like to write flash fiction, short stories, or even novellas? Do you enjoy writing scripts for stage, screen, or audio?

There is nothing that says you have to write novels to be a real writer. More to the point, though, if you try to force yourself into writing the One True Book style, you'll close your eyes to other potentials. And, perhaps most importantly, novels are not the only kinds of books that people will read, buy, or make analysis videos about either!

As an example, one of the best selling things I've ever written is 100 NPCs You Might Meet At The Tavern, which at time of writing has gone platinum on Drive Thru RPG. The most seen thing I've ever written is the Warhammer 40K short story The Final Lamentation, which was adapted for audio by A Vox in The Void, and has over a quarter million views. And one of the more unique projects I've taken on has been the audio drama series The A.L.I.C.E. Files, which requires a very different approach from any of the novels I've written over the years.

So, if you find yourself struggling to write a novel, take a moment and ask if that's actually the book you want to be writing. Or, as might be the case, would you rather be working on something else? Because it doesn't matter what you're writing, as long as you're enjoying that thing you're making.

And once the book is done, well, you can sell anything with a good marketing strategy, and a little creativity. But that is another story for another day.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!