Not because I don't want to. I would love to have the time and freedom to devote to a new novel project right now. It's not because I don't have ideas. At last count I have over 50 viable novel concepts that I could spend the rest of my life working on and just barely get to press if my heart holds out. The reason is, put quite simply, I cannot devote over a year of my time and energy to a project that then earns me maybe a hundred bucks before it runs out of gas.
So this week I wanted to talk about that, and how I'm pivoting my energy as a creator... for the time being, at least.
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| Sadly, needs be when the devil drives. |
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!
What I've Been Doing For The Past Year
To give folks a timeline, summer 2022 was when Ring of Fire closed its doors, and authors were largely let go to find ourselves new homes. I managed to do that, and to get my books slated for re-release. There were some hitches and stumbles, but by Fall of 2023 all of my lost novels were back on the market, and available for purchase. And while I was pushing my books, both in-person and online, I was also dedicating a lot of time and energy to my latest book release, my first ever tabletop RPG, Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic!
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| A book that you should check out, if you haven't yet! |
While Army Men dropped earlier in 2024, I've also been putting a lot of work into various short stories over the past year. In the event you didn't see them, these include:
- The Final Lamentation: A Warhammer 40K story about how the Black Legion finds out the hard way that a Lamenter is not locked on the ship when them... they're trapped in here with him!
- Where The Red Flowers Bloom: A Weird War II tale, this story features a Japanese garrison on an island in the middle of the Pacific where a strange curse overtakes the soldiers who've trespassed on the land during the season of the bloody flowers.
- Gav and Bob, Part 5: Faith and Martyrs: Another Warhammer 40K story, the Imperium's bravest ogryn speaks with a canoness confessor, who weighs both his sanity and his soul after the deeds he's done.
- Black Marks: A Dead Space story that was commissioned by the YouTube channel A Vox in The Void, by the time you're all reading this blog entry, the audio drama for it should be live on the channel! This tale takes place on Earth in the far future, and how one damaged agent uses his broken mind to save all of us from being eaten by things beyond the stars.
While I've been keeping myself busy all this time with a slew of different projects, I was partially waiting to see what the results of my books' re-releases would be. After all, one of them got a new cover and additional internal materials, and the other two were still new enough they hadn't quite found an audience yet. I was eager to see what my own promotional efforts, as well as what the efforts of my new publisher, would yield.
In the end... not much.
Without bringing up the receipts and showing them to you all, I earned enough money that I could treat myself to a fast food lunch this past quarter. Or enough to pay a little more than half of one month's utility bill, if I saved two quarters of payments.
Now, that could change. Something I say, or do, might get a bunch of people interested in my books. I might find an overnight following, or suddenly explode thanks to the efforts of reviewers I've never met... but I've been playing this game for a while. I know none of that is likely to happen, and writing one more book to throw on the pile isn't likely to change my situation in a real, noticeable fashion.
I still have the desire to really sink my teeth into a bigger, meatier project, though. Something where I get to tell a longer story full of intrigue, danger, and a bit of the old ultraviolence. Which is why I'm currently so fixated on the Chronicles of Darkness podcast I want to start titled Windy City Shadows.
A Dark Pack Project On The Horizon!
There is a world beneath the one you know. A world of magic and monsters, full of horrors that will haunt your dreams, and a beautiful madness that will seep into your very soul. If you fall through the cracks of the Windy City, you may find yourself among the broken, and the Lost. These things that were once people were dragged out of the world, and they had to claw their way back kicking, screaming, and changed. They are not now what they were. They are more... and so much less.
Politics among changelings is edged at the best of times, and outright deadly at the worst of times. Shepherd Black left that all behind, along with his position as the Fall Court's enforcer. But when someone from his past calls in a favor he has to honor, and a promise he has to keep, the old wolfhound has to let the beast out one more time so he can settle up, and finally be truly free from his old life.
This simple elevator pitch is what I want to do for season one of Windy City Shadows, whose working title is Grimm Promises. Shepherd Black escaped from a life as the lead hound of the Wild Huntsman, to becoming the attack dog of the Autumn Queen. When he finally left it all behind, an old debt drags him back into a life of blood and shadows... a life he won't be able to leave again without paying a nasty price if he truly wants to walk away.
There are more details about this in the blog entry Windy City Shadows: A Chronicles of Darkness Podcast Proposal, and for those who are interested there's still a little bit of time to leave your input for the upcoming video I talked about in Ask Me Anything About "Windy City Shadows" A Chronicles of Darkness Podcast Proposal.
I've had several people ask me why I'm dedicating my time and energy to a project like this rather than writing another novel. So I wanted to take some time to illustrate the numbers, and dig into this as a business decision, rather than just following my creative desires.
A Novel:
- 70K-90K words for one of my books.
- Takes roughly a year of time to write.
- Can't be released until it's entirely complete.
- Receives no advance.
- Takes several months to a year to be published.
- Cannot be read for free by the audience.
- Is hard as hell to sell, and only yields money from sales.
Contrast that with the podcast:
- 40K-80K words, depending on the final number of episodes for the season.
- Can be written, recorded, and released in stages, allowing it to come out faster.
- Likely a year of time to a year and a half to finish and release a season.
- Can be listened to by the audience for free.
- Will have ad spots to pay revenue.
- Can receive donations from audience members who want more.
- Will have a per-episode fee from at least one backer outside of Patreon.
- May result in sales of tie-in products that already exist (TTRPG supplements for Changeling: The Lost, Geist: The Sin Eaters, etc.).
Now, neither of these projects will be easy to make. They're going to take a lot of time, energy, editorial, and working together with multiple people to ensure it's as professionally perfect as possible. However, a novel only provides me one way to get paid, which is selling the book once it's released. The podcast lets me get paid through Patreon, through ad revenue, and through the backing of my publisher, whose channel I'll also be sharing the production on.
The minimum amount of money I could make from a novel is $0, assuming no one buys copies. Realistically, though, I feel I could make between $100 and $200 in sales for a new book, based on overall numbers from previous new releases. The minimum amount of money I could make for releasing the smallest number of episodes for the podcast is $250, which is just the amount of backing I'd be looking at from the one individual outside of Patreon. That's before any ad revenue, before building a Patreon following, and before any other kind of income allowed under the Dark Pack agreement.
If money was no object, folks would be seeing a lot more books from me. However, I've lived beneath the poverty line for the past decade, and I don't have a lot of cushion in my safety net. So this is the mental math I've been doing, and it's one reason I'm so fixated on getting the Azukail Games YouTube channel monetized, because that is the first step to setting the wheels for this whole thing in motion!
So if you want to help make this show a reality, please check out the channel, subscribe, and help us get the last few hundred watched hours we need for YouTube to give us that official status. And while you're at it, maybe give some of the older audio dramas I made for Changeling: The Lost a listen so you can hear what you're in for, and maybe get a sense of some of the characters you're going to see make return appearances!
Support The Literary Mercenary
If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!
- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)
- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)
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, as well as my Rumble channel listed 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!
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