Writing is messy and a lot less linear than you might think … at least for me. I write things, then they go nowhere and sit in a drawer for a long time, and then I retrieve them and think, “well, some of this is good,” and go back and start rewriting…
…And that way lies madness. Certainly not publication! So after a flurry of publications in the early Aughts, I got bogged down in The Neverending Novel, aka Right of Rule, aka The Monsters of Katakot, and when that failed to launch I started Bone Horse, but I really wanted to work on Monsters, and so I kept jumping back and forth, and oh yeah, Bone Horse is going to be a sequel to a series I never published, so…
You get the picture, right?
As my friend Ben and I talked about our shared writing woes, we both asked, “Do we write because we care about publishing, or about being read?” And we both realized that we really just wanted to be read. And that we had some work that was, well, maybe not the best in the world, but hey, it was readable. Somebody out there might like it.
A pro would say “don’t put anything out there that isn’t perfect.” Or, “look, polish it up and self-publish it, you might make a few bucks! Long-tail income! That’s where it’s at!”
But y’know, everything seems to cost money nowadays. More and more money, in fact. And it’s kinda disgusting.
I’m lucky. I’m a full-time, tenured professor. Contrary to what you might think, looking at Ivy League profs, most of us profs don’t make all that much money. But I can pay the bills, and I don’t need to make money on my fiction.
So I’m going to give it away. Some of it’s been written and it’s not perfect and I’m not going to promise that I won’t go back and tinker on it later — live, here, on this site — but hey, you can read it for free.
Some if it’s going to be a work in progress. That work’s gonna suck a little and get changed a lot. Parts might eventually get scrapped entirely. And it’s likely to be a subscriber-only part of the site. Maybe even beta-reader-only (interested?) and then subscriber-only, once it gets a beta reader’s thumbs-up. IDK. I’m still figuring that out. But those readers won’t need to pay for it, either.
Maybe someday the works I’m sharing here will be polished enough to publish, and that would be awesome. I know there are folks who’d rather read a book than a website, and are willing to pay for the privilege. Hey, if you’re one of them, I have four published books that you can buy on Kindle for a few bucks each. Go for it. Won’t make me any money; I haven’t seen royalties on any of my fiction. Not even sure I still have a bank account connected for the handful of books I’ve edited that sometimes I get royalties on, sad to say! 😆
So — that’s what’s going on here. Or will be, once I get everything figured out. Hope to see you soon!