Shedding Skin

So many questions arise when I reflect back on my professional output over the previous years. My singular focus on creating work while making sure I wasn’t losing income from my former jobs made me deeply uncomfortable. That isn’t to say I’m ashamed of my work. Quite the contrary. I’m more ashamed of the conditions required to make them. This is all stuff I’ve been talking about, both in private and alluding to publicly, for ages now.

Indie publishing is a grueling, unrelenting grind that rewards breakneck release cycles while punishing anything else. That grind wasn’t created by artists. It was what artists gleaned from marketing professionals, distorted, and became beholden to. The same can be said with pricing for indie titles. There are a lot of talented and proud indie authors in the world, those of which cannot price their books competitively with those that are traditionally published because, no matter how hard we try, the stigma of “lesser” remains. Oh, you don’t know me, so you won’t pay full-price for my work. You’ll pay 99 cents, though! Of course you will. How does anyone discover new authors, anyway? How does anyone take a leap and lay down real money for a real book?

I get it. There’s some… really bad stuff that’s self-published in the world. Rushed, unskilled, under-baked, problematic, and everything else under the sun. In my years in indie publishing, I’ve seen all of it.

Last year, I wrote a piece for Typebar Magazine talking about the state of publishing and that for the industry to grow, everyone needs to adjust and think outside of the box. I’ve always felt that way. And while indie publishing is an incredibly viable path to a narrow list of niche genres that indie authors are over serving, it remains a barren wasteland for everything else, forcing writers who want people to read and take their work seriously, to continue to grind through the exploitative publishing industry. How does that change if we all aren’t trying to make it better, right?

This isn’t new. It’s all been mulled over by myself in this very newsletter. So, yes, this is a retread of sorts, isn’t it? But now, the truth is, I have a cover. I have the final edited manuscript in hand. Now I just need to get everything else together to release this book. This, to me, like many other endeavors, is a transition. My next book is myself shedding my skin. It’s the final transition.

Written between 2016 and 2022, it’s a throwback to the things science fiction can and should be. Not just escapism, but cutting criticism of people in power, their enablers, and the systems in place meant to control us. I’d love to give you a definitive statement, such as this is my last science fiction novel ever. I can’t make that sort of promise, though, because it probably isn’t, nor should I worry about anything like that. If anything, it’s a step towards what I want my work to be. A soft reboot, and it’s happening this year.

This year. New release.

Iconoclast.