So, I Signed a Book Deal.

NEWS NEWS NEWS AND… opinion…

Being a writer, especially in the trashfire that has been the last few years, has been interesting. There's a new mini-apocalypse happening weekly. Some new controversy. Some new, destructive technology being pushed that looks to destroy more than help. Plutocrats. Fascists. BookTok. AI slop. 

Everything. 

People like me persevere because there's a real value in creating art and communicating with the world. In the face of the deluge of awfulness, it can difficult to want to keep pushing, but here I am, and here are plenty of others. There's beauty and goodness in the world, and that's what keeps us going. 

Anyway.

Last week I did something that I, as an independent author, had always seen as an entirely different path. I signed a book deal with a publisher. I can't lie, when I started out, being independent wasn't my intention. It came from my stubborn sense of independence, "market conditions," and the excitement that was the boom of indie publishing. I've published 16 books since 2013, and there have been plenty of ups and downs. 

If my two standalone novel releases have taught me anything, it's that the tools in place for independent authors aren't built for what I wanted to do. The tools we have now are created and curated by the retailers. While you'll hear people talk about the 'democratization of publishing' in regards to indie publishing, it's not quite that. It's goliaths like Amazon, Apple, Google and others seeing that there was money on the table for them to open up the gates of their online marketplaces to everyone, regardless of quality, and let the market sort itself out. 

What that means is that the markets favor popular genres, slavishly so that veering away from strict bestselling tropes is an intentional kneecapping that you do to yourself. In addition to that, authors need to sell books at incredibly low prices to be competitive, most first books in a series are sold at a loss, with the idea that you'll write a long, perhaps never-ending series, where successive books will see a higher profit. The problem with that is it's just as confining as what's seen as traditional publishing and it's foibles. It's just a different flavor. 

As my writing has evolved, it became apparent to me that the tools at my disposal were not built for my success. So, I needed to try something new. 

So, my next novel will be released under the banner of a publisher. It'll take a while. Maybe I'll even have something come out before this book comes out, but part of being an artist in the age of Slop, Tok, and Fascism is needing to pivot where need be. 

I'm pivoting, and I'm extremely excited about it. I'll have a formal announcement coming soon.

Thanks for coming along for the ride. 

SHORT FICTION

In March I released The Wretched of the Wastes for my Patreon subscribers.

I love this story and have made it free for a while for everyone to check out.

Today I released In the Light of a Stretched Canvas, a weirder, borderline prose poem from a while back. Read it while you can!

Online mag Hell Itself released story I Will Lay My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots back in late February, in case you missed it. You can read it for free!