FULL BLEED: HOME IS LIVING LIKE A MAN ON THE RUN

I really need to stop watching the news. No, not the regular news about the US buying diesel from Russia while they’re still invading Ukraine and poking around eastern Europe. Not that kind of news. I’m talking about the news from publishing (which includes my own work.)

What’s that? Harper Collins and the majority of the Big Four are using AI to do marketing and covers and back cover copy? The executives are pushing it from the top down? Golly, that sure doesn’t sound like them. They love books so much. They’re not so worried about those third quarter numbers or the value of their Manhattan real estate that they’d cut corners like that. Would they?

You’d best start believing in ghost stories. You’re in one.

Oh, but short fiction outlets are better off, right?

If you mean that Analog, Asimov’s and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction are now buying stories on contracts where the writer gives up copyright and moral rights is better off, then sure. Sure things are better off there. No problemo. Only, well, that’s happening. Those most prestigious outlets from everyone’s youth are now toxic. I don’t care who you are. You don’t give up the copyright on original work just to get it in the biggest magazines so it can be considered for awards and prestige and oh… Well, you do you. Me? It ain’t worth it.

Of course, this is easy for me to say. I’m not in that world and am not really interested in a way back towards it. The only short fiction sales I’ve made were into non-traditional markets (ie, Kickstarted fiction collections from small publishers or shared-world IP from a big game publisher). As I’ve said, and even recently, my work isn’t going to be up for consideration for any manner of award or on anyone’s year-end list. I won’t be a promising newcomer at thirty five years on and off writing (but only… fifteen or so having made any sales.) I won’t be a Wattpad superstar or find an audience by writing serial-numbers-filed-off fanfiction. Hell, I won’t even get reviewed unless I start shelling out for it (aside a recent appearance on Chills and Quills, that is). See, there’s no prestige in it for them. I’m not a feel-good story or bright-eyed-newcomer or someone with a new angle or anyone whose success you’d wish to emulate. And nothing succeeds like success.

Not to mention that I bare my teeth at genre gatekeepers. And let’s face it, you don’t habitually go visit a YouTube channel or review site for work that wants to buck the trend. There’s no percentage in that. Not when there’s another book from a much bigger name or flashier newcomer or someone who came out of nowhere and climbed to the top of their category on Amazon and stayed there.

I just wanna write. I wanna be read, too. I’m not sure about adored. I don’t trust that whole thing. Then you start being accustomed to it and doublethink yourself into corners pleasing people who are likely to move onto the next thing as fast as they moved onto your work. Trouble is that your work has to exist in the marketplace. And for some folks, the marketplace is the only way that you can prove you’re worthy of continued existence. Or attention. I mean, it certainly makes things easier in a world where not even trying I’m seeing five or more book birthdays roll past the timeline. Stuff gets lost pretty fast. Given the choice of covering a Hot New Something or Giant Genre Presence, yeah, you can understand why someone who is working at the margins on their own thing is simply not going to get that much attention. I understand it. I don’t particularly like it. Just like I don’t like being a member of the HWA and getting all these opt-ins for Stoker consideration that I simply don’t have time to read, even if I have the inclination.

And I’m a nobody. I can’t imagine what someone with a name has to go through in terms of being spammed by people desperate for blurbs. Hell, I feel bad about asking for them from people I know decently well, much less folks I’ve never met. I’ve been offered them by much better writers than myself, for which I’m thankful. But I’m not interested in rattling anyone’s cage to get one. Also the whole social awkwardness thing. Whoof. I do wish I’d been born outgoing and confident at times. But then I probably wouldn’t have developed the, uh, total package that boiling in my head at all times. Is that a fair trade off? Hell if I know.

The unfortunate downside of this is that sometimes I let this whole “Your book disappeared and didn’t sell past the Kickstarter and nobody wants to talk it up at all” as “You really should just stop now.” That’s Qliphoth-kissing. Unfortunately, sometimes you need a good, deep tongue-lashing from the shadow. Or I do. It’s tough to fight once it’s started. And pretty soon, you’re sucked under and gasping for air. But there isn’t any ‘cause you threw yourself into it. Whoops. Damn. Skill issue. If it were me, I simply wouldn’t, etc etc.

The only solution to it is to focus on the work. Which I have not been doing because, well, exhausted by reality and stuff beyond my direct control yet part of my everyday life. And I can only do one impossible thing at a time, I guess. Or maybe follow one folly at a time.

Let’s be honest. Writing a personal, genre-antagonistic, series that is not exactly a series and self-publishing it is folly. Financially, I can keep doing it so long as I keep running Kickstarters and shovel some money back into the furnaces. Because show sales and sales after, well, there’s no real money in that unless you’re going at scale (or selling ebooks.) Physical books? Yeah, there’s production, transport (and woe betide you if you’re mailing stock to a convention), transaction and table fees. Doesn’t take long for your per-book return to look pretty paltry. Again, if you’re at scale, congratulations. Good job. If you’re doing hand sales and excited about two hundred bucks worth of sales at a show, it’s a little rougher. If you’re selling via Ingram-Spark to bookstores, it’s a lot worse, sorry. So yeah, the money’s not why you’re there.

You’re there to write and be read. And maybe you can even get read if you’re lucky. Maybe you only get the work. You get to keep writing. There’s your prize.

And that’s tough to wrestle with. Are you the Angel or Jacob? Changes day to day. Can’t just blunder into it. Gotta build up your reserve strength, use some strategy. And most importantly, you have to trust the work, even if nobody else really does. That’s a hard one. That’s stepping right off a cliff and hoping there’s some clever matte art going on so that the hidden bridge is right there beneath your feet because it’s a long way down. It always is, or has been. Just that the trust itself hasn’t been. That’s still a daily struggle. “Is this good enough? Does it make sense?” Those are questions that draw blood even though they appear toothless. And as it turns out, when it comes to this stuff, I’m a bleeder. We got a bleeder here!

I guess I can only trust the work. Everything else has been double-edged at best, a ladder out of the pit, only one crafted from razorblades, and not the safety kind. Every rung out demanding a toll. But as they say, trust is a tough thing to come by, these days. Unless you just go to it, not thinking about it, not hoping for an outcome other than getting another set of pages out as your daily bread.

Just wish it was easier, y’know?

Until next time.