FULL BLEED: PEEL BACK THE MOUNTAINS, PEEL BACK THE SKY
- 8 hours ago
- 8 min read
Listening to Fables of the Reconstruction (or Reconstruction of the Fables, if you prefer) by REM, a forty-one year-old record. I’m old enough to remember waiting for it to come out, still have a ratty promotional poster from Tower Records somewhere, I think. I’d have to go dig it out. It’s an album that still rings for me, slicing into a very particular time and place. That being graduation from high school. Yes, I’m rather old, though I was young when I graduated, not yet eighteen. I was young once.
I hadn’t written much of anything then, though if you were resourceful and knew where to look, you’d probably be able to find amateur press stuff that has my name on it. I’d disown it, of course. I’m sure it’s not very good, even if I could recognize myself in it. I’m not sure my first novel, written substantially some six years after I left high school and finished up college, isn’t all that much better. I did end up publishing a pretty major revision of it awhile back, having given up on getting any kind of home for it in publishing. Maybe I should have tried harder. Rewritten it again. Maybe I should have written a fantasy novel back then instead. I was told by the editor at Avon I’d had contact with as much. I don’t take advice real well, apparently.
So as I sit here writing, frittering away time, listening to “Maps and Legends,” time is ticking down on the crowdfunding campaign for My Gifts Are Hungry. Things close up on Sunday. And I’m not likely to be around much tomorrow (or today for you when this goes up.) Yeah, not good form to be out there getting word out in the closing days of this sort of thing. There’s a big push at the end. Hustle hustle hustle.
Only, I’ve seen how this one ends, folks.
I’ve gathered up all the support that there is to gather. Funded and then some in a day. Another four hundred in pledges the four weeks after that (that being about a quarter of total pledges). It’ll fall short of the number of backers of the last one, both in numbers of backers and amounts of backing. That’s on me. Okay, maybe it’s on the crappy economy, too. Everyone’s feeling that bite. Both in vibes and hard realities. I’ve got a loyal audience. Moreso than I would have guessed. It’s precisely of the size that it is. These books don’t really sell other than a handful in appearances at local stores. Discoverability is, what’s the phrase? Oh right, it’s for shit. There’s too many other writers with too many other books, many of which have publishing deals and have been blessed by someone other than their insane creators and are therefore more worthy of coverage, such as it is.
Oh, I know. I’m probably being too pessimistic. Once the book gets released, surely someone will want to talk about it on their podcast or blog or microblogging service or perhaps their messenger pigeon network or ham radio setup (that would be cool, actually, get at me with that) or microwaves beamed to Zeta Reticuli. But I’m not holding my breath. That’s the reality for self-published fiction. Honestly, the reality for even published fiction. I guess getting released and disappearing other than for a small clutch of readers is a better end than getting released and disappearing completely on Amazon or just being printed and shoved into a manuscript box. I. Guess.
It's not why anyone, any writer, does this. Writers are in it to be read. Yes, getting paid would be fucking great. But in a world where people are charmed by ChatGPT output and not having to pay copywriters or any other labor and just get all this free content that is exactly the way you prompt it. “There’s nothing more expensive than something you get for free,” W.S. Burroughs was fond of saying, at least in the lectures of his I’ve caught on YouTube. And he’s right. All that stuff is poison, but it’s attractive poison. It all costs you in the end, costs everyone, really. But it’s inevitable! (So was atomic power in every home and nuclear Armageddon.)
Back to the matter at hand. Writers are doing this to be read. To have their work read. Not necessarily to become famous or feted, celebrated or reviled. To have their words read, knowing that not everyone is going to get the same thing out of it that they themselves did, that maybe anyone else will get out of it. And, frankly, even this modest outcome seems harder and harder to come by. Not without getting actively fucked and giving your work away so that someone else can sell ads off it via whatever platform you’re trying to use. Getting an unmediated, unmoderated experience with a story is harder and harder, unless of course you just go to a bookstore and pick up a book. (Yes, yes, that experience is actually heavily moderated as well, only invisibly.) The reality is writing is a very lonely profession. In the self-publishing sphere even more so. Yes, there’s an amazing community of people out there, some of which I’m privileged to call friends. There’s also a lot of isolation. Or is that just how the world of the internet works now? Just silos and sovereign personhoods and wannabe cults of followership.
Is wrestling with a book for a year or more worth it when you’re talking about sixty readers? And let’s be clear, I should be on my hands and knees that the number’s even there, given my active hostility towards marketing (though I like to think that I’ve embraced ballyhoo, though perhaps not with the expertise that William Castle had). My refusal to say that my books are simply one thing, aimed at one fandom, one group, will definitely fulfil expectations of those readers and etc etc. To say that I’m prickly when it comes to matters of categories and marketing is like saying Edward Teller liked to see things blow up. Kidding. I’m kidding. I’m sure Dr. Teller is a perfectly nice guy. So, surely I do myself no favors there.
Thing is, I was told over and over that people want new experiences in their books. And Maker knows that I don’t want to write the same thing over and over. I’ll let you in on a little secret. When I ghost-wrote category fiction, those books were all the same thing, the same ur-plot, no matter how much I tried to change them. I got driven insane by the fourth book.
Now is my work today startlingly original? Without precedent? Heavens, no. I like to think that My Gifts Are Hungry isn’t just a re-skin of All Waters Are Graves. Though there’s parallels, but you have to squint to see them. All that said, I’m not exactly in a hurry to check off lists of horror genre items because that sort of thing never satisfies. It’s gotta mean something, gotta work in the space of the story, gotta be something not quite the same old same old. But wow has it ever bounced off potential readership. I’d say off the zeitgeist, but again, truly self-published work doesn’t break through like that. Twilight and Fifty Shades? Nah. Engineered stuff past the writing. Just ask Geese. They’re a band. Kids love ‘em.
I knew that making a living out of this was out of the question about the time I started writing novels again (around ten years ago, for those of you playing along at home). I’m not looking for that. Where things are, though, I’m not so sure. I said not long ago that this is more or less sustainable as long as there’s time and energy to write these books. I might have one, but the other comes in short supply due to other demands.
I’m glad I have any readership whatsoever. I certainly don’t feel like I’ve earned it, aside from writing the books. Writing the books is the least of it, these days. But it’s the only part that’s interesting. Sadly, I have to do all the other stuff, too. Which puts me in direct contact with the reality of things. And that reality is not particularly cheerful. In all honesty, I was hoping. No. I was expecting some growth from the last book to this one. Presumptuous of me, yes. Hubris, even. So it’s always a kick in the teeth to have that shaken. As said previously, only myself to blame on that. I clearly didn’t hustle enough to get the word out. I didn’t pony up for banner ads or other publicity. I didn’t play the game of breaking through. And let’s be real, it is very much a game to be played. The folks with platforms know what they have and cover things that get attention on themselves. Nobody particularly wants to hear what a semi-feral writer of my age has to say. But the latest by a name that everyone in genre recognizes? Yeah, them what has, gets.
I don’t see a way to break through that particular cycle slash equation slash system, though. Short of literally thousands of dollars spent. Which is thousands I have significantly better uses for. And no, I’m not talking Amazon ads. That’s a sucker bet. Those are filtered to death. They’re there to make Amazon more money, not to convert. No, these would be ads that don’t seem like ads. You know, just regular content. But honestly, I wonder if those would move the needle. In the landscape we’re in, nobody reviews anything much for free (though often in exchange for the prestige of reviewing the new [big name] book, which, again, everyone will do because they have to keep up.) How much to get reviewed by Kirkus now? Is it two-fifty or five hundred bucks? Just such a weird system. Am I as a writer paying for a product or the hope of advertisement? Can any of it be trusted? I don’t know. Go ask Geese.
All of this is so depressing and exhausting, but I’m supposed to think about it and play along so that the books don’t languish once I’m done writing them. I’m not supposed to think about that, either. I unfortunately do. I’d rather just talk about the books. I’d rather just write them and not have them disappear. But maybe that’s the gig now. Hell, better people with more money than me spend a hundred million on a prestige TV series only for literally everyone to forget that it even happened, even if they watched it. I’m just one guy with time and a device to record typed words in sequence. That’s… That’s nothing. Common as dirt. No shareholder value on the line with me. Just time. Just the only thing I got.
Time. Its trick is you and me, boy.
Aw, forget all that. If you want a good, weird time, you should instead go buy a good book. I’ve got one in mind. It’s about a girl who runs away to Hollywood to crash a cool club. She makes new weird friends and goes to their crash pad. And as it happens, that old house in the hills has been waiting for a long time for someone just like that runaway girl. They’re going to be great friends, and the house has such a wonderful idea or three for her.
You can pick it up right here:
Three more days of this, folks. Ending a campaign on a weekend. I should have my head examined. For more reasons than this.
Until next time.
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EDIT afternoon of 5/29.
Here’s the part where I eat some of the above words. I’m big enough to admit I’m wrong. And I was wrong about the campaign running out of steam completely. After I wrote this and it getting posted, pledges have climbed to $1936 as of right now. We’re not past the last campaign tally, but at least I see it as a possibility now.
So maybe there will be some actual growth book over book. I’m not going to count (or discount) those particular chickens. That said, we’re looking at the end of the work day on the east coast. West coast in a couple hours. People are away from their computers. But maybe not away from Bluesky on their phones, so I guess I keep hammering the socials. Ha. Yeah. The socials.
I’m still not wrong about the sustainability about this, but at least things aren’t actively shrinking. Not yet anyways.
So, go tell your friends. Tell your enemies, too. Tell ‘em how we kill our enemies by loving them to death.
