FULL BLEED: WITH BUCKSHOT EYES AND A PURPLE HEART

I suspect this'll be a big one, one of the semi-regular lancings of that Qlippoth boil on the soul that's supposed to bring catharsis and relief and instead like and addict leaves you wanting more. That's the danger, right? Chasing that dragon of whatever catharsis is supposed to provide but can't. Not meaningfully for anything more than a moment. Humans aren't wired to have their brains remade by reading The Perfect Work. But then reading doesn't absolve you of having to live an actual life, either. I've often talked about how fiction is great simply because it's not real. That's a double-edged sword. You don't get to read about good people from good writers and become a good person yourself. Maybe you get to pretend for a little while.

Maybe that's the real trick. That momentary diversion. And maybe it gives you an opportunity to look at things differently. But you still gotta put in the work. Just like the whole issue of forgiveness. You can ask for it, then you can put in the good works to show that you mean it, or that you're thankful for it. But you go demanding it and that's where the trouble starts. So maybe demanding these things out of books and movies and such is where things go bad. Maybe ask for an experience. Then go change your own life.

Okay, end of sermon. You're all excused. Go get some nice fried chicken or vegan pad thai and sit out on a blanket in the sun and enjoy the moment, preferably with loved or at least liked ones. Or alone if that's how you roll.

We're looking at the light at the end of the tunnel for the Fake Believe campaign. Just shy of $1800 as I write this. Things might change some, particularly in that last week. 8 days left. But I suspect I've reached all the folks I'm going to through my regular channels. I've gotten 1 (one) outside outlet to grant me a news item on the campaign (thanks, Dread Central). I've gotten 0 (zero) reviewers to commit to reading the book. I've gotten 0 (zer0) influencers/bloggers to cover the book. I suspect that all these are related since I don't buy ads on sites in exchange for coverage. Maybe I could try a book tour, but that's only if you've got a book ready to go. And Fake Believe isn't supposed to be until July. It might be available earlier if you know where to look but only because Somebody won't let me schedule four months out and I needed to see proofs. Sigh.

So, yeah, could be that my current lines of communication are tapped-out. On that basis, I have no complaints. 46 backers and a bigger gross than I could reasonably expect as an advance from any indie publisher. And the advance is all you can expect. I get it. Sure, maybe a mid-size publisher could offer ten or twenty-five thousand. A book a year gets some basics taken care of, but that's not living money. And then we've done the breakdowns of a hundred thousand. You put away half for taxes and that other fifty comes to you in four installments over four years most likely. Which is all you'll see unless you're very very lucky and earn out. If you're staggering those deals one a year over four years, you're pulling down... not great but probably survivable money. The making a living isn't the point anymore because that's for folks who are already financially established or legacy writers. Spare me the but but buts and talk to me about people who make their living from the writing gig. Not from speaking. Not from side editing. From the writing and publishing. Look, there's no shame in it. This is the landscape now.

You all saw that article where the Vanity Fair writer came out and said in public that he's only getting $20 a word for articles now and how he can't be motivated to keep up on that basis. Yes, sad story, very sad. Anyways. The only guy I know who's written for Vanity Fair is still struggling to make ends meet. Folks can't write criticism or entertainment journalism for a side thing because that's been decimated too. All of the critical talk got turned into free content and clocks don't run backwards. People got their free hook-up and are not giving it up. They, in fact, get bent out of shape when articles are put behind paywalls or subscriptions. I get that. I hate clicking on a link and getting a paywall warning. If that's being passed around on social media or whatever, you expect the link to get you the thing you wanted to read. Instead you're asked to subscribe.

Which makes audiences smaller. I've been banging this drum for a long, long time. Several generations in internet terms. Comics moved from broad newsstand and convenience store distribution to the realm of exclusively comics shops. Then comics started being printed to order, but getting new people into comics was harder and harder which created a feedback cycle of diminishing returns. Which I talked about twenty years ago and got mocked for. Whatever. Just 'cause you don't like what's coming doesn't mean it won't run you flat.

I won't even be able to adequately address the impact that tariffs (one day I'll spell it right on the first attempt, I swear) will have on comics and publishing. The big publishers will survive. They always do. But they might start shedding some of those acquisitions of other publishers (if they can find buyers) under their wings. And things for folks just coming in and not selling huge books on waves of popularity will feel the sting first and hardest. Maybe folks will move over to ebooks. Sure, that could save everyone, but the printers and distribution companies who are being kept afloat on hardcover and trade edition books at near loss-leader prices compared to ebooks. Suddenly that 100k over four years, oops, 50k, looks a little more paltry than it first did. Because publishers won't be handing those out as easily (if easy is the word for it.)

And where's that leaving us? Well, in my case, since I never could really get the hang of witing stuff that other people thought they could make money publishing on, it doesn't hit me directly. My books are sold through my contacts. I print what I need and some extra (which, by the by, my former indie publisher did as well. I'm guessing a lot of them do because they can't generate the economies of scale needed to do business with "big" printers.) It means authors are their own publishers doing direct sales. Which, yes, I did when I was being published by someone else too and isn't that the publisher's job? Right. Publishers are there for prestige. You're supposed to be happy that you're being published.

Funny aside. I'm finishing the Blue Ant trilogy by Willam Gibson. On the last book, Zero History. And in it, one of the characters, a survivor of the fashion and modeling industry, talks about the "fundamental dysfunctionality" of the fashion business. Only it's not just fashion that's fundamentally dysfunctional. Publishing is, too. And so is streaming. Yeah, there's an entire economy that's eaten creativity and makes no sense whatsoever. It's all aspirational. But the fundamental dysfunction of publishing has made it so that doing direct sales to a handful of readers actually makes some degree of sense. At least then you're talking directly to folks.

You're making contact. Which I think I only felt a couple times since I went back to writing prose from writing comics. I sat at my publisher's table at several shows and moved... five copies in person? Something like that. Yeah, book shows are not like comics shows. Different vibe. This Kickstarter thing is different. Maybe because these campaigns are being fired off my own Bluesky account rather than anything else. I can only talk about the experiences I've had and anything else would be made up. Now, is this financially a good move? I dunno. My tax guy was incredulous at the amount from last year's campaign, acting like it was both too small to bother with and something that would have to be written down else it would cause a problem. That didn't feel great. Maybe the money stuff isn't supposed to. Because that money won't ever be enough to solve the problems you have to deal with (though more of it wouldn't hurt, I'm realistic.)

Then there's the marketing stuff, as alluded to at the head of this piece, how getting independent outlets to cover the work... sucks. I mean unless you're buying platinum ad packages to get coverage, which yes, this is America. You got to let the man play. But when it's out there and so naked it just gets yucky. Not to mention the whole buying reviews and reviewers, which is explicitly against the TOS of the biggest platform from which I sell books (okay, second biggest, as KS is the biggest). Yeah, that's a non-starter. Seems like all this stuff is up for exchange, but I just don't want to play. Which has been a problem for me for a long time. Ask me about my short stint reviewing stuff for an edgy lifestyle magazine in the middle nineties. Hint: "Give this stuff good reviews and we keep getting stuff to review." I tapped out pretty quick after that.

The only thing I've been good at is the writing. And it's time to get back to that and just that. I mean, there'll be the mopping up from the campaign and the signing books and sending them out. But if I'm going to step things up, then I'll need to get back to writing. And that part is more than a little scary. It's been nearly three years since I wrote a novel, or novella-length piece. The short stories I wrote in the meantime were a lot of work, more than I remember them having been in the past. There's always the fear that there won't be anything when it's time to get to work, no matter how much you've prepared. That maybe the gift or the muse or however you want to externalize it, that work process, just won't come and settle on your shoulder. That you or I aren't good enough. That we're too old and that the work we've done hasn't amounted to much and should've been twice what it was.

I know that's the Qlippoth talking. It's still... not seductive, but can be made to make material sense. I mean, if this was where the rule led you and all that. But that phrase isn't just a materialist warning, or a utilitarian critique of your current circumstance. It's asking about where you are now. What were the standards or actions (or inactions) that assembled the moment?

So yeah, pretty soon it'll be back to me and the universe. And with any luck I can remove the me from the equation, that rational and gigglingly overthinking me, that top of the top brain. That's the trick, right? To make it as automatic as possible. Emergent, even. Destroy all rational thought. Get those fingers going because all the hard thinking is past. Or should be. This is why I write really long outline narratives that take a long time to work into place. This is why my first drafts are basically readable and much closer to the end result than not. Everyone's got a different process and that was mine. Granted, it gets reworked every time. It's not set. It's not a dead thing. Because I'm not reskinning one book after another, which is a thing I've been asked to do in my career and even though that was really lucrative, I got frustrated and eventually proved I couldn't do that facet of the job. Yeah, not bright. That's me.

Anyways, just checked in on the campaign and it's over $1800. Lots of folks asking for copies of the new book by itself, but almost as many buying all three books having not read a single one. That's really a surprise, and a welcome one at that. It's a big ask to put down that much money on an unknown quantity. It's funny. I was certain that this would be the last time that I was going to offer a print-based "get 'em all" package, but maybe not.

Thanks for being on the ride with me. I'm probably going to end up in quiet mode on Bluesky in the near future. Try to get at least a couple hours a day to myself, or to the universe and myself. Because I'm sure that the self is the least part of the drafting work. If it's working, I'm just the conduit for something else and it self-assembles. I know. I'm not supposed to say that. I'm supposed to talk about how I sweat bullets over every word and like Truman Capote get a page out and am exhausted from the physical work of it. That's not my process. It's never been. Time to return to it.