This serves as a Newsletter, as well as a general mission statement for the upcoming year, and an idea of where I’m at right about now.
So. 2018. It kind of sucked.
On the one hand, it was, without question, my most successful year. I made frankly absurd money for about one month. And then Amazon came along and threatened to kill my career for literally no reason other than the fact that their stupid fucking algorithm had misfired and falsely accused me of attempting to manipulate the Kindle Unlimited.
I don’t really want to get into it all again, but the short of it is that I had a panic attack that lasted for about two months and more than likely was what led to my vague health concerns that still, to this day, haven’t amounted to anything. I’m happy to write them off as stress, because the alternatives are scarier, but I’ve been cleared by a doctor, so that’s about as far as it can go without wading into extremely costly territory.
Anyway.
After realizing that it was essentially impossible for me to make a genuine career out of independent writing without the Kindle Unlimited, I decided to play Russian Roulette and got back into the KU game. So far, it hasn’t blown up in my face.
2018 was also a year of change. I finally made the transition from writing serial, episodic fiction to writing novels. Something I’ve been wanting to do almost since the beginning. I’m absurdly grateful that this is actually working, although this year was a mess and nothing was released on schedule.
I also finally managed to get my entire backlog re-released as novels and collections! Very glad that’s out of the way, but unfortunately a new Everest is in my path. It’s looking like 2019 will be mired in distraction and stuff going on behind the scenes as well, as I have found a friend willing to edit all my titles, which means I have to re-edit all my titles as well, and that’s like 40 novels! Fuck!
So, first let’s talk about what I intend to do in 2019.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like a lot.
The biggest thing I want to get completely out of the way is the editing and updating of all my titles. That’s going to be a big time suck, partially because of how monumental the task is, partially because of how much I hate doing it. Seriously, I hate editing. A lot. And it’s not like it’s the kind of work anyone notices. No one’s going to notice when I quietly re-upload a new version of Wanderlust II with some minor tweaks and edits and a few tiny revisions to it. But I’ve got to do it.
As for the stuff you will notice? I have three primary goals this year.
Finish Parasexual. That’s my big one. I want to get Parasexual written and done. I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to do this, but I’m going to try. The main problem is that I don’t know how many novels it’s going to entail.
Continue Demoness. At present, I’m deep into writing Demoness IV. I fully intend to have it published sometime this month, but it might get pushed into February. I don’t want to cut content just to make some kind of deadline. I have a solid idea for Demoness V, and a rough idea for Demoness VI. It’s both my biggest seller and my favorite series, and I just keep getting ideas for it, so I want to keep going with it. I’m fairly sure I can push out at least three more Demoness novels in 2019, but don’t quote me on that.
Start Haven. I’ve really, really been wanting to write Haven, because it’s more survival focused than anything else I’ve written, and that really appeals to me. I’m going to try and start working on it in the background here and there whenever I find time, and if Parasexual gets wrapped up, then I can shift that focus over to Haven.
In a way, what I just wrote is really disappointing to me. I mean, fuck, I have three goals for the entirety of a full year? (Technically four.) That sounds pathetic. It’s been frustrating this past year because due to a number of problems, some I went into, some I didn’t, as well as the transition from episodic to novel format, I’ve slowed down a lot. It’s my goal to get back to the output I was doing 2015 - 2017.
So, let’s do some immediate specifics on my goals, to let you know where I’m at right now.
DEMONESS IV. This is currently just over halfway written. I had to take a short break to update EVERY SINGLE TITLE. Since I finally finished re-releasing all my content, that meant I could finally provide hyperlinks in the back matter of every book. That took about four solid days of work back to back, it was tortuous and grueling, but I finally did it! I also had to tackle a number of other tiny issues that I’ve either been putting off or cropped up in the course of doing this. So anyway, I fully intend to have Demoness IV written, edited, and out by the end of January. This will be my main focus until it’s done. I almost have the cover art, and from what I’ve seen, it looks great. I’m really excited to get this one out, as it will be my biggest single title ever written and it’s been a lot of fun to write.
PARASEXUAL 3. So, this one is planned and I technically have begun writing it, but this got stalled really early on unfortunately as I became overwhelmed with other things. I plan to ramp up production this month alongside Demoness IV. This one is going to be different from the rest of the series in some ways. It seemed necessary in the course of planning it. So, if you aren’t comfortable with the new aspects of Parasexual 3, don’t worry! It’ll go back to normal after this book. If you do like them, then…sorry? I don’t know, I guess I’m just hoping that you’ll enjoy the series as a whole. When will this be done? I don’t know. I think I might be able to get it written and out by late February, but if I get my shit together and really get hardcore on writing, it might be sooner than that.
HAVEN. So, this is an idea I’ve had for a long time. It’s been slowly evolving over the past few years, but finally the storyline kind of coalesced in my head all at once last year. I’m very excited to write this one. Right now, it might turn out to be a trilogy, but it could easily expand into a full on series. I’m not really sure. I’m still finding my footing as a storyteller. Planning ahead has never really been my strong suit, so I’m doing my best. I’m pretty confident I’ll have the first novel out sometime in 2019, and I intend to get possibly the first three novels out before this time next year, but that is insanely ambitious so we’ll see. It has a lot more survival elements to it. Right now, all I have is an extremely basic idea of what the first book will be, I’m not even to the planning stages yet unfortunately, but it doesn’t take me terribly long to plan my novels, so once I get going, I should be able to start writing quickly.
EDITING. My shadow goal. At present, I’ve got 51 titles available on the Kindle store. Now, one of those is the Misty Vixen Starter Pack, two are novellas, seven are short stories, and seven of them are just collections, so they don’t really count for editing. However, that does mean that I have 34 novels to edit. Almost three dozen novels on top of the other material. I get the feeling I’m going to be doing this slowly over the course of the whole year. Normally I try to beast through stuff like this hard and fast, because when I see a mountain of tedious, repetitive work ahead of me, my instinct is to just sit down and tear through it as fast and as hard as I can. However, I can’t do this because I am now relying on another person, and they have their own life, and if I don’t want to ruin my friendship, I can’t keep hounding them to hurry up. Right now, they’ve edited six novels and a novella. I’m hoping we can work out a schedule. Having unfinished stuff like this drags on my brain and distracts me, so that, combined with the tediousness of editing this many titles, is definitely going to slow me down in 2019. I fully intend to have this project finished during this year, and as fast as possible, but unfortunately I have no idea how long it will take, so we’ll just have to see.
So, that’s the immediate specifics. How about we indulge in my enjoyment of talking about my ideas and get a view of the years to come and what I hope to achieve. I talked about this in my November Newsletter, so I’ll try to go into a bit more depth of detail. First, let’s talk about my four shared universes.
FANTASY
DEMONESS. My biggest and most ambitious series currently. Since I covered Demoness IV up above, let’s talk about everything else. First off, I did release a short story that takes place between Demoness III & IV. It picks up a month later and features Ellie, from Royal Lust. You can read it here. I enjoyed writing it and I’ve decided that I’m going to keep that up, writing short stories in between each of the novels from now on. I also plan to do an actual mini-series of shorts in between Demoness IV & V. Speaking of which, I have a solid idea of what I want to do for Demoness V, and a rough idea that I’m still sketching of how I’m going to deal with Demoness VI. I intend to keep this one going for at least a dozen books, almost certainly more than that. This will be a main focus for awhile.
WOMEN OF THE WILD. I actually now regret publishing this one, because I’ve had to put it on hold. The reason being I’d rather focus on Demoness. Now, I do have ideas for the next six novels in this series, so I don’t lack for ideas. I think I may slow down Demoness in 2020 to focus on this, or possibly alternate titles. First a Demoness book, then a Women of the Wild book, back and forth, just so that I can make some progress on it.
OTHER. So, I do have a bigger plot idea for this universe as a whole. Kind of an epic, world-spanning, apocalyptic adventure that features all the characters from all the series. However, I’m still trying to figure out how to actually implement it. Luckily, I’m years away from actually getting there, so I’m hoping I’ll have it figured out by then.
SCIENCE FICTION
WILD DISCOVERY. This is an idea I’ve teased more than once. I have a skeleton of an idea for a 12-novel series. It has an emphasis on struggling for survival in extreme environments and, obviously, sex between humans and aliens. I also have the first two covers for them and they look really cool. I’m likely going to put a lot of focus into this one in 2020 because it’s the most developed.
UNTITLED HAREM EROTICA. I got an idea earlier this year that I’ve been tossing around in my head, trying to see if I can make it work. It’s similar to Parasexual in that it’s more erotica focused with a harem bent. I want it to be a more ‘feel-good’ story, though there will be some sadness to it. I’m still sketching this one out and I might even possibly drop it altogether if I can’t make it work, so we’ll see.
OTHER. Honestly, I don’t have a lot else for this universe planned. I have a few vague notions, but there’s a good chance that these ideas will be either abandoned or cannibalized for the other two series. I want to wind this universe down and kind of put it to sleep.
PARANORMAL ROMANCE
PARASEXUAL. I mostly covered this one up above, so not much new info here. I still don’t know how long this series will go on for. I have notions and ideas, and I do have an ending planned, but it really depends on ideas. As I mentioned before, if I had to ballpark it right now, maybe six novels, maybe eight. That’s a very rough estimate and I plan to actually sit down and figure out a better outline for the whole series in the near future.
OTHER. I actually have no other ideas for this universe. For whatever reason, I’ve always struggled to write in contemporary paranormal romance. Who knows? I might come up with some really cool idea at some point in the future, but I doubt it. So like the Science Fiction universe, I intend to put this universe to bed so that I can focus on other things as soon as Parasexual is wrapped up.
POST APOCALYPTIC
HAVEN. I pretty much covered this one up above. Not much else to say.
UNTITLED HAREM EROTICA. So, I have an idea that I haven’t quite attempted before, and I’m really into it, and I’m really excited to write it. I don’t want to give anything about it away. This one will also be a series with a big emphasis on survival, sex, and building relationships between characters. I plan to start writing it after Haven is wrapped up.
OTHER. As far as other ideas go, I do have one more series planned that will kind of tie together everything I’ve written in this universe so far, while at the same time telling its own story, somewhat similar to the Fantasy one. The only difference there is that I actually know how I want to handle this and that there isn’t going to be as much build up. Like with the others, I will put this universe to sleep after wrapping up this final series. In general, as much as I like shared universes, I do want to move away from them towards singular storylines like most other authors who seem to be actually succeeding in their careers. I’d like to do that too. I’m honestly a little surprised because I thought people would like shared universes, what with how well Avengers is doing. Maybe they just have the market cornered? Or people who like Avengers don’t like to read erotica?
STAND ALONE SERIES
UNTITLED SCI-FI SURVIVAL HORROR. So, I’ve dabbled here and there with horror elements. I like horror. I want to try my hand at writing it. It won’t be terribly different from the other stuff I’ve written, just a bit scarier. Honestly, I’m not even sure I can truly call this a horror. This will be set in a future where civilization has been shattered by a terrible event that left most people scrambling to survive. Trust is difficult between survivors, and everything is extremely dangerous. It’ll be a kind of harem, with one male survivor getting stranded in a bad situation and slowly building up a crew of other female survivors who each bring something unique to the table in terms of survival. It’ll definitely have some aliens in it, and interracial sex and love. I’m super excited for this one, which makes me sad that I have to put it off for so long.
UNTITLED SUPER HERO SERIES. So I’ve noticed that super hero harem fiction is big, which makes sense given how Avengers is dominating everything everywhere. I don’t know if it’ll still be popular by the time I get around to writing this, but I guess it doesn’t matter too much. I ended up coming up with an idea and some characters that I like a lot.
UNTITLED GAME-LIT SERIES. Like super hero stuff, game related stuff is massive. I came up with an idea that I think has a lot of potential, and I think might also be kind of different from other aspects of popular game-lit erotica stories out there. This one might be riskier because I’ll be I guess…how to put it? Caring less what popular convention is doing, and more just writing an idea that I love. Writing what you love and saying damn the consequences sounds great, except it might sell like shit and suck up months and months of your time, which is risky. But who knows, maybe people will love it. I hope so, I really like the idea.
UNTITLED MASSIVE CROSSOVER. So this one sounds weird, but this is an idea I’ve had for a long time now. It sounds kind of nuts, but I have an idea to pull beings and ideas from all my universes and put them into a new, unique environment. I honestly have no idea when I’ll get to this one, and I think it would actually make more sense to create new universes (i.e. the stand-alone series I’m mentioning) before writing it, so that there’s more content to draw on. It’ll be a bit more ambitious, so I want to wait a few years until I’m better at writing and planning.
UNTITLED DYSTOPIAN ACTION SERIES. This is the last idea that I have that I feel is coherent enough to be properly expressed. Basically, it’s a dark future where an alien empire overtook the Earth and now rules with an iron fist. It’ll focus on the underground rebellion. This one will be a lot more story/action oriented. There will still be sex and romance, but not as much.
OTHER IDEAS. So I only have two other series ideas. One is a cyberpunk erotica series, but I haven’t been able to make that one work, and I’m not sure if I ever will. The second is a human-on-furry series that’s a lot like my Paranormal universe. Basically, the big difference there is that instead of paranormals, it’s furries that share the Earth with humans. You can see the problem, given that I had a lot of trouble writing for that universe. I think I’m just bad at writing just romance or just erotica, I need to have some other main plot going on in there. Besides these two, I do have some other ideas floating around, stuff I’ve come up with over the years, some of it much more…normal, I guess is the word? Normal in that it’s humans fucking humans in a modern setting. Nothing weird or out there or fantastic about it. I still have these tucked away and may eventually get around to writing them. Although now that I feel like I don’t have to turn to writing what’s popular, I’ll probably just change these storylines and put them in my shared universes and make it between a guy and an alien or a guy and a paranormal, something like that. Way easier to write.
And that’s basically all of it! I’d say that I easily have enough ideas to keep me going for the next decade, probably longer. And I have no intention of stopping writing. Writing is really the only thing I’m any good at, it seems. I love writing so much that I want to keep doing it for the rest of my life!
I hope everyone reading this has a happy 2019, and that things as a whole go better for the world. I’m going to be working really hard on getting my readers a lot of new content, and I would like to say thank you so very much for supporting me in any and all the ways that you do. I genuinely, deeply appreciate it all!
Also, one little PS. I’ve updated my Patreon a slight bit. 1$/month Supporters will now get access to the first two chapters of my in-progress titles, as I will be posting the first chapter for free to my website! Also, in case anyone who is reading this isn’t aware of my Patreon, 5$/month Supporters get early access to nude versions of my cover art! It comes out one month after it’s released on my Patreon, so if you don’t want to or can’t donate, don’t feel like you have to. Eventually, everything released through my Patreon does get released to the general public.
Thanks again for reading, and happy new year!