First and foremost, I can finally talk about this: RAW HAS BEEN MADE INTO AN AUDIOBOOK! It is available for pre-order right now, and you can get it right here on Audible, and it is coming out July 17th.
This is the mysterious thing I’ve been referencing. Back in April I was approached by Royal Guard Publishing to produce audiobooks based off the Raw series. People have been asking me for audiobooks for years, and the primary thing that kept me from seriously pursuing them was the amount of bullshit and fuckery involved with the production of audiobooks, and all the outright horror stories I’ve heard from other authors. After talking with Royal Guard, we came to an agreement and they basically agreed to deal with all the hassle of producing and selling audiobooks, which was the only way I was ever going to do this.
As I understand it, Raw II is currently being produced, and we’re on course to produce the whole series.
As of right now, I’m still figuring out whether or not to pursue further audiobooks for other series, but if this one does well, I can’t really see a reason not to.
Really, the only bad news is that most of my backlog almost for sure isn’t going to become audiobooks. The main reason for this is erotica audiobooks are basically dead on arrival. Amazon hates erotica, but Audible ABHORS it. From what I understand, it’s far more difficult to make sales if an audiobook is slapped with the erotica label, and almost literally all of my backlog is already self-labeled erotica, and given the costs involved with producing a single audiobook, let alone dozens, I can’t see a scenario in which Hellcats and Wanderlust and pretty much everything before Haven gets turned into an audiobook. If you were holding out hope for that, sorry.
One final side note is, this is the reason for why I am producing triple packs again. Audiobook listeners really like package deals, so they like to produce triple packs if at all possible, and there needs to be a corresponding ebook version for there to be an Audible version (I think). Either way, that’s why.
Next thing: Monster Girl Inn.
It occurred to me a few months ago that I no longer have any straight-up monster girl stuff available, and that was essentially what my platform was in the beginning: inhuman women getting fucked by regular human dudes. I figured I should fix this with a trilogy dedicated just about entirely to monster girls. I’ve had an idea of characters building an inn or outpost in a dangerous fantasy forest for awhile, so I decided to give it a go.
The result is Monster Girl Inn.
I’m looking to get this trilogy written and out before 2023. So far I’m…not happy with how the launch has gone. I don’t know if I did a shit job writing the book, if it was bad luck, or whatever the hell was going on with Amazon’s backend (which of course shit itself the day I launched a brand new novel/series), but it just is not doing well. Which, like…I’m having a lot of trouble with. People are extremely vocal about cover art in harem and how good it should be. It’s why certain authors are as popular as they are, despite the common consensus being that they regularly produce mediocre content: they are able to afford 2,000$ covers on the reg. So I tried to lean hard into making this cover really harem-y and…no one cares? I don’t know.
Playing this harem author game has done a lot for my life, but it’s also deteriorated my mental health to the point where I’m no longer sure about whether or not I want to be alive. Like Hopsin once said: “Real artists get shelved while wack ones get famous” It’s not that I think really highly of myself or that I think I’m a great or even good writer, but it is me writing everything, and I am trying, and I do give a shit. Soulless ghost writer mills are rewarded with millions of dollars and a lot of the rest of us get a fraction of the success and attention. I thought I was onto something with Raw but the more time goes on, the more the first Raw novel feels like a fluke.
I made a blog post last month explaining why I’ve been so inconsistent over the past few years. My mental and emotional stability is unreliable, and this clearly interferes with my ability to reliably produce content. I think it would probably help if I was allowed to produce closer to 4-5 books a year, but that just isn’t my present reality.
I’m obviously not good enough to be like some authors, who can afford to release a few books a year.
I’m not as smart or focused as other authors and can reliably pump out solid content every month or two months without fail (and without the use of ghost writers).
I really don’t know why I can’t just get my shit together and keep it together and just write. I remember reading about John Romero, one of the guys who made DOOM, who was describing what it was like in the early 90s when they were making Wolfenstein and DOOM. He’d wake up, throw on heavy metal, and code for sixteen hours straight, every day, and he was thrilled to be doing so. I have no idea why I can’t be like that. There’s nothing actually stopping me from doing it. To be honest, I should producing a minimum of a new novel every 4 weeks. It’s entirely possible, but it’s like my brain just starts to misfire and I fucking hate whatever I’m working on and I’d rather eat a bullet than keep going some days. And I have no fucking idea why. I’m medicated, I’ve been in an out of therapy for a few years now, I don’t have much of a life outside of writing, so it’s not like shit is taking up time. I don’t have chronic pain, I don’t have any kind of illness. I wouldn’t say I’m healthy exactly, but certainly I don’t have anything that should prevent me from just sitting the fuck down and writing a dozen hours a day.
If it isn’t obvious, this really bothers me. A lot. And I can’t even enjoy the success really. After breaking the Top 500 for the first time ever with Raw, now I’m just disappointed and feeling like an absolute failure because I can’t do it again. Raw III barely broke the Top 1000, so obviously people are just dropping the series, and it’s like, WTF am I doing wrong? Why are these other series with 15 novels regularly hitting the Top 500? What am I missing? Because I’m obviously missing something or maybe it’s just as simple as I’m just not a good writer.
I’m ranting, sorry, this is meaningless.
Right now, I’m taking a break to try and get my head straight again and wrap up a few loose ends in my real life to help me focus. Soon, I will begin work on Raw IV. I already have the cover art for it, and the art for Raw V is being worked on at present, so cover art shouldn’t be a problem for the future. Once I start the actual writing, I’m going to try and go hard. I want to have this out in early or mid August.
In the background, when I can find time for it, I will be working on Monster Girl Inn II. The cover for that one is also already done, and the third cover is being worked on right now. Once Raw IV wraps, I’ll shift focus to finishing Monster Girl Inn II. At the moment, it’s looking like this is going to be a trilogy.
Finally, my horror harem. Production kind of stalled on this one. I fully intended to begin actual writing last month, but as I began planning it, I started running into problems. An outer space survival horror harem is not something I’m as familiar with, and I want to make sure I do it right. This, combined with the fact that I imagine horror harem is going to be niche anyway, means that it’s going to be a background project for the time being.
And that’s about it. Sorry for being a downer, I’m just in a bad place right now. I was really counting on Monster Girl Inn being a heavy hitter.