Here’s a place I genuinely assumed I’d never be.
We’re approaching the year anniversary of the time I began seriously pondering pulling down my backlog, aka all my old non-haremlit material.
A lot can happen in a year, as we have learned since 2020.
Now that time has passed and I’ve had a chance to see precisely what happens when I take down roughly 85% of my entire library, I don’t really like where it’s left me.
Like everything I do, my decisions are made on a gauge that falls somewhere between Personal on one side and Business on the other. The more time has gone on, and the more I’ve studied the results, and considered it all, the more I’ve felt like I made the wrong choice. Or no, that doesn’t quite feel right. It’s more that I made the choice that made the most sense at the time, but it didn’t really work out the way I had hoped it would.
On the personal side of things, I just kept coming back to this simple fact: I took down 2,500,000 words of content. Two and a half MILLION words that I wrote over the course of years. Functionally gone, given that I would say that the amount of people who visit my site combined with the amount of people who might come across me and investigate further on the other sites (Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc.), are less than 2% of the people who come across me on Amazon.
And that just…bothers me. Like, that number kind of haunts me.
Two and a half million words.
Roughly four solid years of work.
An investment of THOUSANDS of dollars, if you consider all the cover art made.
And, on the more practical business side of things, I have definitely felt the impact of those missing titles more than I thought I would. It’s partially due to the fact that I had something of a breakdown in October, and it caused me not only to not publish anything until January, but also to take six months to publish the next book in my most successful series ever. And that six month hiatus did some damage to Raw.
So, an idea came to me in that way that ideas sometimes do. Problems, theories, conditions, all of it can swirl around for weeks or even months in my brain, like a computer running through iteration after iteration, and then suddenly the solution snaps into focus.
I have decided to bring most of my backlog back in the form of collections. They will be 99 cents and in the Kindle Unlimited. Which means I’m going to have to take them back down from everywhere else.
Here’s the thing that might get the attention of those who have read and enjoyed my backlog: I am going to take this opportunity to write brand new material for most of my old stories.
In truth, that was mostly the position I did not think I’d find myself in: writing new material for long-finished stories. I have to admit I’m surprised to discover that I actually am rather interested in this. As of right now, I’ve already begun working on a new short story taking place after all the other short stories for Hellcats, and it’s been…interesting to revisit that series and those characters.
At this moment, I do not know if I will be writing something for every series and story, but I will be making at least an attempt at them all. I may step up to the plate and discover there’s nothing left to be said. Quick example: not sure if I’ll have anything to say for Lay of the Land. But I’ll at least give it a shot.
Here is a look at how it’s going to be divided up.
SCI-FI SHARED UNIVERSE
VOL. 01
Hellcats + All Bonus Shorts + New Short
Exploration + All Bonus Shorts + New Short (Possibly)
Alien Harem + All Bonus Shorts + New Short (Possibly)
Amazonian’s Love + All Bonus Shorts + New Short
VOL. 02
Desire + All Bonus Shorts + New Short
Blind Date + New Short (Possibly)
Like A Sex Toy + New Short
Like A Fine Wine + New Epilogue
FANTASY SHARED UNIVERSE
Wanderlust + All Bonus Shorts + New Short
My Undead Lover + All Bonus Shorts + New Short (Possibly)
Royal Lust + All Bonus Shorts + New Short (Possibly)
Large & Lovely + New Short
Lust & Adventure + All Bonus Shorts + New Short
Snakeskin + New Short
Lay of the Land + New Short (Possibly)
Adventurous + All Bonus Shorts + New Short
PARANORMAL SHARED UNIVERSE
Paranormal Passions + All Bonus Shorts + New Short (Possibly)
Pink + New Short (Possibly)
Roommates With Benefits + New Short (Possibly)
Parasexual + All Bonus Shorts + New Short
POST-APOCALYPTIC SHARED UNIVERSE
Sex & Survival + All Bonus Shorts + New Epilogue
The Pale Redhead + New Short
A New World + New Short
So, needless to say, this is all subject to change. And, obviously there’s some oddities in there. I’ll address them all below.
Sci-Fi: I originally wanted to make each universe its own Collection, but unfortunately the Sci-Fi Universe proved too big and had to be broken up into two Volumes. Also, you’ll notice Valkyries is missing. The reason for that is because basically I don’t want to fuck with trying to put it on Amazon again. It will remain as a bonus download or a purchase option.
Fantasy: Demoness is missing from this because I am going to rewrite it, and making the original Demoness purchasable again seems disingenuous, so it will remain a free download. The same is true for Women of the Wild, given it’s not a great stand-alone title.
Paranormal: All but one of those are marked possibly because I’ll be honest, I don’t think I can come up with much of anything for those three. It was a struggle enough doing it last time around. But I think I really should do something for Parasexual.
Post-Apocalyptic: I guess the only real thing to point out here is that it isn’t a complete collection because, obviously, Haven is still up, and I can’t just put it up again. So technically it’s not complete but it’s close enough.
Some stand-outs from the new material are Like A Fine Wine and Sex & Survival. I intend for the bonuses to be longer than a simple short, maybe closer to novella, or maybe novelette, although we shall see how it actually turns out. I always wanted to write some sort of follow-up for Sex & Survival, and even once had a fourth novel planned, but ultimately decided against it. And, obviously, it’d be nice to give the Like A Fine Wine group more closure.
So, uh, yeah, that’s everything. Sorry if this seems weird, but I’m hoping it’ll make a lot of people happy, at least, and help offset some of my own problems.
I’m not 100% sure when this will start happening, but almost certainly the Sci-Fi Volume 01 is going to go up in March. I’m having new cover art made for everything. Well…sorta new. I mean, it is new, but I’m having one of my artists recreate already established characters with updated looks and sexier poses.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments.