And here we are again, at the dawn of a new year.
I’ve been doing this for nine years now.
Let’s kick this off with a look back at what I managed to do in 2023.
Clearly, 2023 was a lot more productive than 2022, which saw my least productive month of my entire career. Except for one big blemish, I overall feel pretty decent about 2023.
To give a rough and short explanation for the blemish, and to explain why I am going to be spending probably most of this upcoming year digging myself out of a hole: Amazon made a change to the backend of publishing that caused a LOT of trouble for authors everywhere. They added a question that needed to be answered before publishing, the ridiculously vague question: Does this work contain adult content? Without elaborating AT ALL on what the fuck ‘adult content’ means. It could have meant practically fucking ANYTHING. In fact, I’m still hard-pressed to think of a single novel that doesn’t contain something that could be considered ‘adult content’.
This was basically a blank check for Amazon to just slaughter anyone they didn’t like. It went on for two months. Finally, they walked it back without saying a single word and, thankfully, put us back basically to where we were. Despite some authors arrogantly claiming they weren’t worried at all and anyone who was worried or changed their plans based on this new information was a FUCKING PUSSY, I changed my plans. (I get along with nearly every author, but some I very much don’t and no, I’m not going to go any further into it.)
My original plan, after wrapping up Raw, was to switch back to a ‘one series at a time’ policy, and my new series was Our Own Way. Unfortunately, the Amazon threat forced my hand and I ended up staring two new series. Series that I am now committed to. Which might sound like I’m resentful about, but in truth I’m fine with writing them, I just wish I could do so at a saner pace.
It’s become obvious to me that the way to maximize not just profits but also reader happiness is to release books in a series as quickly as possible. While getting to mix it up and having two or three different series on rotation may help keep me sane, it’s simply costing too much money. I hate that money is as significant to me as it is, but…2023 scared the fuck out of me, and it looks like this year is not going to get any better. It will likely get worse. And I need to continue battening down the hatches and preparing for the storm. We all do.
With that cheery thought, let’s take a quick look at my plans, tentative ones and more certain ones, for this upcoming year.
Finish Beneath the Ashes. As of this moment, Beneath the Ashes is planned as a trilogy. There will be no bonus content written. It may expand if the series suddenly explodes in popularity, but despite doing fairly decently so far, so far the sales do not seem to necessitate expanding the trilogy to a quadrilogy or further. I’m intending for Beneath the Ashes 2 to come out either late this month or early February. Beneath the Ashes 3 will likely release sometime in April.
Finish Goblin Girls Do It Better. This one is also going to be a trilogy. Unlike Beneath the Ashes, I am…not happy with Goblin Girls. While it was fun enough to write, it severely underperformed, especially for what it was supposed to be. I admittedly decided to chase a trend for the first time in my career. With the success of Michael Dalton’s Goblin Apocalypse, and the subsequent success of following goblin-themed titles, I decided, in my concern during Amazon’s fuckup, to jump onto a trend for once. I figured, I can do goblin girls. And while I can’t quite call it a failure…obviously I fucked something up. I’m not sure what I fucked up. That’s a sexy goblin girl on the cover, it features fun goblin adventure, there’s over half a dozen hot, horny, argumentative goblin girls getting absolutely railed and some even impregnated in the novel, and yet…underperformed. So I will be wrapping this one up soon. Goblin Girls Do It Better II should be out sometime in February. Goblin Girls III will be out probably in May. There will be one more bonus short set between II & III, and then somewhere in the second half of the year, I’ll release The Complete Trilogy. And then I will probably never chase a trend again.
Finish Our Own Way. This one is going fairly decently so far, I think. I’m having fun writing it and people seem to like it. As of writing this, I for sure will be releasing two more novels in this series. There will likely be at least one more bonus short. Our Own Way 4 should be releasing sometime in either late March or early April. Our Own Way 5 will probably be in June. That will probably be the end, but a sixth novel isn’t impossible. It very likely will not go beyond six, though.
Write the cougar trilogy, at long last. In 2023, I began working on my cougar trilogy. I even invested in some AMAZING (and very expensive) cover art that I am fucking dying to show off. I was going to write it after wrapping up Our Own Way, which, under the original plan, would’ve been finished just about now. I’m very excited about this one, but also very nervous. I’ve had a lot of people tell me they really want to read a harem of cougars, but overall, the concept does seem to be unpopular. Then again, I’m not sure anyone’s ever done a proper cougar harem before. (I could be wrong about this, if I am, I apologize. It’s hard to keep up with something like 100 authors all at the same time.) I am intending for this to be a trilogy and no more. I am going to knock those out one by one until they are finished. I am hoping the first one will be out in July, then the sequel in August, then the final one in September. Regardless, it’ll be fun to write, and hopefully fun to read. There’s going to be four cougars, ranging in age from late 30s to early 50s, and they are all very hot and horny.
Finally, in this list of me digging myself out of my novel hole, I am AT LAST going to tackle a true horror harem. I feel like Beneath the Ashes was a big step towards the concept, and people seem to like it. My underwater post-apocalyptic survival series is going to be written. It will be at least a trilogy, but there’s a lot of potential there. I’m pretty excited for this one. I’ve got the first two covers and some of it written. There will be real horror (while still not breaking any rules, so, you know, the girls aren’t going to die), there will be impregnation, there will be bleak underwater survival, there will be people living on a submarine. I’m looking forward to it. It will likely take up the rest of 2024.
Those five series are the set in stone plans. Or, at least, as much as things can be set in stone for me. Here’s hoping I’m not sticking my foot in my mouth.
Now, let’s discuss vaguer things.
Shelter From the Storm. For those of you who don’t know, I began writing a post-apocalyptic post-dystopian survival slice-of-life and posting it to my Patreon. The big thing is that it’s a lot more emotional and depressing. The protagonist is a suicidal war hero and the three main love interests all have psychological issues of their own. I’ve written about 1/5th of it so far, and I admittedly thought I was going to have more done by now. This one was an experiment, to be written piecemeal and posted to Patreon until it was finished. I’m intending to at the very least finish the first one this year. Probably I will make it a priority following the completion of my underwater horror series.
My backlog. Clearly, I went back and forth on what to do with my backlog last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. Ultimately, I’ve settled on the notion that I’m just going to keep them up in their present form. The only changes that are going to be made are new cover art. The more time goes on, the more I find myself drifting away from going back and tinkering with things. I’d rather look forward, to the future. At this point, the only thing left I intend to touch is Demoness, and I’m still figuring that one out.
Mono Romance. I’ve been tossing around the idea of writing a romance between one man and one woman for a while now. It’s a difficult prospect, because I have hardwired my brain to write harems. Anytime I come up with an idea, I end up wanting to add in at least one other girl. At the very least, I know that I won’t be able to keep the sex between just the two leads. What I’m going to settle on is a man and a woman in a relationship, and sometimes they pull other girls into their bed for fun. I have an idea of a sci-fi survival romance between a human soldier and a female alien warrior in the midst of a war. The basic premise is they’re on opposite sides of the war and ultimately decide it’s bullshit, and they’re just going to stop fighting. They’re forced to work together to escape a desperate situation and begin falling in love. I imagine there’s a lot of potential interesting things that could happen between them, given they’re not just from different races, but from two warring cultures. This one is still cooking.
Future Ideas. Below, I’ll list some ideas that are more solidified that may either be side projects or we’ll see in 2025. Maybe. I’m reluctant to talk too far into the future, but I also really want to because I love teasing ideas. So, here’s a quick look.
SLICE-OF-LIFE SCI-FI: I’ve discussed this one before. It was originally to be my main focus following the cougars trilogy. It takes place about a century in the future and features a jack-of-all-trades survivalist type deciding to take a stab at building a life for himself on a huge space station orbiting Earth. That’s as far as I want to go with it. It’ll mostly be slice-of-life, but there will definitely be survival and battle elements to it.
SCI-FI SLICE-OF-LIFE ADVENTURE: This one is more an idea that’s been kicking around in bits and pieces here and there for at least a year now. It involves a protagonist a bit different from anything I’ve written before in a far future, taking place on a research colony on a distant planet. It’ll be more of a blend between slice-of-life and survival, somewhat closer in structure to Beneath the Ashes. It’s definitely going to be a bit stranger, compared to what I normally write.
POST-APOCALYPTIC BREEDING SLICE-OF-LIFE: I have wanted to do something focused almost entirely on breeding for a long, long time now. I got to indulge in it with Goblin Girls, but I have a few ideas revolving around people chosen for their genetics and asked to be involved in a ‘save the human race’ breeding program after an apocalyptic event.
HORROR HAREM: I really want to do more horror harems. Underwater is awesome, but it’s just the beginning. I want to do something in space, something in post-apocalyptic wastelands, something on a dark and distant alien world, just a lot of ideas. Even if the underwater story tanks, I’ll still likely find time to do more horror harem. I really love the idea.
INCEST HAREM: I’ve been talking about it for years. It’s still probably a ways off. Right now, I know for a fact I want to write a fully fleshed out harem, like on the same level as the other stuff I write, called SISTERS > GIRLFRIENDS. The obvious problem is that it will be at a SEVERE disadvantage, because I cannot publish it on Amazon. They’re bitches about incest. So I’ll have to host it myself and offer it on Smashwords.
That’s all I’ve got to talk about right now. There’s a lot of theoretical series for the future, even removing the things I’m working for sure this year, there’s still 21 new series ideas I have tucked away. And given each new idea spawns a minimum of three novels, that means I’m set for at minimum the next sixty novels. Two of those series I’m intending to make into very long ones. Like, at least 15 novels long, if not longer. I want to have at least one epic length series at some point. That’s probably the most significant reason why I’m definitely not chasing trends in the future, I have too many other ideas I’d rather be writing.
I hope everyone’s year goes well. I’m going to keep on writing.
-Misty
