Unhappy Update

Continuing the trend that haunted me all through the end of 2021, I’m having a very unhappy 2022 so far.

This isn’t anything serious, it’s more me giving my readers a more realistic timeline and then an explanation for that timeline.

When I began heading into 2022, I expected to be able to get a lot done quickly, but that has simply not been the case.

Do you remember that scene in Armageddon, where they’ve been drilling on the asteroid for a few hours, and the NASA guy keeps asking how far they’ve made it. Finally he’s like “We’re supposed to be at 250 feet, what is our current depth?” And Bruce Willis finally admits “We’re at 82 feet.” And you see the pure cold fear come onto his face?

That’s how I end, like, every day now.

I’m supposed to have written like 9,000 words every weekday, making regular, consistent progress across Raw II, A Warm Place 9, and Our Own Way 6, and basically I have failed to do that literally every single day this year.

I’ve been kind of losing my shit and breaking down roughly every 2-3 days as a result of this and I just…cannot keep doing this.

I noticed that finally wrapping up the short trilogies did seem to help things a bit, and so it sort of tipped me off to the fact that I’m simply overworked. I have too many things that need to be released and quickly and it’s killing my ability to work on ANYTHING, thus ensuring basically nothing is getting done.

Consequently, I’ve taken the past few days off, and have finally settled on a plan. I’m going to make consistent progress on Raw II as much as I can, and I will also be focusing on clearing my plate of other projects. I would really like to get to a point where Raw is the ONLY thing I’m focusing on, which is actually within reach. A Warm Place 9 is the last novel in the series, and Our Own Way has 3 novellas to go, and beyond that there’s just the Lust & Adventure - Epilogue novella to write.

I’m going to try and get a sanity check, and mostly just go dark for a little while. Lust & Adventure - Epilogue probably won’t take all that long to write and get out, and then after that I think I’ll try and knock out the next Our Own Way, and then probably I’ll focus on A Warm Place 9 so I can close that series out. All the while I’ll be working on Raw II.

I really wish I could get back to my days where I could regularly knock out like 5-8,000 words, and I’m hoping that clearing the plate, waiting out winter, and getting a healthy amount of Vitamin D will help get me sane again, but for now, I simply have to admit to myself that I can’t do it all, and instead get on light duty for awhile.

I’m really sorry about this, and honestly, it’s particularly gutting for me personally when I know for a fact there are so many other harem authors who can fucking breeze through 8,000 words a day, but I just can’t do it right now. I’m so burned out, I mostly don’t even know what happiness is anymore.

A Change of Plans

Well, this is unexpected.

Raw is, like, exploding in popularity.

Before now, my highest ever ranking in the Kindle Store, which calculates sales data in real time (supposedly) for every title available in the entire store (that isn’t free), so we’re talking literally millions here, was somewhere in the 1200s, and that was A Warm Place 7. It also didn’t last that long. My books tend to peak and then fall off rather quickly after launch.

Certainly my A Warm Place novels have done better than anything I have ever published, but this is unprecedented for me.

Raw has broken my record for roughly the 12th time in a row, reaching a mind-bending #439 in the Kindle Store.

That is fucking insane.

When I launched Raw, I had the hope that it might be able to edge out AWP7 for highest ranking. I had distant hopes that MAYBE it might breach the Top 1000. Something I’ve never actually done before.

Clearly, it shattered those expectations and then some.

I remember stating back near the end of 2019 that I would be very stupid not to focus on Haven, because it was my strongest earner. I felt similarly with A Warm Place in 2021.

CLEARLY, I feel this way about Raw. For whatever reason, people seem to be responding very strongly to it, and my instincts (and some other authors) are basically telling me to just ditch everything else and get to work on RAW II.

I’m somewhat reluctant to change my plans, but I just can’t argue with this. This is a rare opportunity. I have never, in my life, been presented with so obvious an example of ‘strike while the iron is hot’.

My work over the past few weeks has been extraordinarily slow. The reason for this is because I’ve been feeling very poorly. It’s weird, because I’m not sick, but I do have some persistent symptoms. Mostly weakness, like I can’t wake up fully. That has made focusing on writing next to impossible. The good news is that it seems to finally be passing, and I have finally made it to the doctor to get some bloodwork done and maybe determine if there’s a problem.

The change that I’m making is that I will be going full force on Raw II and getting it done as soon as possible. As of this moment, I have the novel planned out, and the cover art is being made. (It’s got Rylee on it.)

I’m more reluctant now to talk about the future of Raw, because when I did that with A Warm Place, I ended up contradicting myself many times. Suffice to say, Raw is the most extensively planned out series I have ever written, by a lot. I’ve got the island mapped out, the tribes and races, and all of the major plot points worked out up to the climax, where the series could stop, or possibly continue. I’ll have to see. I think I can safely say that I can get a dozen novels out of this series, and that’s largely without filler. I see a lot of readers complain about the more popular harem novels being stuffed with filler and I try to avoid that as much as possible nowadays.

I’ll be trying to make regular progress on A Warm Place 9, but I’m no longer sure when I’ll have it done. I do apologize for this, I honestly thought I’d have more time, but not writing Raw II as soon as possible would be like throwing away a winning ticket.

Obviously this is going to push back the free shorts trilogy releases and Lust & Adventure Epilogue.

That’s all I’ve got. Diving into RAW II now.

Let's Talk About RAW, My Caveman Series

I can finally talk about it.

My caveman fantasy series.

I genuinely can’t remember the first time I might’ve brought it up to my readers, sometime in 2019. It’s strange, the idea feels older than that, but I think that’s only because 2019 now feels like it was 6 years ago. The past two years have been FUUUUUCKED.

Anyway.

So, first of all, why do I keep specifically calling it my ‘caveman fantasy series’? There is a good reason. Not because it’s a fantasy scenario about stone age people, but because it’s about, specifically, a fantasy realm that includes monsters and non-human races and magic, but is set during their version of the stone age.

Originally, I wanted to just do a straight-up stone age harem. Someday, I still might. But I ran into a problem. Basically, I’d need to do a lot of research in order to get it right. Which takes way more time and effort than what I normally write. However, I feel like most of my readers simply wouldn’t care if I got little details wrong about some story taking place 30,000 years ago. A lot of readers probably wouldn’t even notice. And the amount of research I’d have to do to satisfy the people who would notice and get upset with things like ‘hey this plant didn’t exist back then’ or ‘this tool actually didn’t arrive until the year 15,000 BCE’, you know, stuff like that, would be pretty monumental. And, again, probably most readers wouldn’t notice or even care. I mean, I wouldn’t. I’m not really that discerning of a reader or knowledgeable in anthropology.

For awhile, this had me sort of caught. I could say ‘fuck it’ and just write what made sense and basically just try to keep it reasonable in terms of ‘yeah this feels like the stone age’, which I still might do someday, but ultimately I came to the decision to write a story about stone age people, but in a fantasy setting. That way, the only logic I need to adhere to is the internal consistency of the world I establish.

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, what is RAW about?

Largely, it’s about a man on an island with few memories of who he was before, his struggle to simply stay alive (at first), and the hot, hot women he meets and fucks along the way. Some are human, some are decidedly inhuman. There are absolutely monster girls in this one.

Here’s a quick list of stuff the series focuses on.

• Survival

• Settlement Building

• Adventuring

• Tribal Warfare

• Monster Fighting

• Fucking (obviously) & Relationships

I don’t really want to give anymore away than that, but let’s say that I’ve established my setting, its history, and the various factions vying for control of it. It’s going to start simple and grow large.

Raw is definitely less free-form than A Warm Place. I’m honestly super excited about it because this is going to be the first time I’ve ever really attempted to tackle a big, epic series, had a solid plan, and was not constrained by anything prior. Everything I wrote before Haven was just trilogies, sometimes quadrilogies, and I just kinda wrote them. Even when I started Haven, I definitely had ideas, but not a solid overall plan from the beginning. With A Warm Place, I had more of a plan, but it was forced to be built around the fact that I was technically doing a rewrite, based on previously established material that I wanted to respect.

Raw is all new. Brand new story, brand new characters, brand new universe. I’ve been thinking about it for about two years now. I’ve got big plans for it, though with how A Warm Place kept fluctuating and shifting, I’m reluctant to say how big.

For now, I’ll just plan and write, write and plan, and we’ll see how it comes out. I’m very excited.

The Demoness Problem

For at least a year now, I’ve had a bit of a problem with Demoness.

I don’t know what to do with it.

You’d think the answer would be simple and straightforward: write Demoness VI.

But it’s not.

Let me explain.

I think I first came up with the idea of Demoness in late 2016 or so. In its original incarnation, I envisioned basically another Exploration or My Undead Lover. A novella. Hell, the first time I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to come up with enough words to fill the 12,000 word goal I’d set for myself. But when I actually got to writing Demoness, it grew. And then it kept growing.

I had a rough deadline in mind, and I wasn’t done as it approached. I could have wrapped it up quick, or let the story keep going. I decided to let the story keep going and wound up with what was at the time the longest single title I’d ever written. I really liked it, and I really liked the characters, and the ending was clearly left wide open for a sequel.

I published Demoness June 8th, 2017.

Even as I pressed on with other titles in my serial fiction series, the idea of Demoness II wouldn’t leave me alone. By then, I was already wanting to move on to novel length material. Over the second half of 2017 I experimented with my first full-length novel, Women of the Wild, which I felt good about. But as 2018 started up and I struggled through the third season of Sex & Survival, it occurred to me that I simply could not go on writing serial fiction. I couldn’t. It was driving me nuts. And so in early 2018 I made the decision to start writing Demoness II, because I had a lot of ideas.

I tracked down a real cover artist and had her make covers for Demoness I & II. I went back and touched up Demoness.

The first real novel I ever released was Demoness II, on April 3rd, 2018. It was very well-received, and people seemed very happy about the longer format. I know I was.

And it sold well, really well.

Although all the shit that went down in Mid-2018 happened, I knew I wanted and needed to write Demoness III. So I did, and I got it out by August 18th, 2018.

It was around this time that I was beginning to realize that while I was seeing a bit more success overall, Demoness was my big earner then. I needed to invest in it more. I added in about 15,000 words to Demoness I, and I wrote a pair of short stories taking place in between the novels, all while working on Demoness IV. That one was huge. It remains the single longest novel I have ever written, at about 102,000 words.

I loved writing it so much. I loved the plot and the characters and the locations and the events. It was all so fantastic.

I published it February 15th, 2019.

Unfortunately, that was when the change began. Although at first it sold decently and was well-received, it didn’t do nearly as well as I had hoped. And it was obvious to me that doing something like Demoness IV again was not sustainable. I had put a tremendous amount of work into it, and while I don’t regret writing it, clearly interest in Demoness had fallen off.

So I shifted my focus to Haven and Parasexual.

But I wrote and got out a little collection of sexy shorts by April 20th, 2019. And then I set aside Demoness for awhile. I knew exactly what I wanted to do for the sequel, but I also knew it would have to wait.

Finally, as 2019 came to an end, I set aside time and got to work on Demoness V. I loved the idea, and although my execution of the novel didn’t quite hit the way I had hoped it would, I did like it, and I got it out April 21st, 2020, almost exactly a year after the last Demoness release.

This reaction was even more underwhelming. It seemed that few people read it, and fewer still reviewed it.

After that, I knew I wanted to write more, as John and Yelena are my favorite characters, and Demoness is my favorite series, but I also realized that it would have to be relegated to a passion project, something worked on only when I had the time. For awhile, I had an idea of what I was going to do for the rest of the series. That changed and the series took on even more responsibilities overall as I realized that I no longer wanted to add to my Fantasy Universe, but I didn’t want to abandon several cool ideas I had, so I decided I would roll them into future Demoness titles.

And this is where the problem came in. The problem that I recognized even back in 2018.

Something I’ve learned the hard way is that a series is only as strong as its first book. And although there are parts I like about Demoness I, it’s clearly the weakest entry in the series. The biggest problem is that when I first started writing Demoness, I had no idea it was going to be a series of novels. I had never even written a series of novels at that point.

And so my conundrum became: every cool idea that I want to pin to Demoness brings me back to this problem. The simplest way I can put it is: It doesn’t matter how cool Book 7 is if Book 1 sucks, because basically no one is going to show up for Book 7.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know there are fans of the Demoness series out there that love John and Yelena, and would keep reading the books. And that’s really appreciated. I’m right there with you, honestly. I want to see them more, watch their relationship evolve more, write about them fucking hot monster chicks more. That’s why I keep coming back to what I now call The Demoness Problem over and over.

At this point, it’s become obvious to me that basically all my older series are done with. I can update the cover art, change the descriptions, pretty it up a dozen subtle different ways, but nothing I wrote before 2018 is ever going to be a bestseller, or even a decent earner.

Hell, probably nothing I wrote before 2020 will be.

Now, I’m not in this JUST to be a bestseller. And that’s why while I’m willing to let just about everything else lie where it has fallen, I can’t leave Demoness behind.

I’ve thought about this problem a lot. I mean, in one form or another, I’ve thought about it for years.

There’s been a solution that I haven’t allowed myself to seriously consider for a long time. And, well, I finally actually let myself consider it recently, and I realized maybe the solution isn’t as impossible or wrong as I thought.

The idea is: I want to reboot Demoness.

Delete everything and start from scratch.

I’m still mulling over it. It would be a lot of work, but the potential to make it much, much better than it already is becomes high. I’m a much better writer now than I was in early 2017. I’ve got a ton of ideas. I could actually use it as a vehicle for not just John and Yelena’s relationship, but that massive ultra epic idea I keep referencing. I could weave more of the already established characters and events into the series. Honestly, I could make the series more coherent. It’s a bit all over the place.

Right now, it’s kind of a moot point. Although I’m leaning towards doing this, I know that even if I decided to do it literally this moment, I simply have too much to do. Way too much. Beyond A Warm Place and my fantasy caveman series coming up…well, let’s just say there are other projects on the horizon that are really big.

I’d say, as I’m writing this, I’m pretty confident that this is the decision I want to make. So I guess I’d say: be prepared for Demoness to get rebooted. I may change my mind, (I’ve been doing that a lot lately as new data comes in), but I doubt I will on this one.

I would, however, like to hear from you. What do you think about this?

Changelog

Just to help out those looking to determine whether or not this post announces any new actual content, let me say now that no it does not. (Unless you count the sequels to my five free short stories that I’ve published. If you didn’t know about those, there’s information below.)

This is basically just a big list of tiny-to-medium changes I’ve made to my works that I thought some people might be interested in.

So as I’ve been saying over the past year or so, I’ve been learning stuff about writing and selling and being an indie author and, more specifically, being a harem author. Obviously I’ve been doing way better during 2021 than any other year, so naturally, I’m trying to figure out why that is, and how I can keep doing better.

It’s become obvious to me that the fact that I started as an erotica author and then made an awkward transition into harem is a hinderance to me, and that my backlog is, if not weighing me down, then at least not doing much to help me.

But because I don’t want to just discard all these stories I’ve written, all these characters I’ve created, I’ve worked hard to make little tweaks to them in terms of presentation. A bit of changed cover art, better formatting, updated back matter, etc. That time has come again, sort of. I learned a handful of little things and also decided it was time to experiment a little bit.

• So the biggest change is that I decided fuck collections. Specifically, collections being collected while in the process of writing the series. Complete Collections are where it’s at. Consequently, I have removed A Warm Place Collection 1 & 2. The two shorts available with them are now only available via paperback, but they will be reinserted with A Warm Place - The Complete Collection, once I do that. That being said, I’m not writing bonus shorts anymore. I feel like they fuck with the flow of the story too much and they’re also oddly difficult to write and they also seem to sort of confuse some readers, so I’m just doing straight up ordered novels from now on.

• As you can see, I have a really good new banner! Also, A Warm Place has new cover art! Not all of it, but most of it. The rest will come soon. This is thanks to author Kirk Mason. I don’t have any way to thank him more than I already have, so I figured I’d plug his book. It’s sci-fi and harem and new. Check it out.

• His way of rearranging the cover art inspired me to do some of the same, and so I’ve rearranged the cover art for all of Parasexual and Like A Fine Wine. I think they look better this way and I like the style a lot more.

• I changed the position of my name on the spine of every paperback, because it didn’t occur to me to do this until just recently. Like wow I feel dumb. My name will now be vertical, just like the title. This looks way more visually appealing.

• I have lowered the price of just about every single paperback significantly. I recently gained access to an immense amount of sales data and after studying several things, something occurred to me: my paperbacks don’t make hardly any money. I actually ran the numbers and for the run of my entire career, my paperback sales account for less than 1% of my overall income. It’s actually close to about .6%. So I figured the only people buying the paperbacks are super fans, and super fans should be rewarded, so I’ve lowered the prices and will continue to do so going forward.

• I’m sure some of you may have noticed that the product description on the Amazon pages for the paperbacks all tended to run together. Amazon finally fixed this! So I’ve gone through and made it all look good. I also bolded the last sentence in the description, talking about how the story contains sexy sexiness, because we can do basic formatting now!

• I updated almost all of the title images that appears at the very beginning of my ebooks. The reason for this is because when I first did this, I mass-created a bunch using dimensions that were too big and made them appear like past halfway down the first page. By the time I realized this, it was already too late, they’d been made and implemented. I’ve begun using ones with better dimensions since beginning A Warm Place, but now I’ve taken the opportunity to go in and fix all the others.

• I updated the back matter of everything yet again. So there’s updated links to like Valkyries and Our Own Way. I wonder how many people actually follow those links and go on to read stuff specifically because of the back matter. I’ve poured probably a few dozen hours into making, updating, and maintaining those over the past six years.

• I removed the Kindle version of Kyra’s Game from Patreon because I’ve heard some rumblings that Patreon is cracking down on sex stuff and although I’ll probably get away with naked drawings, traditionally Patreon has gotten mad with incest stuff. Basically, I don’t want to risk it, and you can still read it on this site.

• I made a few tweaks to A Warm Place. When I looked back over the original version, I realized that I liked the phrase An Ice Age Apocalypse Harem way better than what I had, so I changed it.

• I’ve stopped Wanderlust, Paranormal Passions, and Desire from being free. The data is in: it doesn’t really help as much as I thought it did. Hellcats, for whatever reason, is still strong like almost a year later. Honestly I doubt anyone reading this cares but I like transparency. The five freebies are still free and will remain so.

• Speaking of the five freebies, I made a decision to go ahead and publish the sequels I wrote for all of them. They’re no longer available on my website because the KU demands exclusivity. The reason I did this is because hardly anyone reads them when I put them on my site. I get some traffic, but not much, and it’s mostly to check the blog and look at the nudes. Which is fine, just…I put effort into writing those five shorts, and I figured there’s probably a ton of people who have no idea they exist. So why not put them up on the Kindle? Also, the cover art for Snakeskin II was originally the cover art for Women of the Wild II.

  • SNAKESKIN II

  • LARGE & LOVELY II

  • BLIND DATE 2

  • PINK 2

  • THE PALE REDHEAD 2

• I also updated the back matter of my Smashwords stories but like, has anyone who visited my site ever used Smashwords even once?

• I lowered the price of every Haven title (except for the Complete Collection) by 1$.

• I removed Parasexual - Straitlaced from the store. It is now only available in Parasexual - The Complete Collection. The reason for this is because I’ve been learning more about what’s permissible on covers and what isn’t, and apparently if your book is labeled erotica and a woman’s hands are bound in any way, it’s a red flag and Amazon might take issue with it. So instead of fucking with getting new cover art for a 7500 word short story that has, for the entirety of its run (November 2019 - August 2021) earned me a grand total of 89$ (which was actually 1$ less than the creation of the cover art lol), I just took it down since it’s already a part of the Complete Collection.

• I had to make a bunch of updates to my site to reflect all this new stuff.

• I changed the color scheme of the Our Own Way cover art, thought I’d make it pop a bit more. I like experimenting with covers, I’m finding.

That’s about it. I obviously don’t know how to take vacations anymore.

I haven’t started working on A Warm Place 8 yet as of right now, unfortunately, because I’ve been so busy doing all this stuff. It takes up a surprising amount of time. Also, I’ve had a headache for a week straight and I’m scared. Hopefully it’s nothing.

A Warm Place 7 Is Out & I Need A Break

So, A Warm Place 7 is finally out. Links below.

• KINDLE

• PAPERBACK

• NUDE COVER ART

I kinda feel like I’m losing my mind. My sleep schedule is really all over the place and I’ve been really stressed and anxious, and I’m kind of burned out on A Warm Place. I feel like I need some distance from it or I’m going to lose my shit or something.

So this is basically me saying that I’m going to be taking a break. I’m not going to touch A Warm Place for the rest of August. I will ideally feel better about it once September rolls around, but as it stands right now, I’m tentatively saying A Warm Place 8 will release in October. I’m hoping that this longer break will help, but I don’t intend for it to become regular.

This also feels like a decent place in the series to let things sort of settle in my head for awhile. While yeah, there’s still a looming threat, A Warm Place 7 did not end on a cliffhanger. I try to avoid those, but sometimes they’re inevitable.

I don’t plan on doing nothing though, in the meantime. I want to get out a few more Our Own Way novellas this month. Maybe I’ll finally get a little bit more work done on that Dragon Age fan fiction. Or maybe I’ll write an incest erotica. I’m really not sure yet beyond the work I want to do on Our Own Way. Right now I’m probably 2/3 done with the current title.

So yeah, I’ll see you again when I next get that one out.

I Made A Difficult Call

Hey. So, let me just get the suspenseful part out of the way right now.

I have decided to close out Like A Fine Wine with the fourth novel, and I am sorry.

The primary reason I’m doing this isn’t because of sales or money. I know I’ve complained about it a few times, but that isn’t it. The reason is because I just am not enjoying writing it. Like, at all.

Originally, I intended there to be six novels, and I had a rough idea for each novel. Although I managed to write the first two novels without too much trouble, what I’d call maybe the regular amount of doubt for a novel, (every author goes through varying levels of ‘is this terrible?’ or ‘I’m so sick of this can I work on something else PLEASE?’), the third novel was tough. Very tough. Although I got through it, it was extremely difficult to find the motivation to write. I came to dread it each time I went to work on it. I thought it was a product of my stress, depression, and anxiety, all of which spiked near the last quarter of 2020. And although certainly those things were not helping, I can tell now that it wasn’t just me, it was also the story.

Because after a break, I got to work on Like A Fine Wine 4 and almost immediately ran into the same problem. It’s been very tough and I hate to admit that my heart just isn’t in it. As I began approaching the end of Like A Fine Wine 4, I initially resolved to wrap the series up with a fifth novel, but even the thought of that feels impossible to me right now. Even if I were to take a hiatus from the book and come back to it later, I’m confident it wouldn’t matter. I’d have just as much difficulty in April or September as I would right now.

So I’m going to wrap it up with this fourth novel.

I am genuinely sorry. If it was different, if I was feeling neutral towards it or even just kind of bad, I’d push on, but that just isn’t the case. It’s become obvious to me that working on the series is really clogging me up creatively and draining me emotionally. It’s so hard to work on other material because I know I’ll have to go back to writing something I just do not want to write. There have been times in the past when I’ve pushed on with certain projects no matter how bad they made me feel, no matter how unreasonable it seemed, and I feel like I’ve almost always suffered when I’ve chosen to push past the breaking point. I’ve had to make a few tough choices before, like ending Paranormal Passions and Valkyries at three stories instead of going on like I originally intended, or canceling Women of the Wild, or leaving Adventurous as a single novel instead of making it into a series.

I don’t know what else to say, really. I know some of you were really looking forward to more, and the only solace I have to give you is that, at some point in the future, I do still intend to write a follow-up series with Jack and a few others.

I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’ll understand if you’re upset.

I’m going to try and have Like A Fine Wine 4 finished up relatively soon, then the Complete Series will go up.

Again, I am sorry. I wish it could have gone differently, but the very second I asked myself ‘What if I stopped at book four?’, something inside immediately went ‘That is the correct thing to do’.

I did get a fifth cover made, and I’ll release it soon so everyone can see it.

I'm Having A Tough Time

Hey readers, this is just a little update.

I’m having a really difficult time right now keeping my shit together. October and November were bad for different reasons, and I was actually really hoping December was going to be okay, even considering that winters are traditionally bad times for me. And it was even looking that way during the first week or so of the month.

But I’ve been running into a lot of problems. Largely they’re related to anxiety. Nothing actually serious has happened or is happening. All things considered, I’ve been lucky for 2020. But this year has definitely taken a heavy toll on my mental, and probably physical, health.

Normally I’d just take some time off, but I can’t quite afford that at this point, not with the plans I have in motion. Although I have to admit it’s gotten so bad that I’ve genuinely considered saying fuck it and just throwing my plans into disarray and just shutting the fuck down for a few weeks.

But now, to add to my anxiety, I’m nervous about A Warm Place in specific, and my writing career in general. My sales have definitely been on a downward trend. Although Haven was a fairly strong earner for most of it, I noticed a definite decline in reads and sales for Haven 8 & Epilogue. Like A Fine Wine is definitely not selling well, people don’t seem much interested in it.

I was really hoping that A Warm Place - Prelude would make more of a splash, but it honestly hasn’t, and that’s seriously frightening. I’ve put a LOT of effort into this series so far, and intend to make it basically the centerpiece of 2021.

Am I fucking wasting my time? Is no one going to give a shit about A Warm Place?

I have no idea.

At this point, I don’t intend to alter course. A Warm Place still makes the most sense, but I just don’t know. Honestly I’m scared. This kind of thing used to piss me off, now it just scares me.

I’m not really sure what to do. I can’t advertise, I’m too frightened that it’ll set Amazon off again. I can’t make a mailing list, because I refuse to show my physical address on it, which is LEGALLY REQUIRED apparently. Everyone says get a PO Box, but I don’t know, even that makes me anxious. There’s way too many psychos out there.

It used to be word of mouth was what got an author bought, but if that’s still true, I just can’t seem to get people to talk about me enough. Obviously I appreciate the fans that I do have. Every review on Amazon or Goodreads, every like or retweet or response on Twitter, every comment on my website, every saint who donates to my Patreon or Ko-Fi are most definitely extremely appreciated.

I’d like to believe that what I’ve got now is enough, but I know it might not be. I know it could just drop off for no reason. I know the algorithm could just drop me more than it already has. I could wake up tomorrow and Amazon might decide to get rid of me or to just clear out every indie writing anything even remotely sexual. Stuff like that HAS happened before.

I’ve still got ideas and a lot of material to write. Enough to last for years, probably a decade from where I’m standing right now, and I’m glad to keep writing. I’ve got a lot of stories I want to tell.

But it’s just…frightening. And exhausting.

And I’m one of the fucking lucky ones.

So basically, what I’m saying is, if Like A Fine Wine 4 doesn’t come out before the end of the year, or there’s some other delay, this is why. I’m having a really difficult time because my anxiety and depression are fucking with me more than normal.

Right now, I’m maybe 1/4 into Like A Fine Wine 4 and roughly 1/3 into A Warm Place 2. I’m also planning a secret serial project when I find time.

I guess, wish me luck. I wish anyone reading this luck as well.

Let's Talk About A Warm Place

So, we’re finally getting close to my latest series, and arguably my biggest series. (So far.)

For those of you who don’t know, a bit of history. I originally wrote A Warm Place under a pen name, Crystal Candy, in 2019 as a 12-part serial fiction. I finished it, I had fun writing it, and people seemed to like it. Ultimately, I took everything related to Crystal Candy down after I abandoned the name, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about A Warm Place.

So pretty quickly I decided I was going to have to rewrite it as a full-blown series of novels as Misty Vixen. After some planning, I began doing some actual writing around mid 2020.

Now, what’s this series all about?

It’s different than basically everything else I’ve written. It’s near future, taking place in 2038, and the most fantastical element of all is the weather. There’s no sci-fi, no fantasy, no monster, alien, or otherwise inhuman ladies around. This is as close to grounded in reality as I’ve ever come.

In A Warm Place, it has been two years since a lot of crazy-ass weather abruptly culminated in a worldwide snowstorm that turned the whole planet into a frozen wasteland. Civilization collapsed as billions were killed by starvation, plague, and the cold temperatures. People live in small enclaves or settlements for the most part, money is gone, and people trade goods, food, or services. Survival can be a struggle, especially in the vast wilderness between settlements.

The protagonist, Chris, finds himself oddly suited for survival in this new brutal wasteland. He can hunt and skin game, build fires, make camp, and has a knack for finding hidden supplies. And, naturally, someone like him would appeal to the women of the wilderness.

Practically speaking, a few things have changed on a writing and presentation level. These novels will be longer than my average books. My average books, I use Haven for a benchmark now, were roughly 60,000 words apiece. I am aiming for closer to 80,000 words apiece with these novels. It’s also written in first person. And the chapters are shorter. On average, Haven chapters are 5,000 words apiece, and with A Warm Place I averaged 3,000 words per chapters. Personally I think it helped the book flow a bit more smoothly, and I think it helped me with the writing, but ultimately that’ll be up to you to determine.

One last thing, if you are one of the people who have read the series in its original incarnation, and are wondering when exactly this new series takes place, this is the answer: the series starts several months before the beginning of the previous serial fiction. The first two thirds of this version will be all new content, and the final third will be a rewritten, expanded version of the original series. So there’s a lot of new stuff coming.

The first title, called A Warm Place: Prelude, will be released soon. It is a 34,000 word novella that serves as kind of an appetizer for the main series. It isn’t required reading, just a fun little prelude featuring a hot brunette.

A Warm Place will release on January 1st, 2021, and I intend to release a new novel in the series every month for the following eight months. Right now the series is projected to be nine novels (plus the Prelude). At present, I’m not sure if I will continue the series beyond that or end it there. Honestly, it could go either way.

One more thing: given the series’ length, I believe I will reinstitute my triple pack policy, and will almost certainly pick back up the notion of bonus content, as I already have a few ideas.

I hope you enjoy this new series.

Quickies Are Gone

So, as I said I was going to do, I removed and basically dissolved the Quickies. For ultra dedicated fans, here is a list of notes on what happened to everything.

QUICKIES #1

• LOVE’S NIGHT OUT & THE PROMISE have been added to the website as free content.

• FANTASY COME TRUE, BACK FOR MORE, PREGNANT IS HOT, & MATURE, MARRIED, & LOOKING have all been added to Hellcats - The Complete Trilogy, both eBook & paperback.

• MORE EXPLORATION & SHE’S REALLY TALL have been added to the website as free content.

QUICKIES #2

• LYDIA HAS SOME FUN has been added to the website as free content.

• SCALES & FUR has been absorbed by the first Wanderlust novel, as it’s more or less an epilogue anyway. The eBook & paperback versions of Wanderlust + Wanderlust - The Complete Series now reflect this.

• REUNION & THE QUEEN’S SECRET have been added to Wanderlust - The Complete Series, both eBook & paperback.

• DEATH FETISH & LEATHER & LACE have been added to the website as free content.

QUICKIES #3

• ANGELIC has been added to Paranormal Passions - The Complete Trilogy, both the eBook & paperback.

• SINCE THEN has been retitled PINK 2 and added to the website as free content.

• NEW ROOMMATE has been retitled ROOMMATES WITH BENEFITS 2 and added to the website as free content.

• PARASEXUAL 2 EPILOGUE is now exactly that, added into Parasexual 2.

• AN UNEXPECTED PLEASURE & BLUE LIGHTNING are both part of the brand new PARASEXUAL - THE COMPLETE SERIES.

QUICKIES #4

• THAT ONE NIGHT, A NEW EXPERIENCE, ROUGH STUFF, & FREEDOM have all been added to the website as free content.

• WITH A PRINCESS has been retitled LAY OF THE LAND II and added to the website as free content.

• MAKING IT WORK has been retitled SNAKESKIN II and added to the website as free content.

• DOUBLE THE FUN is now just the Epilogue for Lust & Adventure.

• THE WOMAN IN THE OCEAN is now just part of Chapter II in Lust & Adventure III.

• SPECIAL FRIENDS has been added onto Lust & Adventure - The Complete Trilogy.

• PASSING THROUGH has been retitled LARGE & LOVELY II and added to the website as free content.

• AN INTERESTING EXPERIENCE has been added to the website as free content.

And that’s everything. Holy shit that was so much work, a lot of just miserable reformatting and reuploading and just blah.

Although I am no longer committing to write follow-ups to EVERYTHING, I will at least go through with follow-ups to Blind Date and The Pale Redhead. They’ll be out before the end of the year as free content on the website.

I’m still in the process of updating everything and I’m also suffering through brain burnout right now. I’ll likely need some rest and recovery time. So if there are some inconsistencies, that’s why. Although feel free to tell me if you notice anything weird, like dead links or outdate information. I’m always happy to be told about that.