I announced a little while back in So My Novels Have Been Unpublished (For Now) that the 3 novels of mine that have been unpublished should start coming back into print under a new publisher sometime this fall, and with luck all three of them will be back on the market by the end of the year. In addition to those 3 novels, though, I have one self-published dagger-and-witchcraft novel, as well as a collection of short stories that are still in-print, and those are all the physical books of my work currently out in the world.
Over the past year and change, however, I've had more than a few folks ask me when I'm going to put out a new novel. Will I write another noir cat mystery? More grim sci fi? Or will I show up with an entirely new premise?
Sadly, it's unlikely that I'll be writing novels for several years to come, if at all, again. And I wanted to talk about why that is, while also mentioning that just because I'm not writing novels that doesn't mean I've stopped writing fiction.
If anything, I put out more of that than ever these days.
| And even better, a lot of it is free! |
Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!
Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!
Struggles and Realities
Full disclosure for folks who don't know, and thought the name of my blog was just a quirky little joke, but I'm a professional writer. This is my job, day in, and day out. And over the past decade or so, my margins have gotten thinner, and thinner with regards to what kind of earnings I need to justify my time and energy. And I know that, for me, writing a novel takes anywhere from 8 to 12 months for the rough draft, another month or so to edit it, and then once I turn it over to the publisher I've got between 3 and 12 months before it hits the market.
So writing a novel is an investment of somewhere between a year and two years of effort. And given that I tend to write them at around 500 words at a time, well, that's not that big of a deal, is it? Can I just not find time for that in my packed schedule?
No, actually. I can't. Not anymore.
| Let me run you through what goes on behind the scenes. |
During an average day I spend several hours on social media promotion (honestly it's one of the most frustrating tasks that is one of the most necessary for paying my bills). Then I have to add material to the two tabletop RPG supplements I have to turn in every month (because those have both an up-front payment and a royalty attached to them, so they're a priority). I update one of the two blogs I run (which are funded through my Patreon, and whose links earn me additional money if I make a sale through them). I record/edit video for the Azukail Games YouTube channel, The A.L.I.C.E. Files, or sometimes both. If I have any time left at the end of the day, I will work on a fiction assignment for a client if I have one, because when I hand those in, there's a check in my hand.
With all of that, I have enough free time to eat a few meals a day, go to the downstairs gym 3 times a week, and attend my bi-weekly RPG session for 2 evenings out of the month. That's it. My day starts when I roll out of bed, and it doesn't end until somewhere between midnight and 1 in the morning, depending on when I put the final words on that day's last project.
Now, this isn't me saying that I don't want to write novels anymore, or that I'm just not up to the task. If anything, I'd love to crack my knuckles, sit down with an outline, and get back to work on a full-sized book again. And if my books find an audience when they're re-released? If a good marketing campaign causes a booktok stir, or for some reason everyone starts paying attention to them? Well, if I don't have to cram so much stuff into every, single day, then I might just be able to find a little bit of room in my schedule to start working on another book.
I've got outlines and plots for days. Somewhere between 20 and 30 of them, at last glance through my notebooks. I could do nothing but write novels between now and whenever I die, and I'd probably still have more I wanted to write... but thanks to capitalism, that's not going to happen without folks out there raising a clamor, boosting the signal, and getting their friends into my fan club.
A Novel's Worth of Text Has Gone Into "The A.L.I.C.E. Files"
While I've written at least 17 RPG supplements this year, as well as 4 short stories, and a slew of blog entries, one thing I've been pouring a lot of work into is the ongoing audio drama of The A.L.I.C.E. Files. I launched this YouTube channel with Alice Liddell earlier this year, and we were hoping to grow it into a monetized channel where we could tell stories, dramatize some parts of our own books, and provide a fun tale for listeners to follow.
Well, I just finished editing the final episode for Season 1, and by my calculations, there's at least a novel worth of text that's been put on the screen thus far... and that's just for the main series plot. Alice herself has narrated the entirety of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a companion piece, and she's just started in on Through The Looking Glass to make sure folks don't run out of things to enjoy.
I bring this up here for folks who wonder where I've been putting my efforts, and what I've been making, because this is a project that's free, a little experimental for me, and that I've put a lot of sweat and thought into. However, it's also on a ticking time clock. You see, we need to get 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours on this channel by the end of 2026, because in 2027, requirements to get a channel monetized are doubling. I mentioned more details in my recent post Thanks To YouTube's Recent Announced Changes, The A.L.I.C.E. Files Needs Your Help!, but I wanted to try to raise awareness of this again.
Especially since we're currently at 362 subscribers and we're just shy of 1,500 watched hours... so we really need folks to help us pull this one out before we run out of time, and find ourselves trapped between a rock and a hard place.
So if you could, please:
- Watch all our episodes (preferably without a VPN or ad blocker on, as those hours get ignored by YT)
- Leave upvotes and comments (especially if you have theories on the ARG elements going on in the stories).
- Share the links on social media, and tell your friends about the series
I have plans for at least a second season of the show, where I'd like to expand the format, the cast, and more... but all of this is going to be dependent on audience interaction, demand, and whether we can hit our numbers.
So if you can help, please do! And if there are other small creators you want to see succeed, do these things for their channels as well. It makes a huge difference at the end of the day!
Support The Literary Mercenary
If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!
- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)
- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)
And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!
Also,
if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to
check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the
Azukail Games channel above!
Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!
That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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