Introducing Crystal Candy

So, I had a breakthrough near the beginning of the month, and it felt like a big one. As in, I broke through a mental dam, and a tsunami was released.

I’m going to start a second author pen name: Crystal Candy.

This was born of several different competing needs, and ideally will solve a few problems. It came in the shower, as cliched as that sounds. Like, just a bunch of different stuff coalesced in my head all at once, and it was like one of those cartoon light bulb moments.

It was a really exciting time.

So why am I doing this? Here are the reasons.

  • Probably the biggest reasons is that there are difficulties that I am facing behind the scenes with my writing career. I don’t want to get too much into it, but let’s just say that I’m impeded in a way that’s difficult to fix. I’m currently working on a more permanent solution, but this, if it works, would really help take some of the pressure off.

  • Money. February was brutal. Although March was definitely a good month, sales wise, April is again looking like it’s going to be brutal. I’d love to not give a shit about money, but honestly there are some things I feel kind of obligated to do, people to help in my life, not to mention paying my own bills, and every month that goes by where I’m not able to do some of those things, I feel guilty. This could help with that. Ideally a lot.

  • Ideas. I have a lot of ideas. I’ve talked about them a lot before, but there’s even more that come to me that I tend to reject or, at the very least, put away for the time being, hoping to be able to find some way of working them in somehow. When I began to understand the potential and parameters of this second pen name, it released a cascade of ideas. Within ten minutes, I had a dozen unique series ideas jotted down. These are ideas that can’t really fit into my current model for Misty Vixen for one reason or another, but, free and independent of that, could work out well, I think.

  • Freedom. One of the coolest aspects of how I’m going to handle this is that I’d be doing this 100% on my own. No one would be helping me at all. There was a brief window of time in 2017 where this was true. Where I was doing literally everything myself, and then I shifted back to relying on other people. And don’t get me wrong, I love being able to work with other people and am extremely grateful for the help they give me. It’s just that the freedom of being 100% in control of something is almost intoxicating.

  • Cover art. Interestingly, probably the most minor reason being that I’ve been thinking for awhile now that I wish I could still somehow use my original cover art style. For any newcomers, all my covers used to have pink women silhouettes against a simple background, like stars if it was sci-fi, or a mountainous or forest landscape for fantasy, etc. I mean, it was basic, sure, but I actually worked hard to come up with that. It had to do several things: like be recognizable, convey what the genre was at a glance, be easy to mass produce, help build a brand, all that. So I figured it’d be perfect for this.

So, what can you expect from Crystal Candy?

Well, a few things will be different from my standard fare.

  • In terms of quality and length, these stories will fall somewhere in between my older work (episodic shorts below 10,000 words), and my current works (60,000+ word novels). I don’t want to say these stories will necessarily be low effort, but they will be written at a brisker pace than my novels. I’ll be aiming for somewhere between 10,000 & 20,000 words per entry. However, there will be outliers. A few of my ideas will be on the lower end, more sex-heavy and less narrative-focused, and some of them will be the opposite.

  • Structurally, I’ll be releasing triple-packs slightly reminiscent of my original packaging, and closer to what I’ve got going on nowadays for my re-released older titles. It’ll be a little more basic, in that there will not be bonus exclusive content, it will be a simple convenience package. Honestly, I doubt many people will feel like buying it and it’s really just there for people to support me, given I earn a bit more if you buy the whole package instead of the individual episodes. (Roughly 6.15$ if you bought 3 titles at 2.99$ apiece, vs. 6.95$ if you bought a single title at 9.99$.) I also won’t be releasing paperback versions unless for some reason there’s a demand for it, because honestly almost no one buys paperbacks even now. On a good month, I might sell a dozen paperbacks. Which, I mean again, honestly, if there’s some people who REALLY want them, I’d put them out, but I really just don’t think people are interested.

  • As in the example above, price wise we’ll be looking at 2.99$ per title, 9.99$ per triple-pack.

  • Everything will be enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited.

  • Here’s probably the most important thing: Content. What will I be writing, and how will these stories differ? My primary focus will be harems, pretty much. That’s the big focus of this: harems. Given that this is closer to a marketing venture, I am making a somewhat more concerted effort to appeal more directly to that market. I’m making a few adjustments to the way I tell the stories and the way the characters interact. Don’t worry, I won’t be writing douche-bro alpha males or anything, but several people have advised me to have more decisive male leads, guys who take charge more and do more shit on their own. So that’s what I’m aiming for: more traditional harem protagonists. As for the plots themselves, well, that’s something else that’s going to be different. I mean, some will be pretty similar to the stuff I’m familiar with writing, but some will be really different.

Honestly, this is one of the reasons I’m so excited. I’ll be getting to write stuff without agonizing over it. More and more often, I’m finding myself getting caught up and stopped dead in my tracks because I’m afraid of screwing something up. Parasexual 3 took way too long to write because I kept worrying if I was going to fuck it all up. Same thing with Haven, a little. I actually wrote like a whole chapter before deleting everything and starting over. Now, that was the right move, as I’m a lot more happy with what I have now, but still, the point stands. With this, I feel a hell of a lot freer. I can take an idea and just fucking…GO! It’s liberating and exciting. One of the ideas I have is like a hardcore horror series that I’m really looking forward to, and I can finally dip my toe into a few genres without going like all-in. Like superhero stuff, or game-lit.

I honestly have no idea how this will turn out, but if it could even become a semi-stable secondary income stream, a nice outlet for my weirder ideas, and more content for fans, then that’d be pretty great.

I currently don’t have a release schedule yet. It’s more of me writing when I can alongside Haven. Basically, I’ll be putting out episodes as fast as I can in trilogies. When one is done, I’ll likely switch over to a second series, or if I’m super into what I’m currently writing, I’ll just keep pressing with the current series. I would deeply appreciate it if anyone would be willing to help me spread the word about this. Word-of-mouth is still some of the most powerful marketing. If you’re part of any erotica, harem, or game-lit groups on Facebook, I’d seriously appreciate help getting the word out. (Facebook wouldn’t let me join. I’m not joking.)

Right now, I’ve got one title out, with the sequel coming out very soon.

You can get it right now, right here, for 2.99$, or for free if you’ve got the Kindle Unlimited.

I’m also working on three other series right now. The first, and most primary, is a GameLit Sci-Fi story, it’s mostly action with a bit of horror. It’s called Planet of the Bugs. I have to admit, I’m afraid of this one, because it’s so totally different from anything else I’ve written. I’ve never even tried writing a story where someone is inside of a video game and that’s part of the story and acknowledged. I’m also writing something called Hot For Teacher, which is, you guessed it! About a dude fucking his former teachers, cause that’s awesome. That one will definitely be shorter and more fuck-focused. I also started writing When the Monsters Came, which is NOT a story about monsters jizzing all over hot chicks, believe it or not. That was just the best name I could come up with. It’s a dark horror about a guy and a few hot chicks trying to escape a city that suddenly becomes overrun with crazy ass monsters.

I’ve got a few other ideas I’ll probably start writing too, since I’m too excited about them.

So yeah, I hope you enjoy the new stuff, and I’m still getting regular work done on Haven. I’ve actually made good progress. And right now, I’m thinking that with this new schedule, I’ll be tackling one Misty Vixen book at a time. And also, that was something I wanted to touch on. If this stuff with Crystal Candy works out, and it takes the financial pressure off, it would actually be really good for Misty Vixen, because then I could write whatever the hell I wanted. So I could hop back onto Demoness V, which would be awesome.

Again, it’d be extremely appreciated if you could help spread the word around.