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.