Well this sucks.
A month ago I had all these plans and everything was pretty damn set and certain.
And then everything got completely derailed and fucked up.
Unfortunately, nothing got released last month. Things got very busy over at Royal Guard and the last I heard are still settling down, so that’s why no audiobooks got released. However, I believe that at least something should be coming in July, though I don’t know for sure yet. Once I know, you will know, provided you keep up with my Twitter. As for my own personal situation…
I don’t have a whole lot to offer. I’ve been having a really difficult time this past month. I ran into some problems at the end of May that strained me, but if they had been the only problems I’d run into, I’d be fine right now. However, I barely had two days before abruptly this whole situation with Amazon kicked in. If you don’t know about that, in short: Amazon updated the publishing process with a mandatory question: Does your title contain adult content? If you say yes, you get walled off from like 90% of the store via the algorithm, meaning your sales and thus your career, is extremely hindered. It seems like this can’t possibly be what they intended, however, because…like, what DOESN’T contain ‘adult’ content? Like, every fucking book I’ve ever read has something that you could call ‘adult’. So then where’s the line drawn?
Obviously, because we live in a society that is slowly being destroyed by governments and corporations pretending they give a shit about us, this is about sex. So where is the line drawn? They won’t fucking tell us.
I could go on and on about how massively bullshit this is, but obviously this has caused a big stir.
I’m…still considering my options at the moment. Given what’s on the line (my literal fucking career) I’m nervous and unsure of what to do. I don’t really want to switch to fade-to-black, and I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m going to do that. But because of the delicate nature of this entire thing, I feel like I can’t really talk about what’s going on behind the scenes.
But, as a consequence of this, (among other things), I’ve got literally SEVEN series in various states of progress right now. I’ll give you a little update on each of them below.
RAW: What I’m working on hardest right now. I’ve got the bonus short set between 7 & 8 written and edited. Raw VIII is over halfway finished. I still intend to have it written and released sometime this month. A bit after that I’ll release Collection III, and then sometime later in the year, or possibly in early 2024, I’ll release The Complete Series. (I’m still learning about when to release Complete Collections. I kinda fucked myself releasing the Complete Collection of A Warm Place so soon after finishing it, as it killed off sales of the individual novels before they would have otherwise naturally died off.)
OUR OWN WAY: The first book is written, edited, covered, 100% ready to go. I’m…still struggling with what to do. I will probably also release it this month. I also will get started on the sequel very soon.
UNDERGROUND POST-APOCALYPTIC TRILOGY: I said in my last post that I was going to write an experimental trilogy to see how hard Amazon fucks me if I do go ahead with saying Yes. However, what little data has trickled in behind the scenes seem to indicate increasingly that this would be stupid as hell. That, basically, doing so would be writing an entire trilogy just to kill it, dead on arrival style. So, I have decided to do something else with this trilogy. I’ll explain what that is when I’m closer to making it happen and have more details ironed out.
COUGAR TRILOGY: This stalled in terms of production, but I’m absolutely making this happen. Not sure when, but I want at least the first novel out this year, ideally the whole trilogy.
DAMAGED PROTAGONIST STORY: So this idea really hit me hard last month. It’s a post-apocalyptic story with a society rebuilding itself, but it’s centered on an emotionally and mentally damaged and struggling protagonist. I don’t want to say much more than that, but when I brought it up a few times, people seemed to be really interested. Given that and the fact that the tale and the characters are still speaking to me, I’ve opted to continue working on it in the background.
HORROR HAREM: Yes, this. While production has completely stalled, I still REALLY fucking want to get this going. I’m amped for this still but it’s had to be put aside for now. It WILL happen though.
HORNY HAREM: So…last week it occurred to me that I’ve been whittling down my sex scenes for years now, and this whole thing with Amazon recently has only reinforced that idea. And it made me think that maybe I should write something that’s just horny as fuck. Or, basically, I don’t hold back on the sex scenes and the horny factor. I quickly came up with an idea and a name that, frankly, I’m SHOCKED no one has used yet. You’ll see what I’m talking about when I reveal more about it. What I can say is that I’m working on it in the background, and I’ll be indulging in two things that are VERY common in haremlit, but which I have never once indulged in before. I’m very curious to see how my take on these two things plays out, and how people like it. All I can say about it for now is that it’s apocalyptic survival and there will be breeding (not one of the two things mentioned above). I’ll also talk more about this one later.
And so yeah, somehow I went from having what was going to be a fairly simple and straightforward time to having a fucking nightmare of a schedule. The rest of the year, and at least some of 2024, is going to be spent getting all this written and out.
I’m going as fast as I can but honestly this whole thing has been absolutely fucking up my mental health, and that makes writing really difficult. I’ve been calming down recently, so that’s nice, but we’ll see how it goes. In short: I’ll be trying to both preserve my mental health and up my production as much as I can over the next few months.
Wish me luck.