NaNoWriMo 2020 -- It's On

NaNoWriMo 2020 is here, and it's going... Just going. I won't say well just yet. I'm still a few thousand words behind, but out of six days, I only managed to skip one, which is a better record than I've had before. There is real possibility for this one. 

What's different about this year is that I have decided to post what I write as I'm writing it. There are many writers who do this and find it a great way to better communicate with an audience. That's one reason I did this. I also did this to maintain accountability and provide more value to my Patreon page. 

And that brings me to the not-so-subtle plug: you can read my NaNoWriMo 2020 project as it happens if you join me on Patreon. You can get access to it at the $5, $10, and $15 tiers, plus the 2020 All-Stars tier which is just $1, but there are currently only ten spots left. 

Now I have to get back to the writing. It's gonna be a long month, but hopefully a wild ride. 

New Work Released

If you have been following Pieces on Wattpad (or if you are thinking about doing it right now), there have been more pieces added to the collection. Enjoy 31-37, with more to come in the next two weeks.

And if you want exclusive content, you can always check out my Patreon page. While many of my posts are free to browse, you can get a lot of exclusive content by becoming a patron. There are still 10 spots left to get full access for just $1, but those spots will disappear before you know it!

Focusing on November

It's just barely past the halfway point of October, but I'm spending most of my time thinking ahead to November. That's when NaNoWriMo starts, so that should be fun. At least that's what everyone wants you to think. Mostly it feels like work, but there is the occasional moment that makes a writer smile.

Balancing the day job with NaNo is going to be a little tougher this year. Even after my price change announcement (both here and on the specific Fiverr gigs) I still seem to be a popular person for new and repeat clients. I took advantage of the lull in the Book Spotlight gig and changed the higher tier prices early. No one seemed to notice. That's a good thing.

I think the reason that new clients keep coming in and checking it out is that I finally made it back to a Level 1 Seller after Fiverr decided to change the requirements to get there. I only have to sell about $1600 more to make it to the next level after that. That should only take a couple of years...

I also have a week and a half or so to buckle down on the poetry project. It's solidly halfway done, but there's still a lot to write and revise. You can learn more about it on Patreon. Just $1 gets you all of the content I've posted about it until now, plus all the fun previews and exclusives still to come. Even at just the dollar level, you will also get access to previews and exclusives from some of my other projects as well. It's a pretty good deal (if I do say so myself...).

See you at the starting line November 1!

The Death of Kindle Worlds

If you haven't heard the news yet, Amazon is shutting down Kindle Worlds over the next few weeks. This comes after Amazon shut down all of its other programs for writers such as Write On and Kindle Scout. This was the last entity that writers still had an option to work with, and now that its shutting down, what is left for writers over at Amazon?

Although I currently have three Kindle Worlds titles, this news isn't the end of the world, so to speak. When Kindle Scout shut down, I knew that Worlds wouldn't be far behind, but I thought I would have at least until 2019 before they decided to close. I'm going to miss my $20-$25 a year in royalties from these titles. Even though it wasn't much, I recently had been looking into revamping my backlist to boost sales with new covers, better formatting, and a nice clean edit for each title. Now I have less titles to do that for, so that will save me a little time and effort.

I don't think that there's ever a good time for a book or a series of books to become obsolete, but this wasn't a great time for me to hear this. I was finally trying to get real plans in place to relocate, not just wishful thinking. A big part of that was getting my passive income streams up to par. I needed these novellas not so much for the direct royalties, but for the higher tiers on my Patreon page. My highest tier ($15) now looks a little silly, because the bulk of what patrons were paying for was digital copies of my entire backlist, which is going from five titles down to just two. No one in their right minds would join at the $15 level (even with access to all of the additional amazing lower-level perks) knowing they could pick up digital copies of my backlist for about six bucks. I'm trying my best to get more work out, but insert your favorite tired Rome-related cliche here.

The Legal Bit...

All hope is not lost because some rights do revert back to me upon the closing of Kindle Worlds. The problem is the Worlds Licensor (the author of the original series) also holds onto some rights because those who submitted a story, novella, or novel to a world was required to use characters and locations from the existing series. What it boils down to is that if I wanted to revive these novellas, I would have to have explicit permission from the author of the original series in order to do so, which isn't likely to happen.

Under the bubble of the Kindle Worlds label, the Worlds authors were getting royalties from someone else's work and probably a bit of promotion for their own work in a roundabout way without doing anything other than offering authors like me the ability to play with their characters. Without that bubble, offshoot works have the potential to dilute the power of their series, especially if you run into readers who don't understand the difference between the original series and the fan fiction titles. If I were on the other end of this, I could see why I wouldn't want former Kindle Worlds titles competing with my series.

I signed up for Kindle Worlds knowing full well I was tying up my hard work with copyright restrictions, but right now I have the feeling that it was all a waste of time. I'm sure that feeling will pass, eventually.

Titles Are Still Available... For Now

Amazon isn't pulling all of its Kindle Worlds titles until "on or around July 16th" so if you still want to check out my Melody of Love novella series, you can still get them. Unfortunately for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, they have already been removed from the program as of yesterday--the day the email was sent, so thanks for that heads up, Amazon. It's probably because they were promising proactive payment for borrows, even if the book hadn't met the reading threshold. Smart business move for them, I guess.

Melody of Love (#1)
Haunting Melody (#2)
Melody's Valentine (#3)

I also want to quickly thank those who have downloaded any of these titles since they first went live on Amazon. I do appreciate the support and the book reviews. Now I have to get back to work. Gotta build up that backlist again...

New Year, New Ideas

My writing life seems to have a predictable pattern. And I'm falling into the second half of that cycle this January. While I'm trying to focus most of my attention on finishing what I started for NaNoWriMo in November, I'm also plagued with a lot of new ideas.

I watch a lot of TV shows, but I don't make as much of a point to watch movies on a regular basis. I wanted to correct that, so I've been watching movies on Saturday nights (I know, I'm a wild child). And of course watching just one movie conjured up a big idea in my head for a movie script. I wrote out an outline and hope I don't lose steam on this one because I'm pretty intrigued to see where it goes.

An essay idea also crept up on me in the last couple of days. I think that came from reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem over the past couple of weeks. I'm also in the middle of Ariel, so who knows what kind of poetry is going to hit the paper over the course of the month. But it's all good--new ideas are always welcome. I know that with them I will never suffer writer's block.

When it comes to finished work, I'm trying to push more of those finished ideas out. That poetry chapbook is still sitting around, waiting to find a new home. I've looked at dozens of chapbook contests, and I think I've finally found one that will give me the best chance to get my work out there. The only problem? Entry fees. I have a hard time justifying spending the money just for a sliver of a chance. However, the particular contest that I'm ninety-nine percent sure I'm entering does provide a year's subscription to the journal for paying the entry fee, so I don't feel like I'm totally getting ripped off when I don't win--if I don't win. The real scary part about winning is that they provide five hundred copies of the chapbook to the author. Five hundred. That's a lot, knowing that most would sit around and collect dust.

In the midst of sorting out all of the new writing ideas and submissions, I've also added another reward tier to my Patreon page. At the $15 patron level you will get all of the great benefits that the other levels get (exclusive excerpts, digital ARCs, cover reveals, and more), plus now you can get digital copies of my entire backlist. Right now that includes one book of poetry, one novel, and three novellas--all for $15 a month. If you're interested, you can always sign up as a patron today.

That's what my January looks like. What are you working on this month? 

December Is Here!

The best part about it being December 1st? NaNoWriMo is officially over. At 24,755 words I didn't even hit half of the goal, but it's 24,755 words more than I had thirty days ago, so it's still a win in my little writer heart. The rest of 2017 will be dedicated to getting Melody's Valentine ready for publication in January, but you can be a part of what I'm going to work on in 2018. Become a Patron by December 15th and you can vote for what project I tackle next.

I also woke up to a rejection letter. Not fun, but not anything that's unusual. It will make me rethink about submitting to west coast-based publications for awhile, though. When I submit to Midwest or east coast publications, the rejection letters usually arrive between noon and 6pm. West coast publications like to give me something to wake up to. At least I'm at the point in my career where this little anomaly makes me chuckle. Five years ago I would have went all Betty-Draper-on-her-fainting-couch for a day.

And it did get me thinking about where to submit to next. 2018 is probably going to be the year of Go Big or Go Home, so I'm aiming high. The literary elite won't see me coming!

Taking the Plunge

I'm going to take the plunge on go on Patreon. Right now, today, typing this sentence I'm not asking whether I should do it. I've already made that decision by reading tons of articles saying either that I'm clever for using this service to continue to fund my creativity, or I'm a panhandler that should never ask to be paid for my writing, because if you love it, you shouldn't expect to be paid for it. Yeah, I'm gonna try that line the next time I take my car to a mechanic--because I just know they do oil changes solely for the love of doing it. Uh-huh.

What I am asking is what type of perks do most patrons expect from a writer? I know that when I had more money and was considering supporting other creatives, I was looking mainly at comic book/graphic novel artists. They can do everything from posting exclusively artwork to sending out postcards, creating custom drawings for individual patrons, etc. Writers are, as always, a little bit different.

I've been studying writer pages on the site (all of the featured ones are making at least $3k a month--insanely awesome, but I'm assuming not typical) and have found quite a few common perks: general updates on the progress of current projects, digital access to exclusives (blog posts, short stories, poems, chapters of upcoming books, photos, cover reveals), print copies, general and bookish swag, video Q&A's. But is there something missing? Is there something a little more unique or a little more desirable that patrons would want from a writer?

And the other key question--do these perks need to focus solely on the reader, or do some patrons also want the business side of writing when it comes to the structure of a perk? I noticed that many higher tiers on any given page focus more on things interesting to fellow writers, rather than just readers--which is weird to me, because wouldn't someone looking for writing advice also be an underpaid, underappreciated writer? I guess not all of us are underpaid...

These are all the things I'm still working out, and any input would be helpful. I don't want to provide someone with something they don't believe is worth the money. I want to choose these perks carefully so that the creative/patron relationship is pretty balanced.