It's Been 84 Years

Well, okay, not exactly that long. But it's been a while. 14 months since our last blog post. If you haven't been living under a rock for the last year, you know that the COVID-19 pandemic turned the planet upside down, and especially for those of us in the US, where things, shall we say, have been a little tumultuous.

Back in Mid-March of 2020, my work went remote until August. I worked from home for 5 months, with only very rare, clandestine operation-style trips into work in order to pick up something or drop something off in another person's office. Since then, I've been on a 3 days a week schedule since September. Overall, it has been okay. My commute, which is via public transit, isn't so bad, mostly because there are very few people on the train going in either direction. At work, I interact with almost no one. There are days where over the course of 8 hours, the person I interact with most is the nice person handing me my Starbucks through a pickup window. I have become the Maytag repairman, sitting and waiting for a problem to happen, and it rarely occurs.

Well, most of you must be waving your arms around and saying, "Wait, that should be perfect for a novelist, right? You should be able to get all sorts of things done, right? Why haven't you written three or four novels by now?" Well, nah, not exactly. I'm sure it was great for some folks, but it was hard for me. Constant mental distraction between the pandemic news and worry, trouble with family (especially elder care stuff), troubles with friends and loved ones, national political crisis, and the stress of working-but-not-really working, in an environment that's both dull and stressful at the same time, it all became conditions that aren't great for the flow state necessary to write and complete long-form storytelling.

On the other hand, I wasn't idle. I did work on a number of projects, although some only made small amounts of progress. All in all, I think I wrote about 60,000 words over the course of 2020, which for me, isn't terrible. And the good news in all of that, is I did write a novella - 32,000 words - called THEY KILL FOR GOLD. I'll drop another post about it tomorrow, but in short, it is a fantasy novella that asks the question: Everyone wants to be the hero, but what if you're just the hireling? It's a story idea I've had for years, but never got around to writing it because there was always some greater, higher-stakes project that took precedence. Well, this year, I was just too stressed to work on the high-stakes stuff, so I finally settled down and wrote this novella, which will, I hope, be the first of many quick-read adventures.

Beyond that? I picked away at a few other ideas, but nothing I want to talk about here just yet. And I do owe you all my 2020 writing in review, which is usually a breakdown of sales and writing progress. It'll take a little more time this year, as my move to publish six of my novels through Wolfpack Publishing means I've got to consult two sets of spreadsheets, rather than one, but I do want to get you some numbers eventually. In short, it was...an okay decision. KILLER INSTINCTS and SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER sold better in 2020 than they ever did before, but my Commando titles actually lost money with the move, and overall I think I either broke even or made less this past year than I did in 2019. Granted, given the situation over the past year, making a good estimate as to what my sales should have been is a little pointless, but I think the long and the short of it is, I should have held onto my Commando titles, and only given Wolfpack the other two novels. Live and learn.

That's going to be it for now - just a quick update. Now that THEY KILL FOR GOLD is out (link for those who are interested) I'm going to focus this spring on finally writing the second Hangman novel, BATTLE FOR THE BLACKTOP. I've had this idea half-formed in my mind for years, and I think now's the time to get it finished. On that note, I'll catch you all later, and thank you for dropping by.

My 2019 Writing in Review

My usual disclaimer: It is time once again to put forward my writing summary for the past year. As always, the facts and figures I provide here aren't meant to be boastful - I provide the information so that others can have an understanding of what I've done, what works, what doesn't work, and everything in between. I sell more books than some, and fewer books than others, and that's that.

In 2019 I sold 1,167 eBooks and tracked 471,533 Kindle Unlimited eBook pages read of my material (that converts to almost 1,900 Commando novel-length reads). This is almost a thousand fewer eBook sales than last year, and about 230,000 fewer KU pages. Interestingly, when I look at my royalties for this year as compared to last, I'm only down about $1,100, but of course, there is a two-month sales/royalty overlap (meaning, the money I received in January 2019 was for books sold in November 2018), and indeed the monthly royalties I received in the first quarter of 2019 are much, much higher than what I received at the end of the year. So you can see what my sales trends look like visually, here's January through November, 2019:

And here is the title-by-title sales for December 2019:

So, why the big downturn at the end of the year?

Well, a couple of reasons. First off, I only put out one title in 2019. That was my WW2 novella The Butcher of Calais, one of the "Commando Short Bursts" titles. While it was well-received by those who read it, it wasn't read by all that many, and I am not sure if that was because it was part of the Short Bursts series, or if it was genuinely not interesting to my Commando readers. Only time will tell, but it is true that this was the only title I released all year. I will say that this past year I did more reading and research for future books than I have in a long time, but frankly, the motivation to write has been pretty weak this year, and I am fighting hard to get past that wall, but so far, I have been unsuccessful. I'll come up with a great idea, do some good plotting work, a bunch of research, get several thousand words on the page...and then it just fizzles out.

The second reason my KDP sales have been so low, especially in the last quarter of 2019, is that I made the decision to partner with an independent press, Wolfpack Publishing, and give them the rights to publish my six Commando novels, as well as Killer Instincts and San Francisco Slaughter. The Commando books were released in two three-book omnibus editions, while KI and SFS were released on their own. Since all my previous "Writing in Review" posts have shown that roughly 90% of my sales and income is driven by the Commando titles, this effectively puts the whole of my financial future as an author in the hands of Wolfpack Publishing. For those of you who have always handed your books off to a publisher, that might just be business as usual for you, but for someone who did it all on their own for eight years, that is a big, BIG step, and I did not take that step lightly. However, as life the last couple of years had meant less time and energy for writing, and definitely less energy for marketing, I decided that giving my books to a publishing house that was well known among my fellow authors for a strong record in marketing and sales, I felt they would be able to do the one thing I could not - find readers for my books.

The ultimate question is, of course, did I make the right decision? Wolfpack's strategy for selling books is to rely extremely heavily on Kindle Unlimited page reads, and almost completely ignore sales revenue. Everything they put out is listed at $0.99, even multi-volume omnibuses like my Commando series. This means that while Amazon paid me $6.18 for every three Commando titles sold, Amazon is now giving out only $.35 for those same three books, and that's before Wolfpack takes their cut. Of course, they target Kindle Unlimited readers and make most of their money from them, and a page is still a page no matter who publishes it, but I made a significant amount of my money from sales, not KU reads, so Wolfpack needs to not only make up what they are taking as their cut of the KU royalties, but all the money I made from sales as well. This means that now, in order for me to make the kind of money I was making on my own, Wolfpack is going to have to sell a lot more copies of my books - especially the Commando series. And I do mean A LOT, like, an order of magnitude more.

Can my new publisher come through on those kinds of numbers? We will have to see. The US sales of the Commando titles aren't very promising. They're still in the six-figure rankings, which is...well it's terrible. In the UK the rankings are much better, but the UK eBook market is different, much smaller, meaning you don't have to sell as much in order to get those better numbers, so while the numbers in the UK are "good", that doesn't necessarily translate to sales being great. On the other hand, Killer Instincts and San Francisco Slaughter are now, after all these years, actually selling fairly well. It was always highly frustrating to me that those two books were well-liked by pretty much everyone who read them, and yet these was so little cross-popularity from Commando readers. So, while I will probably not be rolling around in large piles of KI and SFS cash, those books are finally going to be earning the kind of money I always hoped they'd earn.

I think that's all for this post. Perhaps next week I'll do a post on 2020 projects, but for now, it's fingers crossed.

Fiction Friday: Paul Bishop Presents Anthologies

Astonishingly, the third post of the week! I'm reserving Fridays for fiction posts, and today's post will be a little shorter than the posts on Monday and Wednesday. I wanted to highlight a series of fiction anthologies being put out by Wolfpack Publishing, and curated/edited by Paul Bishop, a retired LAPD detective and venerable novelist. The first anthology, Pattern of Behavior I read as soon as it was released, and while not every one of the stories was entirely my bag, so to speak, all of them were well-crafted tales from highly-talented authors.

There is a second book in the series out now, Criminal Tendencies, and although I have yet to start reading it, I must humbly mention that I have a story in that volume, one featuring my character Jamie "Hangman" Lynch, the protagonist from my novel SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER. If you liked that novel and want to read some more of the Hangman dealing out some bloody vigilante vengeance, look no further (for now) than Criminal Tendencies.

I do believe there is one more entry forthcoming in Paul's series of crime anthologies, and after that, there is at least one Western anthology on the horizon. All of these are (or will be) available in eBook and trade paperback form, and not only are they priced to move at $0.99 apiece, they are available through Kindle Unlimited as well.

Lastly, I highly encourage anyone interested in crime and mystery fiction to go to Paul's Amazon page and check out the full range of his published works. Paul was one of the authors I connected with early on in my blogging and writing journey, and I am more than happy to promote his publishing ventures whenever and wherever I can.

My 2017 Writing in Review

It is time once again to put forward my writing summary for the past year. As I always mention, the facts and figure I provide here aren't meant to be boastful - I provide the information so that others can have an understanding of what I've done, what works, what doesn't work, and everything in between. I sell more books than some, and fewer books than others, and that's about that.

In 2017, I sold 2,557 ebooks, and had 709,267 Kindle Unlimited page reads. This is significantly less than last year's totals of 5,921 and 849,081 (my numbers in this post might be a little different than last years' numbers, as KDP is providing better tracking tools that make adding all these numbers up easier, so the numbers in today's post are probably more accurate). Percentage-wise, book sales dropped 57%, while KU reads dropped 16.5%. Overall revenue dropped 43.5% this year, which is pretty damn significant - although thankfully, 2016 was by several thousand dollars my best year to date. For those of you who are wondering, paperback sales were too insignificant to even bother including in the above calculations. 

This was the first year since I started publishing in 2011 where technically, I didn't release a new title of any kind (Assault on Abbeville was published on New Year's Eve, 2016). This means as of right now, there hasn't been a new Commando title in two years, which, I am certain, is the reason for the poor sales this year. Historically, every new Commando title has given my sales a huge boost for several months, and kept things at relatively high sales points for the first six months of the book's release. While AoA did pretty well its first few months, it quickly tapered off, probably as a result of it being the only book in the series. Overall, however, its sales figures were reasonably strong, competing with any one individual Commando title. Numbers-wise, AoA made up 18% of my overall ebook sales, and 13% of all KU pages reads. This is highly encouraging, because it means there's definitely an audience for this series, and I am in the process of plotting out the second Revenants book.

Takeaways from all this? It was interesting to see the very large disparity between my sales and KU figures. While sales dropped over fifty percent, KU page reads dropped less than twenty percent. I don't know how that plays out in terms of money, since the value of each KU page read shifts from month to month based on the KU Fund and how many overall page reads there are in all of the KU titles (okay, I could probably figure it out...but I'm not going to bother), it's interesting to see that the the dip was relatively small. Also, as always, my non-WW2 titles sold like garbage. Killer Instincts sold a whopping 18 copies and had about 11,000 pages read in the ebook market this past year, earning me less than $150 for 2017. San Francisco slaughter was about a third of that total. All my other short fiction? A Sergeant's Duty did okay for a short story, pulling in about a hundred dollars. The Train to Calais earned about fifty. Renegade's Revenge? About twelve bucks. Nanok? Two dollars.

So, what happened? Life happened.

I don't want to get into the details, but in the past year, there have been a series of serious problems with multiple members of my family - health, finances, life in general - and the chronic nature of these problems has really thrown me for a loop. I've been anxious, depressed, angry, distracted, annoyed, scared, frustrated...basically every emotion that can grind away at the focus and dedication I need in order to write, I've had those emotions repeatedly over the last year. It is ugly, it is unfortunate, and it is really, really hard to dig out of and get back to the place where I need to be in order to...you guessed it...Always Be Closing.

For 2018, my primary goal is to finish and publish the sixth Commando novel, Operation Elysium. I'm about halfway through writing it, and I think it's going to be a great addition to the series. After that? As mentioned above, there is definitely a market for a second Revenants novel, so that's going to take priority, but I also want to start a new series, focusing on German Panzer warfare. I've got a bunch of research and some substantial plotting done for the first book in the series, so that's also good.

But ultimately, the hardest part will be overcoming the emotional obstacles I've thrown up in my way that prevent me from getting the work done. I find myself actively avoiding writing, which isn't good, and I need to get around that fear and embrace the process as something positive and encouraging, rather than something that I don't want to do, but feel I have to. As I have a full-time job with good pay and benefits, I am under no immediate financial threat if I don't publish, so for me, writing should be a fulfilling, emotionally positive act. I need to find that place again, and if I can, I know I can bounce back.

As always, many many thanks to those people who have sent me messages of encouragement over the past year. I greatly appreciate it, and it is genuinely heart-warming to know that both readers and fellow authors want to see me continue to write and publish. I honestly couldn't do it without that kind of support.

My 2016 Writing in Review

Hello all, and happy New Year. I've written one of these "writing in review" posts every year for the past several years, and wanted to get this one out as soon as possible (I realize I don't have a tag for these posts, so I'll be creating one now if you would like to go back and read the others). Although I did not actually publish anything in the calendar year of 2015, I sort of only book-ended this year with a major release in January and one with just hours left on New Year's Eve. And, as always, just to preface, I give my sales numbers only for the purposes of providing information for folks, not as some measure of my subjective success or failure. I do better than some authors sales-wise, but many others do better than I do, and that's a-OK.

This was easily my best year by a considerable margin. While last year I was down, money-wise, this year I beat last year by several thousand dollars. I had over 5,100 sales of all ebook titles, and I cleared over 840,000 Kindle Unlimited pages read (which works out to roughly 4,000 of my titles read through, on average). While that sales figure is down compared to last year by about 500 sales (and keep in mind that for the first half of 2015, I was counting KU "borrows" as sales), my average daily KU page read counts have skyrocketed. Between July and December of 2015, I had 170,000 KU page reads, which averages out to around 944 pages a day. This year's daily average is about 2,311 pages a day, nearly a 150% gain. In addition, starting in April of this year (when I received royalties for February, the first full month after Operation Archery was released), my monthly royalties were higher - sometimes double - every single month this year.

That is, of course, the good news. The bad news is that the percentage of books sold that aren't associated with my Commando series is, basically, almost non-existent. I sold twenty-five copies of San Francisco Slaughter this year, as well as thirty-two KU reads. Now, looking at my overall yearly sales figure, we see that SFS was less than one-half of one percent of all my sales this year. Killer Instincts sold 225 copies, about 80% of them over a two-month period during which I ran a large sales promotion after it received the new cover. There were also 96 KU reads, about half of those very clearly due to the visibility of the promotion. Both ebook and KU sales come out to about 4 1/2 percent of my totals for the year. As for all the other non-Commando shorter works, barely anything moved. Twenty-three copies of Renegade's Revenge were sold. Eight copies of Spiders & Flies (each moved a few hundred KU pages, a mere handful of reads). The rest are even more pitiful.

Last year the Commando series accounted for around 90% of my totals, but this year that number has nudged up to probably around 93-94%. While some of that growth can be attributed to having a new title in the series that sold quite well, it is clear that everything else I've written is just ignored. Keep in mind that without that KI promotion, that percentage would go from about 4.5 to barely 1 percent of my sales, so without those extra 180 or so sales, Commando titles would probably be...97-98% of my income this year.

Which is a little disconcerting, especially as I have just released Assault on Abbeville, the first in a new WW2 series, REVENANTS. This series is set in the same "universe" as my Commando books, so they are indirectly related, but that is no guarantee that the readers of one will be interested in the other - I may very well have another San Francisco Slaughter on my hands. I also want to push and get a Panzer-focused series out the door this year, after the publication of Operation Elysium, and my biggest worry is that title dying as well. As much as I enjoy writing the Commando books and short stories, I fear the notion that such are the ONLY things I can write which will earn me any kind of appreciable income.

And, of course, all of this comes back to productivity. This year after releasing Operation Archery in late January, I began work on Operation Elysium, but got side-tracked and wrote Assault on Abbeville, as well as polishing up and publishing A Sergeant's Duty, the second "Short Bursts" story. As of right now, about 15% of Elysium has been written, and the rest extensively outlined. In the next couple of days, while my day job is still quiet, I'll be making an effort to push forward on the first draft, with a great determination to have the book done by the spring, which will hopefully leave me with more than half a year to write and publish the first Panzer book, which also have some extensive outlining right now.

So now, it is just a matter of getting my shoulder against the wheel. I know I can do it - in 2014, I was actually surprisingly productive, releasing Operation Dervish, SFS, Renegade's Revenge, and Spiders & Flies - It is just a matter of sitting down, writing, and repeating that process as frequently as possible.

New Covers for Old Novels

Apologies for the lack of posting over the last couple of months - Real Life has been rather distracting, and I haven't gotten around to providing the usual semi-regular content here. Hopefully that will turn around as the summer gets into full swing!

Recently, after talking to author Mark Allen about the cover for his new novel, The Assassin's Betrayal, I was rather impressed with his experiences in finding and working with a new cover designer, Rebecca Frank. After some consideration, and looking at her website and portfolio, I contacted Rebecca and discussed her re-doing the covers for Killer Instincts and San Francisco Slaughter. After some back-and-forth over cover concepts and several drafts of each, I received the following covers, which I think are fantastic, and a massive improvement over the originals, both of which were designed by yours truly.

Below I've placed each of the new covers to the right of the old cover.

I don't think either of my covers is *awful*, but as you can see, there are certain benefits to paying a professional to do the work for you. Not only do you get what is simply a better, more professional-looking cover, but it adds a layer of professionalism to your book as well. Everyone I've shown Rebecca Frank's covers to has said something to the tune of "I can totally imagine that on a book in a bookstore", which is an excellent metric, if you ask me.

My 2015 Prospective Writing Projects

Whenever I have a book idea, one of the things I do for fun is to draft up a simple cover design that conveys the feel of the book. It is both a focusing and motivational technique for me, and although some of the covers will never result in stories - at least in 2015 - I thought I might share a few of them as a sort of "teaser" for the rest of the year. Keep in mind, these are just draft covers, and might change considerably before the titles (maybe, eventually) go to print. Any and all feedback is certainly welcome!

HANGMAN #2: Battle for the Blacktop. The next book in the HANGMAN series. Ex-Green Beret Sergeant Jamie Lynch is hired to provide protection for a long-haul trucking company when attacks by a gang of outlaw bikers threaten to ruin the business. Not only must Lynch take on a roaring pack of chain-swinging, gun-wielding, maniacs, he must figure out who is backing the outlaws and attempting to ruin the trucking company. It'll be death by bullet, blade, and bumper along the highways and back roads of southern California.

KANSAS KILLERS, the sequel to RENEGADE'S REVENGE. Paul and David Miller decide to leave Missouri and head west, but as they ride into Kansas, they find themselves dodging both U.S. Cavalry patrols and packs of roving Jayhawkers, many of whom are now little more than murderous, pillaging outlaws. When the Miller brothers save a young woman from death at the hands of a pair of Jayhawker bandits, they find themselves on the run from a dozen more, as the band's leader seeks revenge for the deaths of his men.

STREET SWEEPER, a vigilante cop novel set in Boston, 1985. Detective Nick Malone used to be a good cop, always playing by the rules. But when Malone makes a move against the Irish mob, the rules set free the gangsters who killed Malone's partner. Unable to find justice while working within the bounds of the law, Malone decides the rules don't just need to be bent, they need to be blown away. Maintaining the facade of a good cop by day, Malone cleans up the streets of Boston at night by sweeping away the filth with a loaded shotgun and a magnum revolver.

KRUEGER #1: Boston Bloodbath. Another Boston-based story, set in 1921. Krueger is a former German storm-trooper who'd fought in the trenches and no-man's land of the Great War for four bloody years. Wounded by bullet, blade, and bomb shell, Krueger survived and returned to the front again and again, a killing machine who just wouldn't die. Now a wandering soldier of fortune, Krueger is hired by a gang of bootleggers fighting to dominate the black-market liquor trade in Boston. But when you hire Krueger to fight your battles, you better be prepared for all-out war..

PANZER ACE: Crushing Poland. Cannons roar and tank treads grind men into pulp as the Blitzkrieg of the Third Reich rolls into Poland. Panzer commander Victor Krieger has no allegiance in his heart for Hitler and his gang of Nazi thugs, but he is a soldier born and bred, and the business of fighting is what he knows best, the razor's edge between life and death the only place he calls home. Krieger pits the armaments and armor of his Panzer against waves of stout-hearted Polish defenders, where quarter is neither asked, nor given. It is war at its ugliest and most savage, just the way Krieger likes it.

DOGFACES: A Day at the Beach. It'll be one hell of a summer's day for Private Jonathan "Jack" Russell and the other men of Dog Company. Along with Captain Collier, Lieutenant Shepherd, Sargent Barker, Corporal Basset, and all the rest, Russell finds himself bobbing around off the Normandy coastline, about to hit the bloody beaches of Fortress Europe and drive back the Germans one hard-fought step at a time. Unfortunately for the men of Dog Company, the same cosmic prankster that put them all together in the same outfit is going to make surviving their day at the beach tougher than a concrete pillbox.

My 2014 Writing in Review

Two years ago, I wrote a piece called "In 2013, Always be Closing". The year after that, I laid down a 2014 Short Story Challenge. This year, I want to take a look at the past twelve months, where it has brought me, and where I'm going from here.

In 2014, I sold a little over 7,600 copies of my various works, roughly half of everything I've ever sold in the past 3 1/2 years, and 800 more than in 2013. That figure averages out to a little under 21 sales a day over the course of the year. Granted, in the third quarter of the year my daily averages dropped to significantly less than that, but I had a strong opening to the year with the release of Operation Cannibal around Thanksgiving of 2013, as well as a couple of really strong Kindle Countdown Sales during the first quarter. In addition, I'm finishing off the year with a very strong past six weeks, thanks to the release of Operation Dervish, which has sold over 460 copies so far.

I lay out all of the above so that people can decide for themselves how successful I am, and do some comparative analysis with their own and others' sales figures. I was glad to see overall sales increase substantially, and royalties increase as well (I made about a thousand dollars more this year than last year), but it certainly wasn't a bowl-me-over sales year. Let's break it down...

The COMMANDO series made up about 81 percent of my total sales this year, utterly dominating all my other titles. With four novels and a short story, that's certainly understandable, but it is important to point out how much my sales figures depend on this series. Without it, I wouldn't be breaking a hundred sales a month on average. In addition, while I used to sell at least twice as many copies in the UK as in the US every month, the ratio is now mostly even, and with my new title in the series so far, I'm selling far more US copies. There are probably a variety of factors at play here, from the much larger Amazon customer base in the US, to what might be a more saturated genre market in the UK (there are several UK-based WW2 series that aren't available as ebooks in the US), the dominance of the UK sales region is now firmly over.

RENEGADE'S REVENGE was a surprise hit for me this year. I sold a little over 700 copies of this title in eight months, accounting for roughly nine percent of my total sales this year. Since a significant number of these were Kindle Unlimited borrows, I actually made pretty good money off of this title, especially given that it was originally written as a project that failed to launch. For many years, publishers and critics considered the Western genre one of the worst-selling, but there seems to be a resurgence in the last few years, both in re-releasing old titles as ebooks, as well as original content. I fully intend to write a sequel to RR at some point in the next year, and maybe a few other standalone Westerns as time goes on - it is certainly a fun genre to write in, with a great blend of action, adventure, and history.

SPIDERS & FLIES was released at the beginning of the year, and has gone nowhere since. It sold 28 copies in 12 months, 18 of those in the first month of its release. The few reviews it received were positive, and people seemed to like the cover art, but the title simply doesn't sell, even when I have tried free giveaways. Considering its poor performance, and that of NANOK, while I'm glad I finally got around to finishing and publishing this piece, I think even if I can write decent fantasy stories, it isn't worth my time or energy. I doubt I'd even write a sequel to this title, but while I do have several NANOK stories in mind, that's where they're going to stay for the foreseeable future, until I have enough "legroom" to take a chance on writing them.

HANGMAN #1: SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER was also well received by both beta readers and those who've written reviews. However, it did not take off like I'd hoped it would. I sold about 130 copies in the six months it's been out, better than S&F but terrible even compared to RR. I have a number of sequels in mind for this series, and perhaps with an additional couple of titles it'll have more appeal, but so far, I'm not that hopeful. Still, I really enjoyed writing the book, especially since it allowed me to ramp up the "mature content" compared to the COMMANDO titles. SFS contains a lot of swearing, a little sex, and some very cruel violence. It is definitely a darker work, and getting out of my morally-cleaner mindspace was definitely interesting.

KILLER INSTINCTS continues to perform terribly. More than a few people still feel my first novel is the best thing I've written, and I certainly believe it is a good, solid story. I did a cover change for the ebook mid-year, and a couple of promotions helped bring in more sales, but of the roughly 350 copies sold in 2014 (~4.5% of my total sales), at least half were during promotions, meaning I made nowhere near the money I could have with those numbers. Next year I would like to get the title into a BookBub promotion, which would be amazing, but I don't have high hopes. In a market choked with thrillers of all stripes, KI goes largely unnoticed. I would still love to write a sequel to this book, but at this point in time, I feel it would fail to thrive just as KI did, a pointless gesture.

In conclusion, I face some tough choices. It is clear that my niche genre titles (WW2 and Westerns) sell much more than my more mainstream genre works (thrillers, crime, fantasy). COMMANDO titles and RENEGADE'S REVENGE make up ninety percent of my sales this year. Clearly, this is where my focus should lie, but on the other hand, I don't want to limit myself in terms of what to write. Writing is not my full-time job, nor will it be for the foreseeable future, meaning I am not as much a slave to the market as I could be were it my only income. And, in addition, I might stumble upon another genre with a title that's more popular than I'd imagined. Certainly, when I wrote both the first COMMANDO title, as well as RR, I never anticipated their degree of success.

In a few days, I hope to follow this column with one discussing my hopes for 2015. Until then, Happy New Year!

Chasing the Rabbit of Success

Believe me, he's faster than he looks.

Yesterday, I had conversations with three writer friends of mine. We discussed pricing, promotions, writing our product descriptions, cover art and design, tracking sales, royalties, and other writing business minutia. Some good discussions with nice guys, talented writers all of them.

It wasn't until this morning that I realized, the one thing we didn't really discuss was the writing itself. We didn't talk about plot hooks, or character concepts, or cool scenes we were working out in our heads. We didn't bounce ideas for new stories off each other, or ask questions about the progress of current projects. In short, all we focused on was the business side of writing, and we all but ignored the writing itself.

In the movie Pacific Rim, a new Jaeger pilot can find themselves caught up in the memories that flood their minds when they enter "the drift" and join consciousnesses with their co-pilot. The pilot "chases the rabbit" and pursues a fleeting memory, getting lost in the conjoined memories and becoming distracted, disoriented, helpless, or even a danger to themselves and others. When I realized this morning how much time and energy I spend on scrutinizing and micro-managing the business side of writing and publishing, I know part of it is because I can see that rabbit ahead of me, that dream of becoming financially self-sufficient off of my royalties, quitting my day job (which, by the way, I loathe) and becoming a Full-Time Writer. I want to catch that rabbit more than I care to admit, and there are times when that feeling of wanting becomes akin to desperation.

When a new title goes live, I'm checking the sales page fifty times a day. When it starts to sell, I'm still checking the page while thinking of what I can do to spread the word and all but click the "buy" button for people. When a title flops, I look at it like a houseplant that's slowly withering and dying, no matter how much water and light and plant food I give it. Tweaking the cover, re-writing the description, playing with pricing, hitting the social media marketing pavement, launching promos - I'll do anything I can think of to get the word out there and sell sell sell. The only thing that keeps my promotional drum-beating in check is the fear of being "that guy" - the jerk on Twitter or Facebook who does nothing but spam followers with links to buy their books over and over again.

And the problem is, of course, that the rabbit is real. Becoming a financially successful author isn't some fantasy no one achieves except the luckiest of a lucky few. This post over at the Passive Voice Blog is filled with people who've either gone full-time or are anticipating doing so in the foreseeable future. The new publishing paradigms of the last few years have made it possible for more people than ever before to make a living - or at least, create an appreciable second income stream - from their writing. And the harsh reality of it is, you do have to pay attention to things like your cover design, your pricing strategies, your marketing, your product description, and so forth. If you don't, even the best book will languish in the doldrums, and you'll get discouraged, perhaps giving up the idea that you're any good, that you should keep at it despite a poor start.

What makes matters worse, of course, is seeing the real A-listers crushing it time and time again, and hearing the "Coffee is for Closers Only!" speeches they throw around. This Passive Voice Blog post discussing an article by powerhouse author Russell Blake became so incendiary, the blog owner had to turn off comments, because once Blake showed up and began kicking people in the junk over their own wishy-washy definitions of "effectiveness" and 'success", the knives came out. That's not the only example of such advice, of course - plenty of the more successful indie authors have thrown down the gauntlet, inadvertently or not, and made less successful writers question everything they're doing. Can't write for two hours every single day? You're a slacker. Can't get a new "book" out every month? Slacker. Your book can't stay above the "dreaded" 10,000 marker on the Amazon best-sellers list? It's a failure. Not willing to pay out $500+ for a book cover? You're just not taking this seriously, go wade in the kiddie pool with the other wannabes. And, oh, by the way - this business is only getting more cut-throat by the minute as the "tsunami of swill" covers the world, so if you're not selling a hundred copies a day right now, just give up, because the next new dino-porn craze will mean your novel will go unnoticed forever.

Chuckle at that last paragraph if you will, but I've seen all of those statements, and many more, over the last year or two, and no matter how hard you try to ignore the negativity, it's going to eat into your soul a little bit every day. You're going to start thinking to yourself, "Hmmm...maybe writing Bigfoot erotica isn't that hard...I can just use another pen name...", or paying out to professional marketers in the hopes that your poorly-selling book will finally find its audience, and some journalist will be interviewing you to ask about the secret of your success, and your story will cause other writers to furiously jot down notes, because hey - you caught that rabbit! That means it's possible after all!

Ultimately, I have to come to terms with the fact that I may never become a Full-Time Writer. Right now, my royalty stream is roughly equivalent to working a part-time job for 20 or so hours a week at a coffee shop or grocery store. It is definitely a solid, substantial source of income, and I appreciate every dollar. Over time, as I write and publish more, I hope that income stream grows, but there's no guarantee. My latest book has pretty much performed a face-plant a yard from the starting line, And I can already feel the first twinges of despair over it joining the pile of "failures" in my portfolio. That despair, of course, fuels the drive to figure out what I can do next to write something more profitable - the rabbit has gained more of a lead, and I'm pushing myself harder trying to catch up.

But what about the joys of writing? I actually love writing my Commando novels. Hanging out with Lynch, Bowen, McTeague, and the rest is a blast for me. I had a great deal of fun writing Renegade's Revenge, as well, and despite its abysmal performance over the years, I do want to write another Nanok short because I had a ton of fun writing the first story, and I want to get back to that goofy pastiche-y world I created. And of course, there's the sequel to Killer Instincts, which I do, in fact, want to write, but so many other projects come along and push themselves to the front of the line because I've decided to put success first.

This article on writing has gone on so long, it's becoming a book in its own right, so I'll conclude by saying that although someday I hope to write for a living, I never want to care more about promotions and marketing and price points than I do about my characters and their stories. Those two forces - the urge to create something I love to write, and the urge to create something I hope will make me money - will need to find a point of balance if I'm going to continue down this road without driving myself (and everyone around me) crazy.

HANGMAN #1: San Francisco Slaughter - Available Now

Click the Cover to See on Amazon

My '70s-era Men's Adventure novel SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER is now available on Amazon for the Kindle, with a trade paperback format to follow later this month. I'm copying the Amazon product description below. Thank you again to everyone who gave feedback and support to this project - I couldn't have done it without you!

Amazon Book Description:

California, 1973. Back home after three years in the jungles of Southeast Asia, former Green Beret Jamie “Hangman” Lynch is enjoying the good life, drinking beer and chasing skirts along San Diego’s Mission Beach. But Lynch finds himself growing increasingly restless, and dreaming of getting back into the fight again.
Lynch asks his former commanding officer for guidance, and is offered a chance at some excitement: a private sector job working for the CEO of a San Francisco tech company in need of a man who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. The assignment? Hunt down a man named Roth, a whiz-kid engineer in debt to the Vegas mob. Roth has stolen an advanced military prototype and is looking to sell it to the highest bidder.
Lynch accepts the job and finds himself working with Richard, an enigmatic Texan mercenary, and Blake, the company’s head of security. The three men face off against Cranston, a murderous ex-cop turned enforcer-for-hire, who’s got an army of ruthless thugs turning San Francisco upside down looking for Roth. If Cranston gets to Roth before Lynch and his partners do, Roth can kiss the prototype - and his life - goodbye.
SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER is a hard-edged action-adventure novel. There's drinking, profanity, and sex. There's fast cars and big guns, sharp knives and loose women. Arson, torture, and murder are just tools in the hands of men who’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done. And while the good guys aren't so great, the bad guys are even worse.