Six years ago, when I published Seeing Red, I had zero fear and zero expectation. I wanted to give this “self publishing” thing a try, but I kept my personal stakes low. Based on all my other forays into “the public eye,” having high hopes would lead to massive disappointment.
(In the misspent youth of my mid-late 20s, I had dreams of a massive web empire, not taking into account the amount of effort that actually required. Not to mention that back then, I wasn’t aware of the ways in which the internet would change.
And then in my mid-30s, I started a podcast I was sure would catapult me to international fame and fortune. Okay, I didn’t actually think that, but I secretly wished it — even though podcasts didn’t really grow wide-spread popularity for several years after I stopped. Don’t tell my fan.)
Calling myself a writing hobbyist instead of any kind of aspiring professional meant that the only people who ever had my book were the people I gave it to (as part of the NaNoWriMo fundraiser I had done in 2015). I would not be devastated when I had zero sales.
Well I didn’t have zero sales. I had four. All people I knew (whom I would have given it to had they asked), and only two people have ever confessed to reading it. Again, this was beyond my actual expectation. I just plopped a book out there, did no advertising (except a mention on my personal social media)… Experiment fulfilled.
Then in March of 2020, right before the world went into its coma, I published Comedy of Terrors. Because Seeing Red didn’t do anything, I expected the same from this one. And got it… mostly. The people who had donated to my 2018 fundraiser got the book. And four people bought it, the same four who had bought the first one.
But then something weird happened. A person left a review. A person I didn’t know. A person who (according to Google Translate) liked it.
And I have been paralyzed with fear and expectation ever since.
In November of 2020, I put up the audiobook for Comedy of Terrors, and before I knew it, people were getting that from libraries and subscription services around the world. A couple of people used an Audible credit. When Spotify bought Findaway Voices and opened up the streamer, people started streaming it. How do I follow up this success*?
By waiting another five years or more to publish, apparently. I know what my next book is to be. At this point, I don’t see it coming out before March 2025. Assuming I can get my lazy bum in gear to do the danged thing.
*For the record, “success” is a very relative term. As I mentioned in a previous post, as a business, Poison Punch Publishing is still very much in the red. My sales and streams and library borrows would make anyone else in this business vomit with a perceived failure. But for me, this is a hobby, and my experience with hobbies is that lots of money goes out and next to nothing ever comes back in. (Well, for most hobbies that’s true. Publishing is the only hobby I’ve ever had where money has come back to me.)
So what’s the problem, you’re asking. If this is just a hobby, plop the thing out there and see what happens.
The problem is that now there is an expectation, even if it is just my own. While I don’t generally read reviews, the ones I have stumbled on have been mostly mixed positive. Though refreshingly, one review of the audiobook said the only reason they could finish it was the narrator, Jessica Hazard. The book itself was trash. I 99% agree with that review. Jessica did a fantastic job on the audiobook, and I will hire her again (if she’s available) if I ever do the sequel(s). The part I don’t necessarily agree with is that the book, as a whole, is total trash… but the ending does leave much to be desired.
The point I’m making here, somewhere buried in all those tangents, is that I don’t want to plop the thing up to see what happens. I want to improve the skeleton of the story that is there. I want to make it readable. I want to make it… dare I say?… good. I’m not sure “good” is in my range of ability.
Thus the fear. I keep hearing about (and I’ve touched on) Imposter Syndrome. It’s not something I suffer from, actually being an imposter… but stating the desire to make something good gives me “Delusions of Adequacy” vibes.
Best Enemies Forever would be a departure from my StabbyMurderDeath brand. (Ugh. Just using that b-word makes me shudder.) Would one of the people I conned into thinking I wasn’t awful pick it up and be disappointed?
The post-Seeing Red me wouldn’t even be giving this a second thought. So why is this bugging me so much now? It’s not like Comedy of Terrors is any great literary work, either. It just had a slightly larger audience.
Eventually I will get over myself and do what needs doing. Best Enemies Forever will eventually come out. And as much as I’m daydreaming, I highly doubt Robbie Daymond will narrate the audiobook. (I’m still going to ask when the time comes. The worst he can do is say no.)
And my neurotic fretting will be quelled until it’s time to publish again.
WRITING IN PUBLIC
Quickly checking back to the last entry, it looks like I was doing my blog post from the virtual writers’ retreat I was on. So, unfortunately, I’ve already mentioned here all the writing I’ve done in the last (mumbles a number) months. And here I was, all excited to mention the short story I had started.
On the bright side, I have touched (slightly) the revision project I was just whining about. I’m still in the re-reading / putting that 4th wall back up phase. I swear, every November I waste hundreds, if not thousands, of words complaining about how much I hate a given story or how hard writing is. Or dissing Kevin Costner, something I have to be more careful about as I continue to publish.
Who knows? I might just pull up my revision when I set this to go out on Labor Day.
GAMING THINGS
We have finished Adventure 3 of our Skull and Shackles campaign! We are now halfway through the box, we have all chosen our new roles, and we are ready to dive into the second half.
My new role as Alchemist is Grenadier, which (as the name implies) means that I can blow things up better than ever! I’m also hoping the Adventure 4 cards include an even better blow things up potion. I love my Alchemical Fire and my Liquid Ice, but the baddies are going to get harder and harder, so I need my Splodey things to keep up. As a part-time healer, I’m also hoping for an upgraded Cure spell soon. I want to say I already had Major Cure by this point in Runelords… but I could be remembering wrong. Also, not everything carries over from set to set. (Example: We had to bring the Runelords Holy Candle into the game, a unanimous decision.)
Anyway, long story not quite so long, we’re making progress! Unfortunately, as I suspected, bringing a fifth player into the mix may have been bad judgement. I’m not bothered by the fact that the game gets harder, because that’s balanced by the extra powers brought in by his character. The problem I’m having is that we have to suspend Pathfinder at least 50% of the time. And the new person is the reason at least 3/4 of those times. I get that things come up from time to time. Heck, even I have to bow out during NaNoWriMo if there is a Saturday night event I want to attend. But why does it seem that they regularly come up for him at a time he knows the rest of us have blocked off?
I think I’ve talked before (to the group, if not here) about asking other people to respect our time. We have a member whose family always insists on scheduling mandatory family things for our game night. They have no respect for his time or the plans he has made well in advance. But I’m also thinking I want to talk to the group about respecting each other’s time and commitment, too.
Yeah, yeah, it’s just a game. But it’s a game that the five of us have supposedly committed to. A game we all know can’t go forth without all of us. To consistently make plans that conflict with that commitment shows lack of respect for our time.
Heck, even Bonetti double checks with me before scheduling the virtual Train Write (which, to be absolutely clear, he is under zero obligation to do). He knows I love that event but have a standing commitment, and he wants to schedule the Train so it won’t conflict. Sometimes it feels like he has more respect for my time than my own gaming comrades.
Especially since I often don’t know they won’t be showing up until the session has already started.
A person without any hobbies won’t understand how important this kind of thing is. Some of the people with lives and such are probably wondering who has time for these things anyway.
For those, I would say, imagine that your external family keep insisting you show up to some kind of thing… and always on a night of your kids’ ballet recital. Or during their sportsball game. Or your spouse’s very important thing for work that you feel you should attend. It’s not a direct analogy, but it hopefully illustrates the frustration of expecting to do one thing but then finding yourself unable to do that thing because someone else has imposed their own agenda on the situation.
Yeah, it’s all whiny boo hoo crap no one else cares about, but it bugs me.
And thus… it goes here.
MUSICAL SHARES
On July 4, our favorite modern composer Jorge Rivera-Herrans released the 6th Concept EP for EPIC: The Musical…. The Thunder Saga. (Link is to Spotify, but it is available on all major music platforms.)
Holy schnitzel, y’all! If The Underworld Saga was amazing (and it was), then this one is amazing x2 just in story progression! One of these years, maybe after all nine of these have come out, I want to have a talk about the story. But for now, I just want to say, I was on the edge of my seat in terms of the things happening. The music was top-notch, of course — it always is — but there was a brutality in the characters this time that I wasn’t quite expecting even after how Underworld ended.
I’m loving all the callbacks and reversals in this series. The song “Mutiny” is particularly rife with this. And does it pack a wallop!
I realize that this segment has become redundant, but that’s only because I want to relay how much I love it without spoiling the experience for anyone else. I want you to experience the music for yourself without the story being spoiled.
(And by spoiled, I know that The Odyssey is centuries old, but like with any adaptation, liberties have been taken. I don’t want to spoil those either. Plus, there is no such thing as a statute of limitations on spoilers. When I discuss this down the road, it will be slapped with a spoiler warning.)
As with all the other EPIC sagas, The Thunder Saga is a must. I listened to this about a million times while waiting for #7… which dropped on August 30. I plan to talk abut that one next time.
WRAPPING UP
So ends another riveting episode of my rambling mess of a whine-fest. Just remember, everyone has insecurities. Hopes, dreams, fears, the like. All you can do is acknowledge them and try (emphasis on that word) to release them and move on. If you can’t, you end up writing a blog like mine.
And who wants that?
I hope you have a wonderful day today, whenever you read this. If you’re struggling with any kind of fear or expectation, talk to a friend about it. Or a professional, if that is more your jam. Or just write them down in your private or public journal.
Don’t let it fester and become debilitating. Set your sights on something and make it happen.
Remember, you’re incredible.
I’ll talk to you next time.