Well, here we are another month closer to the day when I can quit my job and write full time. And the plan for this week's blog post says Monthly Update.
And seeing as this is the first monthly update I'm doing on this blog, I really haven't worked out a format for it yet. So I might as well let you know the big news and what's coming up the pipe.
Book Launch Coming Up
If you haven't heard already, my first book, The Invisible Woman and Other Stories is coming out on Tuesday, December 5, 2023. (Yes, I know I said it was coming out on December 4, but I swear I thought that was a Tuesday!) So to be clear: unfortunately you'll have to wait another day for the book to go out for sale on December 5. By the time you're reading this I might already have the last of the formatting done and you may well be able to pre-order your Kindle copy by now. (I'll add a link here as soon as that becomes available.)
If you haven't already gotten an early review copy already, just get in touch with me and I'll have that to you. It'll be a PDF copy, not quite as pretty as the final product, but you can get early access, give it a read, and once the book goes up for sale you can leave a review on the Amazon page. I'm trying to give this first book as strong a start as possible and get to 100 reviews before January 5, so I hope we can all make this a big success.
Just get in touch on this site or anywhere you can find me online and I'll set you up with a free review copy. And don't worry, when you leave a review it doesn't have to be anything extensive. Just a couple of sentences is enough to make a big difference. Thanks!
The Blog
About a month and a half ago, I posted something about how I wasn't sure what this blog was or what it needed to be. And that's pretty much where things remain for the moment–still trying things out and figuring out what sticks.
For the next few months, though, I'll be trying something out to see how it goes over. I'll be delving into some of the weirder and wilder corners of the online world, doing what I can to bring to light some of the better stories being produced today. Every week I'll feature a different book–mostly indie authors–and put out a review. Over time I hope it adds up to a pretty decent library and turns this place into a community of curious readers looking for what's spicy out there.
In a small way I started this out last week, with my review of Venus in Furs. That's more or less the kind of posting I have in mind, although these next few months and into the future I'll be focusing more on contemporary work. If you have a favorite piece of weird or experimental fiction you'd like to see featured here, just get in touch and we'll see what happens. Especially if the work in question comes from an indie writer.
So keep an eye out for that starting next Sunday. It'll be a change of scene for me, reading writers who are actually alive… but I'm looking forward to it and I hope we can all have some fun here.
… ugh. That all sounds super fake and lame, doesn't it? This whole blog is fake and lame, come to think of it. I'm not even interested in what I'm writing, so why should you be?
Seriously, just while writing this stuff I've been constantly clicking away to Twitter or to check the YouTube stats on my most recent short. (It's doing some numbers, relatively speaking.) Why should you give a damn about some no name writer trying to scribble his way out of a factory job? Join the club, bucko, you're one of the billions on this rock who isn't satisfied with the way he makes his bread.
This blog doesn't need to be the record of some schmuck trying to pretend to be a big writer. It needs to be uncomfortably honest or it doesn't need to exist at all.
I'm doing the same thing here that I do in real life, where I erase my personality and try to make myself harmless and obliging so I don't have to engage with the people around me. And it doesn't work, either–people always say I give off serial killer vibes.
And you know how that can be, pretending to be polite and harmless with people who bore you to death. Which is something you have to do in the workplace, especially when the workplace is full of women like the modern workplace is. Pretend to be happy to be there. Pretend to be sympathetic to people's problems. Pretend to care about anything other than getting out of the door as soon as possible so you can get back to the real work of your life.
And you pour yourself into that work so deeply that it consumes you. You start to feel bad conscience any moment you're not writing. Wake up, exercise, write, do the stupid social media stuff, go the damn factory, come home, eat, and maybe if you're lucky squeeze in a little leisure reading time. Only the work has eaten up your leisure reading time–you're reading this book because you need to learn how YouTube works, you're reading this one because you're reviewing it on the blog, and you're reading that one because you need to know how to get reviews on Amazon.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Then it's the weekend, and the real work starts.
You have a blog post to write. You have a YouTube video to make. You have podcasts to reach out to, you have next week to plan, and you have a book to format. Eventually Monday gets here and you're halfway relieved to be going back to your factory job because it's less work than what you squeeze out of yourself every moment you're at home.
But still you're dwelling on every moment you weren't writing. Every moment you weren't marketing. Every moment you weren't pushing towards the day when you can walk out the door and say good riddance to employment forever. And it gnaws at you and you wonder if something in you wants that boss hanging over your shoulder and telling you what to do.
Because that would be the worst thing of all. To want that. To need… that.
And you have your doubts, of course, but you push them aside, they only get in the way of the work.
You don't have time to date. You haven't touched a woman since 2020. Does it bother you? Only always. But then somehow it's better this way, even if you halfway suspect your obsession with writing is only a ruse–the real point is to build up barriers against any woman coming into your life. Woman is chaos and disorder and danger and something to be kept at least at arm's length.
Thinking about women is too painful, anyway. The maximum desire and the maximum hatred and the maximum love and the maximum terror all at once. Emotions too big and too complex to be allowed.
Because that would be the worst thing of all. To want that. To need… that.
You try to drink the feeling away but that only leaves you hungover. You try to pleasure it away with pornography until your fantasies come to match your insecurities in the most perfect detail, but that only leaves you feeling small, helpless, and ashamed.
So what's there to do but write the feeling away? Force yourself to throw names over it and project it all out into the world.
What, you got something better to do? Enjoy life, maybe? Don't make me laugh.
But there's no writing it away, not really. The big bad feeling is always there.
A man will spend every waking moment putting words together rather than go to therapy.
… so, there's that. Write long enough with as much honesty as you can and you'll end up telling the truth about yourself.
I'm not sure where to go now. I'm not sure I won't delete all of this and just post the fake and lame first part tomorrow. Nobody's reading this anytime soon, so what's it matter? Maybe in a few months, once there's an audience built up. But nothing soon.
I have been reading a lot about marketing lately. Figuring out how to get from where I am to where I need to be. But while there's something useful in the content of what they say, they all have major cases of toxic positivity. It all sounds fake and lame.
I try to pretend I am who I think I should be, or who I think other people want me to be, or whatever. Same as everybody else. I halfway believe my own act sometimes. Rarely, though. People talk about how great it is to be confident. I'm not confident, and I'm not even sure what it is to be confident. What I am is stubborn. Both by nature and because if I'm ever gonna get laid again in my life it's not happening until after I'm getting enough scratch from my writing to do it full time.
(I have no particular onus against my current job, by the way. As far as jobs go, it might be the least horrible one I've ever worked.)
The point I'm getting at here is that I'm not sure what I want this blog to be, even now. But I am sure I want it to be something other than fake and lame.
I'm trying to sell books, period. This blog exists expressly for the purpose of selling books. I'm not going to be obnoxious and hit you over the head with it (unless hitting you over the head with it turns out to be the most effective way to get the job done). But I'm also not going to hide my intentions here.
As you can probably tell, I don't have the most systematic mind and I tend to think associatively. I'm also very uncertain of what to do with this blog–it feels a little like turning the keys in an ignition, but the engine isn't turning over.
Honestly, a lot of the marketing stuff feels that way, but the blog especially. The other stuff I feel like I'm steadily getting a better handle on, but the blog is a mess. And it's a crucial part of the architecture, so it's not like I can just not figure it out.
Sometimes I wish I only had to write my books and they would sell themselves. And I would spend my days being chased down by beautiful seven-foot tall amazons demanding I give them a child. (And their arms would be as big around as my thighs, by the way. Oh to have a big, strong woman sweep me off my feet and take my breath away.)
Anyway, enough fantasies. Next week I really will be starting out the reviews–everything I said about that was substantially true, just written in a fake and lame way. The stark reality is a little more calculated and sinister than all the crap I wrote up there. Not nefarious, or anything, but we all have our little games, don't we now?
Anyway, it's about time for me to wipe my ass and flush her down. Go ahead and pre-order the book, or at least buy it when it comes out, or else I'll call down a curse on you and your family down to the third and fourth generation. It's great, I promise, and remember it's coming out on December 5, not the fourth. Have a good one, and I hope somebody sucks your dick this week.
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