Starting the New Year with a Goof

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And yes. I goofed.

I had a major setback to my writing in 2022, and I had hoped 2024 would be the year I recovered. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked.

Two years ago, I was starting to build real momentum, attending comicons throughout the Midwest to sell my books directly. It was great to meet some fans and find new ones. And the more books I published, the more my overall sales increased, making for good long-term growth.

Then I totaled my car in a freak accident. One I was blessed to walk away from. But that canceled my weekend comicon trips, along with my Uber driving for extra cash. At the same time, my wife started a new job that involved working some evenings and part of Saturday, seriously limiting my ability to travel, since someone needed to be home with the kids.

So I became more of a househusband, learning how to make dinner (something I still struggle with), along with the familiar chores of doing laundry and dishes and cleaning the house, once I was through with my day job. But that made it tough to find time to write, let alone sell anything.

Still, I managed to put together a box set of the first three Red Rider books, and another box set of my Island of Myste trilogy, by the end of 2022. Unfortunately, I no longer had reliable sources of income, so I couldn't afford a graphic designer to make the covers needed to publish them.

Then in 2023, I finished my epic fan fiction crossover, Remnant: Buffy, the Vampire Slayer meets Batman and the Red Rider, a fun promotional story to introduce new readers to my characters. But, of course, no matter how good it was, I couldn't make any money from it since they're not all my characters. So I had another year of not actually publishing, apart from some short stories that were accepted in anthologies.

I knew I needed to finish the next Red Rider book, but it became a complicated project with a lot of moving parts to track. Meanwhile, my mind kept filling itself with ideas for an action-packed Christmas romcom. So by making extensive notes for that holiday thriller, I ended up writing both books at the same time.

Still, I pressed ahead to finish my first draft of Red Rider Raid: Book 6 of the Red Rider Saga, in April 2024. I was finally back on track.

And that's when I derailed.

I had every intention of publishing Red Rider Raid by the end of the year. But I knew it would take several more months to revise it, and I wanted to make sure I published something in 2024. For years, I had intended to develop my Twilight Zone style series of short story collections, called Beyond Imagination. I figured this was the perfect project to put together quickly by just writing 4-5 more short stories for the first collection.

But those stories got bigger than expected and took longer to complete. Especially when one story, Replica, led me to create yet another series called Interceptor 7, in the style of Star Trek. Once more, my brain was stuffed with more ideas than I could type.

I intended to publish Beyond Imagination during the summer, then finish Red Rider Raid by December. Neither of those plans happened. I now have all the stories written for Beyond Imagination, but I'm still hindered by a lack of funds. I realized that I need to do a Kickstarter to fund the graphic design covers, and to also purchase my own ISBN bar codes for each book.

Why does that matter, you may ask? Because I publish e-books through Amazon with the free ISBN codes they provide, and they will also provide free ISBN codes for paperbacks, hardcovers, and audiobooks. However, apart from e-books, using an Amazon ISBN bar code makes it an "Amazon-exclusive" product that can only be sold by them. I couldn't sell through Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or even sell directly myself. And that's not the kind of deal I'm looking for.

So in a sense, after all that work, I'm right back where I started in the summer of 2022. With a few positive exceptions. So it's time to rethink my plans.

I'll need to do a Kickstarter, but it makes more sense to fund mypurchase of ISBN codes for the box sets of The Red Rider and The Island of Myste. That will require the least effort while providing the most books, while helping me to get everything else in motion.

Once I purchase my own ISBN codes, I can more easily publish the completed Beyond Imagination collection. Then I can finish Red Rider Raid, followed by a series of Interceptor 7 novellas, and hopefully publish my Christmas romcom thriller before next Christmas. Which is a lot of books for me to publish in a single year.

Because the good part of all this is that these stories are mostly written. I've worked up enough material that they can be published with little effort, once I'm funded.

So that's my confession. I panicked near the summer and tried to publish something quickly, only to discover that my ideas were much bigger than I thought. Too big to get them all ready in a year's time.

But not in two years' time.

So this year will be a busy one, but maybe not as busy as this past year. In 2025, you should see all the work I've been doing in 2022-2024, once those stories are ready to read.

I hope you'll stay with me for it, because it's going to be really good!

Thanks for your support!

Keep believing!

RAD