I’m working on Untrue Tales… Book Four. I know I mentioned it on Twitter/Facebook, but in case you haven’t been following me; I began writing Book Four while I was in Las Vegas recently. (During the day while we were there, my wife Mandy was at a teaching conference, so I had plenty of time to work. Evenings were for having fun.) I got about 5700 words written in Vegas, and haven’t added a word in the three weeks since. Actually, I’ve been pretty darn depressed lately -including the last three weeks, comicon, Vegas, and for quite some time before that. I’m a bit surprised I was able to write anything at all. Luckily, I’ve been working on feeling a bit better and in the last week or two, and while I haven’t managed to get any actual writing done (and have actually experienced stress to the level of physical pain the last two times I tried to sit down to work on Book Four), I have been working through the story quite a bit.

I’ve seen/remembered quite a bit of the rest of the story, and it looks like instead of 7 books (or more) as I recall originally envisioning, the story will be well told in 6 books. The first three are done, you can read them now. I should have Book Four done within a couple of months. (ie: before NaNoWriMo’10) Then maybe I’ll write Book Five for release in early 2011 and Book Six for release in mid- or late-2011. I am planning on keeping them all very close to the same length as each other and as the first three books. The writing may (or may not) go quickly through all 3 books, one after the other, but I’m beginning to get used to the idea of investing months per book for editing/preparation/recording in advance of an official release.

I’ve just looked at a calendar, and if Book Four is ready by October 8th & I start podcasting it on the Modern Evil Podcast that week (immediately after TeaTA finishes its run), then it’ll run out in mid-December… Two more books of the same length would be another 5 months of episodes, if posted back-to-back, which would put the release of Book Five in December 2010 or January 2011 and Book Six in March 2011. Which I suppose would be alright. The first three were released in 2004, 2005, and 2006. I somewhat wish I could release the next three in 2010, 2011, and 2012… but I also don’t like the idea of sitting on a finished book for a year or more… and I kinda want to get all three books written as quickly as possible.

Of course, pre-2008 I was only writing/publishing about one book per year.

Now, for the release, I’m thinking of doing a modified version of what I’ve been implementing with my more recent releases (though certainly in line with the current availability of the first three Untrue Tales… books). I’m thinking of releasing the individual books 4-6 as eBooks and audiobooks and not as individual paperback books, then putting out the second trilogy as a combined paperback after all three books are done. I brainstormed a variety of models for putting out various other combinations of paper/eBook/audio at various intervals, doing various fundraisers, even thought about limited hardback releases, but due to the expense of paper (and the miniscule interest I’ve seen over the years in the individual books in the series in paperback) I think this will be the most reasonable plan. Then, maybe, I’ll look into doing a limited hardback release encompassing the full series.

On the writing itself: (Possible spoilers ahead) I haven’t written -or been in the mindset that created- books in the Untrue Tales… series for over four years. Since then I’ve been through a variety of life changes, not the least of which was my marriage in 2007. Despite Trevor’s having been reunited with his wife at the end of Book Three, their being together for the remainder of the series, and Book Four being about their life together before his being exiled to Earth, my relationship with my wife actually distances me from the relationship Trevor has with his wife. Writing Book Four has been an emotional stumbling block since (perhaps) 2005, and is the primary reason I’ve not previously continued the series. It was supposed to be about Trev & Toni’s love story, which led directly to his exile on Earth… and writing the core of that story is one I may never be able to do.

Luckily, upon examining the way the story needs to be told and how events unfolded prior to Trevor’s exile, I discovered that the emotional core of and the how-they-met-and-fell-in-love part of Trev & Toni’s story doesn’t get told in Book Four or (probably) anywhere in the series. Book Four is still nearly-all-flashback to what led Trev into exile, as told by Toni, but she’s keeping a vital element secret. Something that won’t be revealed until the cliffhanger ending of Book Five. Something which, since she’s keeping it secret (for good reason), means she won’t be telling the story of how they met, fell in love, et cetera, either. This takes a huge weight off my back re: writing Book Four.

I’ve also discovered that the tall man, the closest thing to an antagonist in the first 3 books, figures into Trev & Toni’s backstory and into future books – would you believe he’s actually a complex, sympathetic, and manipulated character? His love story, I get to tell.

Most of the rest of what I have planned, I can’t tell you about here. It would give too much away. But it’s going to be awesome. The main battle sequence in Book Five is mind-blowing, and the twist at the end of Book Five… well, the main storyline has been planned from the beginning, it’s just a few details that have needed ironing out. Most of which happens in a process very similar to remembering something that happened to me long ago… or far into my future. It’s hard to tell the difference, sometimes.

It’s coming. If you want to get early access, you can volunteer to be a ‘Beta Reader’ – you’ll get to read the books before the general public does, in exchange for giving me feedback on them. You don’t have to be a professional editor, you just have to be an interested reader (and familiar with the first three books in the series).  Email me, or comment below, if you’re interested.

• Buy the paperback at modernevil.com
• Buy the paperback at Amazon.com
• Buy the paperback at barnesandnoble.com
• Buy the eBook from Smashwords
• Buy the eBook for your kindle

I’m already working on the audiobook version; if you subscribe to the Modern Evil Podcast, you’ve already heard some of it. It should begin running on Podiobooks.com in August, after More Lost Memories is complete there. Actually, I’ve already recorded the entire book, but still need to do most of the audio-editing… and I need to work on the music a while longer. I’m not happy with my first few attempts to compose the intro/outro music for the audiobook. Definitely not doing book-length bed music for it, but I’m a bit blocked on coming up with a melody/sound which encapsulates the entire collection.

I’m pretty happy with the finished book. After reading and re-reading the book over and over again in the last few weeks, it feels pretty solid. In case you’re wondering: I read each story aloud as soon as it’s written, for any immediate/obvious edits. About half the stories in this book were written a couple of years ago, so -while they’d already received quite a bit of editing- I re-read them recently, as well. Then when I’d written the first nine stories & essays, I re-read the entire book (aloud, again) before sending it to my Beta Readers. (Then I wrote the final story, Buying Time.) Then after I’d got the final feedback from my Beta Readers, after preparing the book for print, I printed out a proof and read that aloud (Finding even more errors!) before sending it to Lightning Source (my printer). Then I read it aloud again to record the entire audiobook.

The order of the stories and essays feels good. The balance between them is strong. There’s a wide variety of characters, time manipulations, and relationships. I’d have liked to have had more/longer essays, but that’s more a personal preference than that the book doesn’t work as-is; the essays currently in the book work well as brief interstitials between the stories, like a mental palate-cleansing. I’m happy with it, overall, and I think readers will be, too.

I do not recall the precise details of the conversation, but it began with a confusion. When the caller insisted that something must be wrong, that Untrue Tales… wasn’t all there, I immediately went into tech-support mode and tried to determine where their problem downloading might be. Soon, as they explained further and my mind wakened more, I realised that what they meant was that the story didn’t have an ending.

Which is correct. Only the first three books of the series are written, so far, and I have plans for at least another four (possibly six) books to complete Trevor’s story. I have been putting off continuing the story for the last several years. Book Four is supposed to be nearly entirely flashback, filling in the story that led to Trevor’s exile on Earth and separation from his true love, and I’ve worried that I won’t do the story justice.

I wrote & published (via Cafepress, originally) Book One in 2004, Book Two in 2005, and Book Three in 2006. In 2007 I began seriously working on starting Modern Evil Press, buying ISBNs, contracting with Lightning Source, and getting several books both in print and available for purchase everywhere. And got married. In 2008 I stopped working a day job and started being a creative full-time, devoting quite a bit of that time to creating audio versions of my existing books and writing Forget What You Can’t Remember and More Lost Memories, which were published on 1/1/2009. In 2009, in response to certain feedback from readers of FWYCR, I spent the better part of the year doing research on zombie novels, then wrote Cheating, Death. Then edited together the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut for sale as an eBook. So far this year I’ve put out the print edition of LaNF-DC and am nearing completion of this new collection of short stories and essays, Time, emiT, and Time Again. I’ve been busy.

Then, while I was working on Cheating, Death I had a few ideas for an alternate history universe where I could tell at least a few good stories. I’ve been doing a fair amount of research on the period and characters from which I intend to develop these stories from, but the task is far and away the most research-intensive project I’ve ever attempted. (Normally I prefer simply to write the stories and worlds that originate in my own imagination, rather than to attempt to start anywhere near actual history and real people.) So I’ve postponed it a bit, too. In fact, putting together (and expanding) Time, emiT, and Time Again was partially because I suspect that I might not feel ready for the first book to see print by the end of 2010, and I wanted to be sure to put out at least 2 new books this year.

On the other hand, I’ve received my first enthusiastic contact from a fan since Dragons’ Truth also led a few people to ask me if/when there would be a sequel. (My response to that is a question of where, exactly, one might go from the end of Dragons’ Truth. As soon as someone has a reasonable idea, I don’t see any problem with pursuing it.) I know thousands of people have downloaded the eBook and Podiobook versions of each of the three Untrue Tales… books, but the dropoff in readers/listeners from Book Two to Book Three is fairly significant, feedback & reviews are sparse & mixed, and I’ve long suspected that people aren’t getting to the end or don’t like the series very much. The only people who, prior to today, had asked me about continuing the series were people who hadn’t read it yet and were avoiding it because it was unfinished.

Actually, I’ve still been asked more frequently about the description of the fireplace in Book Three than when or whether Book Four will be written. As in: “I really liked the whole series, except for the description of the fireplace in Book Three. What was that about?” That, dear readers, was in the same vein as the entirety of Forget What You Can’t Remember; I was trying to simulate in the reader, via writing style and structure, the experience the character is having – forced on you by the act of reading itself. You like to feel tension and excitement while reading the tense, exciting parts of a thriller. You like to feel as though you are being romanced while reading a romance. I just tried to do the same thing with irritating distraction (in the fireplace), depersonalization disorder, and amnesiac confusion and ethical doubts (in FWYCR).

Yet I’ve now had a great conversation with someone who not only liked the Untrue Tales… books, but is eager and excited to read the rest of the series. Eager enough to look up and call the author’s phone number, to ask about the rest of the story. Which is, in itself, perhaps enough motivation to attempt to squeeze Book Four into my schedule before starting on the alternate history series. At first glance, I think perhaps if I start thinking about it now, I might be able to finish it & publish it by the end of August. Or perhaps September.

Even though I’m not much motivated to write it. I’m a bit distanced from the explicit erotica, violence, and (the core of the thing, which most readers will never notice) the central motivation for the whole project being the satire by exaggeration of the way series like Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events were unfolding at the time. Rather than despising such frustratingly written yet inexplicably popular books and wanting to mock them by emulating and exploding them, I just don’t care about them any more. Technically I had already got to that point by the time I published Book Three, but it has been a real stumbling block to the continued writing of the series. I will have to determine whether I can either simulate or replace that motivation, in order to continue the series without drastically altering the storytelling style.

Perhaps this comes down to that question of ‘why’ – Why I write, why I publish, why I do all this work. If I write “for the readers” I’ve got to finish the series. If I publish to be able to write what and how I want to write, I’m fine to go on ignoring it. I think it’s complicated and contains some of both of those (and other factors), which is why I’ve neither written the next book nor taken the first three out of print. I shall continue to think about  it, and I’ll see if I can start working on it this summer.

Here are the eBook and Podiobook download numbers (including above eBooks estimates), as usual giving the total of eBook downloads, the total of Podiobook downloads, and the more-accurate (re: # of people who dl’d a full book) total downloads of the final episodes of each Podiobook, as: eBook/total-PB/final-PB

• Lost and Not Found: 65 / 1342 / 61
• Dragons’ Truth: 133 / 934 / 102
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 102 / 3032 / 90
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 91 / 3771 / 332
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 89 / 3493 / 247
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 93 / 1841 / 159
• Cheating, Death: 2 / 3176 / 229
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / 909 / 89
• Total for all titles: 575 / 17,589 / 1,220
• Total YTD: 2,595 / 109,990 / 7,800
• Total all-time: 11,017 / 290,091 / 18,919

What this looks like, in case you didn’t just look at April’s numbers, is a slight drop in dl rates of most of the Podiobooks and a slight increase in most of the dl rates of the eBooks. The Untrue Tales… Book One & Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut Podiobooks held steady, and the Lost and Not Found eBook dropped off. I can guess the latter is because the Director’s Cut is quite visible on modernevil.com, and is new on Podiobooks.com. It also looks like I’ve probably (in the last couple days) passed the 30,000 downloads point (across eBooks & “finished” Podiobooks, for 8+ distinct books), which is a nice-looking round number. I’ll probably also pass 300,000 Podiobooks episodes downloaded some time this month. Not anywhere near Scott Sigler’s numbers, or Nathan Lowell’s, but numbers I’m pretty happy with.

I have a new Podiobook launching in a couple of days; the short story collection More Lost Memories, which has been out a year and a half in paperback and all but one story of which has already run on the Modern Evil Podcast. It’ll run for the next couple of months and then I’ll start running the audio version of Time, emiT, and Time Again there. (TeaTA begins on MEPod in 3 weeks.) Each new Podiobook means the “Total all-time” numbers just go up faster and faster, both simply because there are more episodes to be downloaded, but also because (generally) people who try one are likely to try all the others, and the more they like them the more likely they are to share them.

Moving on to actual sales: First, you already know about the great success I had with my first attempt at a Kickstarter fundraiser. The fundraiser ended (and the pledges were transfered to me) on May 15th. The big pledge is $500 and I’m counting it as art sales (since the $500 reward level included ‘everything below’ and a single piece of original art, and the ‘everything below’ reward level was much lower at only $150). I’ve never made $500+ in art sales in a single month. (Even if you want to only count $350 toward art, since the other rewards are all related to the book, I haven’t made $350+ in art sales in a single month since moving back to Phoenix in ’04. (My records for sales in Pine are … effectively non-existent.)) Best art sales month, ever.

My other two backers pledged $15 each for copies of the TeaTA paperback & a chapbook & eBook. That’s $30 for 2 (or six, if you want to count them that way) books.

Also in May (last weekend) was the Phoenix Comicon 2010, at which I was a ‘Small Press’ exhibitor. I had all my books with me, prominently breaking them up into genres (heh) of ‘Science Fiction’, ‘Fantasy’, ‘Horror’, and ‘Poetry’ (in the back corner). I also had the little zombie I’d crocheted, priced at $55, as a sort of mascot to sit next to the stacks of Cheating, Death. The zombie sold Saturday, along with a copy of the book, which was awesome. (The zombie sale counts as art, bring the total art sales for May to $555, by the way.) Here are my total sales (all paperback, except where noted):

• Lost and Not Found: 0 / $0
• Dragons’ Truth: 4 / $49
• Dragons’ Truth MP3 CD: 1 / $13
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 5 / $70
• More Lost Memories: 0 / $0
• MLM/Pay Attention chapbook: 1 / $2
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 1 / $12
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 0 / $0
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 0 / $0
• Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 (combined): 8 / $200
• Cheating, Death: 6 (plus 2 given away, 1 to Wil Wheaton) / $55
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 1 / $10
• Total Comicon book sales: 27 / $411

I have never had $411 in book sales in a single month before. Actually, with the sale of another copy of LaNF-DC prior to Comicon, the TeaTA sales, wholesale sales of 3 books (2 Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 (combined) & 1 Cheating, Death; $14.82 total net) and eBook sales, my total book sales for the month were $468.10. Best book sales month, ever, and it compares pretty favorably with the total book sales I reported on this blog for the whole of 2009 ($503.39). I suppose I’d better sign up for a table at the 2011 Phoenix Comicon.

Two very successful projects came to fruition in May, and they pretty fairly secure profitability for Modern Evil Press for the remainder of the year, barring unforeseen expenses (or, if/when I return to the Art Walk this Fall, even worse sales than before). More importantly, they give me hope for the ongoing financial viability of Modern Evil Press. Thirty-four books doesn’t come close to the sales volume most other authors and publishers would consider “successful” for a month’s work. It does exceed the goal I set last time I bothered trying to set a sales goal; that if I could sell at least one thing per day, on average, Modern Evil Press would be financially viable, and more than successful. Since I’m not planning on doing any in-person sales for the next 3-4 months, I expect much lower sales numbers for a while. Still, I believe I’m on the right track, and things are looking good.

Here are the eBook and Podiobook download numbers (including above eBooks estimates), as usual giving the total of eBook downloads, the total of Podiobook downloads, and the more-accurate (re: # of people who dl’d a full book) total downloads of the final episodes of each Podiobook, as: eBook/total-PB/final-PB

• Lost and Not Found: 81 / 1488 / 71
• Dragons’ Truth: 90 / 1149 / 111
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 96 / 3029 / 90
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 69 / 3961 / 354
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 60 / 4241 / 327
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 70 / 2320 / 214
• Cheating, Death: 2 / 4042 / 304
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / 806 / 97
• Total for all titles: 468 / 20,230 / 1471
• Total YTD: 2020 / 92,401 / 6580
• Total all-time: 10,442 / 272,502 / 17,699

Starting late in the month, I put a code to download Cheating, Death for free from Smashwords on its eBook page at modernevil.com – for my other books, I’ve downloaded or created the various free versions of the eBook and put them right on the page, which is where the above download numbers come from; this is an experiment to see if people will go through the extra couple of steps to get the book from Smashwords for free. So far: no. None. Maybe next month. LaNF:DC eBook is still pay-only.

• Lost and Not Found: 74 eBooks, 85/1,695 Podiobooks
• Dragons’ Truth: 96 eBooks, 150/1,393 Podiobooks
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 84 eBooks, 95/3,110 Podiobooks
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 81 eBooks, 292/3,318 Podiobooks
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 70 eBooks, 268/3,529 Podiobooks
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 70 eBooks, 152/1,581 Podiobooks
• Cheating, Death: 0 eBooks, 293/4,253 Podiobooks
• Total FREE downloads: 475 eBooks, 1,335/18,879 Podiobooks

Note that Cheating, Death is not currently available as a free eBook. I’ll change that, soon, I think. Now paid digital downloads. I had zero smashwords sales in March.

• Dragons’ Truth: 1 kindle
• Cheating, Death: 1 kindle
• More Lost Memories, individual stories: 3 kindle
• Total paid eBooks: 5 downloads, $5.08 net

I also sold a few paper books (& some art) in March, at the First Friday Art Walk & wholesale via LSI:

• Worth 1k — Volume 2: 2 copies by hand
• Second Thoughts chapbook: 1 copy by hand
• Cheating, Death: 1 copy wholesale
• Art: 1 painting, 1 mini-painting, 1 crocheted item
• Total (paper) book sales: 4 books, $24.44 net
• Total art sales: 3 works of art, $125 net

The order I made today for paperback copies of Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut cost about $145. (ie: everything I just earned) This is intentional; even if they don’t sell right away, they’re already covered by income I’ve already earned. But hopefully they’ll sell, too.

So, for Quarter One of 2010, we have:

• 1,535 free eBook dl’s, 17 paid eBook dl’s, for $22.51 net
• 5,109 dl’s of final Podiobook episodes, 72,171 total episodes dl’d
• Podiobooks donations for Q1 were $29.97, my cut was $22.48.
• 4 paperbacks & 8 chapbooks by hand, 3 paperbacks wholesale, for $57.07
• 1 painting, 5 mini-paintings, & 1 crocheted item sold, for $170
• Gross income for Q1: $272.06

That’s about 4 cents per free download of one of my books, by the way, assuming you include the art income. (w/o art income, it’s about 1.5 cents per copy)

Anyway, ‘Second Thoughts’ will run for 3 episodes. I’ve got it recorded but not yet edited. Then I had planned on alternating between episodes of the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut (on Fridays) and new poetry (on Tuesdays)… and when I drew up that schedule a couple of months ago, I’d expected to have been able to write the 5 new poems such a schedule calls for… but I haven’t written any new poetry.  I could grab 5+ more poems from my 3 existing collections. I could cut the podcast back to once a week. I could *quick* write some poetry in the next 2 weeks. I haven’t yet decided.

Regardless of what I do, after I finish podcasting ‘Second Thoughts’ and the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut, I’m out. If I only do 1 episode of LaNF-DC per week, I’ll run out of content April 9th. Including the presumed mid-week poetry episodes, that’ll be episode 167. I don’t have anything ready for episode 168. Yet.

Theoretically I could podcast the remaining stories from More Lost Memories… though I have been reluctant to do so. I could podcast all the remaining poetry from both volumes of Worth 1k… I could edit and polish the other stories from my unfinished collection and podcast them. I could … write a new book. I could let my podcast go on ‘hiatus’ pending new content. I don’t know.

I should be able to write a new book between now and then, but I have a lot of other things going on. A major factor of which is that the book I’m currently researching for … I expect not to be one of the quick ones. I expect to spend at least the next month researching for it, actually (though I suppose if I cut back on crochet work, I could get through my reading faster), before I write word one. I expect it to come out to be one of my longest novels yet, if I want to do a good and thorough job with it. I suppose I could do what some other authors have done before, which is to podcast the unfinished, unedited work as-I-write-it. Or I could write some other book in between researching for it, and podcast that.  I don’t know.

What I don’t want to do is podfade. To stop podcasting. I really would prefer not to go on hiatus. I don’t want to lose my momentum. I also don’t want the quality to drop, or the nature of the feed to change – it’s a podcast of my writing. It isn’t some guy jabbering, it isn’t an interview show, it isn’t topical or political or humorous or informative – it’s a podcast of all the literature I write. Twice a week, every week. I’d like that to continue.

• Dragons’ Truth – 11,458 downloads in 2008, 15,985 downloads in 2009: 27,443 total downloads
• Lost and Not Found – 2,906 downloads in 2008, 18,251 downloads in 2009: 21,157 total downloads
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 43,218 downloads in 2009
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 35,704 downloads in 2009 (~9 months)
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 27,178 downloads in 2009 (~6 months)
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 13,502 downloads in 2009 (~4 months)
• Cheating, Death – 11,899 downloads in 2009 (~2 months)
• Total downloads in 2008: 14,364
• Total downloads in 2009: 165,737
• Total of all my Podiobooks’ downloads as of 12/31/09: 180,101
• Total downloads of MEPod as of 1/8/2010: 24,229
• Grand total of Podiobooks + MEPod: 204,330

So there’s some bigger numbers. Still long-tail sized numbers. Even within podcast audiobooks, I’m a small fish. But 204,330 looks a lot better than the 11,119 downloads of just the final episodes of my podiobooks. Puts the donations in perspective; for every ~6005 downloads of my Podiobooks, $1 is donated. Podiobooks.com’s $0.25 cut wouldn’t cover the bandwidth cost of those 150Gb+ of downloads, so I suppose it’s a good thing they aren’t being charged for bandwidth.

To begin, a snapshot of right now. As of 1/1/2010, I have 13 titles in some form of publication or other. 5 standalone novels, 2 poetry journals, 2 short story collections, 3 books in the Untrue Tales… series and a single edition containing those 3 books. One of the novels (the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut) is currently only available as an eBook. One of the short story collections (Time, emiT, and Time Again) isn’t yet finished, but I’ve released one of the short stories that will be contained in it as a standalone chapbook.  The 3 individual Untrue Tales… books aren’t technically “in print”, though I have a few copies, printed by Cafepress & sans ISBN. I am not counting The Vintage Collection, though it is another book I’ve put together, had printed, and sold at one time. (I plan to edit and re-release it at a later date.) Seven of my books are available as podcast audiobooks, and all but the poetry is available as eBooks.

Now. What would you like first, sales numbers, or free download numbers?  Sales numbers you say? Alright, free downloads it is! Early in 2008 I began putting my books online as free PDFs & txt files, and in April of 2008 (shortly after I returned to life as a full-time creative) I put all my novels (Lost and Not Found, Dragons’ Truth, and Untrue Tales… Book One, Book Two, and Book Three) as free eBooks in 7 different formats (PDF, galley-style PDF, txt, rtf, html, mobi, & epub) on modernevil.com, and made them available for sale on Amazon’s kindle. Here are 2008‘s download numbers:

• Lost and Not Found – 1079 downloads, including 1 paid copy
• Dragons’ Truth – 961 downloads, including 3 paid copies
• Untrue Tales… Book 1 – 948 downloads, including 2 paid copies
• Untrue Tales… Book 2 – 964 downloads, including 1 paid copy
• Untrue Tales… Book 3 – 897 downloads, including 1 paid copy
• Total eBook downloads in 2008: 4849
• Total paid eBook downloads in 2008: 8
• Total direct revenue from eBooks in 2008: $22.71

Also in 2008, I began podcasting audio versions of my books. In June 2008 I released Dragons’ Truth all at once, and starting in September 2008 I began podcasting Lost and Not Found (finishing in December 2008). Tracking the # of people who have downloaded the podcast audiobooks is more tricky than eBooks, since each book is broken into many files. I’ve gathered data about how many people have downloaded the first episode of each book, as well as the number who have downloaded the last episode of each book. I figure counting downloads of the final episode is a fairly conservative estimate of downloads. Here are the numbers for all of 2008:

• Dragons’ Truth – 2334 downloads of first, 1271 downloads of last, $9.99 donated
• Lost and Not Found – 434 downloads of first, 80 downloads of last
• Total “finished” downloads of audiobooks in 2008: 1351
• Total direct income from podcast audiobooks (after Podiobooks’ cut) for 2008: $7.49

On 1/1/2009, I published two new books, Forget What You Can’t Remember and More Lost Memories. I began podcasting Forget What You Can’t Remember on the same day. It was complete by April, and I started Untrue Tales… Book One the next week. Book One was complete in June, Book Two ran from July to September, and Book Three ran from September to November. In September/October I wrote a new novel, Cheating, Death, publishing it as an eBook for sale while I was still writing it. Cheating, Death was in print by 10/31 and began podcasting on Friday, 11/13/09 (finishing 12/25/09). For the eBooks, I decided to treat Forget What You Can’t Remember like my other novels, and made it available as a free eBook in 9 formats (I added .lrf & .pdb) and for sale on Amazon’s kindle. Starting in January I also began putting my eBooks up for sale on Smashwords.com, beginning with Forget What You Can’t Remember. Then I decided to make More Lost Memories free only by direct request, and for sale (as a whole & with 7 of its 9 stories available individually for $0.99 each) on kindle and at Smashwords. When Cheating, Death came out, I put it up for sale and again said I’d give a free copy of the eBook to anyone who asked. (So far, only book bloggers have asked, and I sent quite a few of them free paper copies as well.) At the end of November I threw together the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut and put it up for sale as an eBook on the kindle and at Smashwords. Here are the numbers for all of 2009‘s eBook downloads, with for-pay-only titles in italics:

• Lost and Not Found – 506 downloads, 5 of them paid
• Dragons’ Truth – 609 downloads, 7 of them paid
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 735 downloads, 13 of them paid
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 587 downloads, 4 of them paid
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 562 downloads, 3 of them paid
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 553 downloads, 1 of them paid
• Cheating, Death – 8 downloads
• More Lost Memories – 13 downloads, 7 of them the individual stories
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – 0 downloads
• Total eBook downloads in 2009: 3573
• Total paid eBook downloads in 2009: 54
• Total direct revenue from eBooks in 2009: $65.17

And here are 2009‘s podcast/audiobook download numbers:

• Dragons’ Truth – 3231 downloads of first, 1616 downloads of last
• Lost and Not Found – 1523 downloads of first, 926 downloads of last
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 2711 downloads of first, 1150 downloads of last
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 5006 downloads of first, 2865 downloads of last, $10 donated
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 5173 downloads of first, 1843 downloads of last, $10 donated
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 1890 downloads of first, 1002 downloads of last
• Cheating, Death – 1786 downloads of first, 366 downloads of last
• Total “finished” downloads of audiobooks in 2009: 9768
• Total direct income from podcast audiobooks (after Podiobooks’ cut) for 2009: $15

Of note, the 366 downloads of the final episode of Cheating, Death actually occurred in a period of 4 days (I put it on my feed on Christmas, but it wasn’t on Podiobooks.com until the 28th). Speaking of my feed… I don’t have nearly as good of statistics for the Modern Evil Podcast as I do for the Podiobooks.com versions of my books. PodPress gives me total downloads of each file I put in the feed, and tracks how many are dl’d via the feed, direct from the site, and played through the flash-based player embedded in each post, but unless I’d been copying them out at the end of each month/year… I don’t know any way to get good breakdowns. Not to mention the number of downloads of each episode of MEPod vary wildly from one to the next. I’ve been putting all my novels into the feed, as well as quite a bit of poetry and some short fiction. Yet even when I put an entire novel up, one chapter after another uninterrupted, the numbers don’t make sense; most of my novels show more people downloaded the final chapter/episode than any other in the book. There are patterns like … the first few and last couple chapters of each book get downloaded several times more times than the others, even in the “feed” – which would mean someone (a lot of someones, actually – hundreds in some cases) had subscribed to the podcast & then selectively downloaded only a few parts of each book.

As far as numbers go, the Modern Evil Podcast seems to run at around …. 30 regular subscribers (ie: consistent & immediate feed downloads) but individual episodes tend to get downloaded… around one to two hundred times each… over time. With wild variations, as stated. Overall I might estimate that the Modern Evil Podcast has contributed an additional … perhaps 1000 finished podcast audiobook downloads to my total… including both 2008 & 2009 numbers together, since PodPress doesn’t break them out. But enough of the free download counts, let us move on to the money:

Beginning, again, with 2008, when I had 2 standalone novels, 2 poetry collections, and the 3 Untrue Tales… books plus the collected edition, for all of 2008 I sold:

• Lost and Not Found – 10 paperbacks by hand, 1 eBook: 11 copies for $143.11
• Dragons’ Truth – 3 paperbacks by hand, 3 eBooks, 1 giveaway: 7 copies for $47.74
• Untrue Tales Books 1-3 combined – 2 paperbacks by hand: 2 copies for $49.99
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 2 paperbacks by hand, 2 eBooks, 1 giveaway: 5 copies for $27.40
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 1 paperback by hand, 1 eBook: 2 copies for $14.70
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 1 eBook: 1 copy for $2.70
• Worth 1k — Volume 1 – 1 paperback by hand: 1 copy for $9.99
• Worth 1k — Volume 2 – 2 paperbacks by hand: 2 copies for $19.99
• Total copies sold of all titles: 31
• Total income from book sales in 2008: $315.62
• Paintings sold in 2008: 13 paintings & 5 mini-paintings: 18 original works of art for $1384
• Total from sales of books + art combined in 2008: $1699.62

In 2009 I added 2 novels, a short story collection, and some chapbooks; for all of 2009 I sold:

• Lost and Not Found – 4 paperbacks by hand, 3 paperbacks wholesale, 2 eBooks, 3 giveaways: 12 copies for $72.43
• Dragons’ Truth – 1 paperback by hand, 1 audiobook on CD by hand, 4 eBooks, 4 giveaways: 10 copies for $42.60
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 9 paperbacks by hand, 8 paperbacks wholesale, 9 eBooks, 18 giveaways: 44 copies for $153.98
• Untrue Tales Books 1-3 combines – 0 copies for $0
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 4 eBooks: 4 copies for $5.86
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 3 eBooks: 3 copies for 3.23
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 1 eBook: 1 copy for $0.53
• Cheating, Death – 6 paperbacks by hand, 6 paperbacks wholesale, 4 eBooks, 15 giveaways: 31 copies for $83.40
• More Lost Memories (full) – 8 paperbacks by hand, 5 paperbacks wholesale, 3 eBooks, 8 giveaways: 24 copies for $110.82
• More Lost Memories (individual stories) – 5 chapbooks by hand, 6 eBooks: 11 copies for $12.54
• Time, emiT, and Time Again (individual stories) – 4 chapbooks by hand: 4 copies for $8.00
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – 0 copies for $0
• Worth 1k — Volume 1 – 1 paperback by hand: 1 copy for $10.00
• Worth 1k — Volume 2 – 0 copies for $0
• Total copies sold of all titles in 2009: 145
• Total income from book sales in 2009: $503.39
• Paintings sold in 2009: 10 paintings & 19 mini-paintings: 29 original works of art for $1074
• Total from sales of books + art combined in 2009: $1577.39

Not very much, is it?  I also sold a few hand-screen-printed T-Shirts in 2009… but… yeah. So, a few notes: This summer for almost 3 months I reduced the prices of all my eBooks below $2 retail, to see whether volume would increase. Volume of sales did NOT increase. But that’s why, for example, I only earned $0.53 from Untrue Tales… Book Three in 2009; I earned 35% of $1.50. Also, I’ve included giveaway copies here because they’re copies that should have earned money.  I actually have another set of figures that examines the profitability of each individual title (mostly not, so far), but I’ve already put too many numbers into this post. Suffice it to say that for my in-print titles it costs me $200-$375 to get a book set up & to make an initial order of paperback copies (not counting the value of my time at all) and my highest-grossing book to date (Lost and Not Found) has only earned $218.36.  That examination is for another post, at another time.

In fact, I think I’ll save any thoughts/conclusions/analyses of these numbers for a possible future post, as well.  For right now, this is it.

Right now it’s this book, Cheating, Death.  I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my next novel about four months ago, and had its initial outline done by mid-July. Then I spent two and a half months reading modern, popular, and recommended zombie novels until I was on the verge of being so sick of zombies I couldn’t have written Cheating, Death.  At which time, in the middle of reading one of the books, I just stopped reading and began writing.  And I’ve spent the last 5 weeks working on it.  In a conversation with my brother earlier tonight, I estimated that I’m on roughly the ninth or tenth pass through the full text of the book, between writing it, editing it, copyediting, hand-coding the kindle version, recording the audiobook, and now editing the audiobook.

It’s no wonder I’m having trouble maintaining interest in editing the audiobook.  (Have you tried reading the same book 9+ times in a month?)  If I’d been able to sit still and work through the edits, hour after hour, I should have been able to finish the first pass through the entire audiobook in (at most) two days, finishing today.  Alas, I’m not quite halfway through with the main edits, I’ve barely begun the work of marketing the book, and I’m nearly fed up with it.  I want to work on anything else.

I want to work on my next book.  I’ve been brainstorming & worldbuilding for the next book and have come up with at least one more (longer, more complex) novel in addition to that which will be set in the same universe.  I lost a couple of nights recently in looking toward what I’d like to accomplish in the next five years.  I spent several hours with my brother tonight developing (from scratch) the basics of a video game we want to develop.  I’m able to work on each of these other ideas & projects for hours at a time over multiple days; it’s not a moment-to-moment shifting from project to project, it’s an urge to work on anything other than Cheating, Death, right now.

I am aware that other authors work on a single book for months, often for years, before ever considering submitting it for publication – and that’s before professional editors start working with them on it, a process that typically stretches on for a year or two before the book reaches the market.  I am aware of it.  It’s just not something I do.  I’m undisciplined, unfocused.  I have trouble working on a single project (a book, an audiobook, learning a language) for more than a few weeks.  I have trouble working on a single image (a painting, a website design) for more than a few days.  I have trouble working on a single blog post for more than a few hours.

On the other hand, I’m intense. I’ve written several novels in about two weeks each, and I wrote one of them in under 3 days.  I’ve won NaNoWriMo four times.  Cheating, Death is the second novel I’ve gone from first word to finished-paperback-book-for-sale with in under a month.  I usually take a website redesign from zero to done in less than two days.  When I’m working passionately, I dive in completely, forsaking sleep, the normal bounds of time, and press on diligently until I’ve exhausted either the idea or my interest in it – and then, like I’m certainly going to do with the Cheating, Death audiobook, I usually continue working on things in which my interest has waned, at least until that phase of my work is complete.  Even my sense of responsibility (& stubbornness) is intense; I remain dedicated to completing the work, and doing so to the best of my ability, in spite of even intense apathy.

I’ve just spent nearly four hours working on this post, and I’ve had a headache for almost half that.  I ought to be sleeping.  Not just because I’ve been awake so long, but also so I can wake in the morning and dedicate tomorrow to working (at least a few hours) on editing that audiobook.  To marketing it.  To getting it from being just a book I wrote to something people are actually reading and listening to.  Hopefully the acetaminophen I took a little while ago will take effect soon; I’m not sure how easily I’ll be able to sleep with this headache.

Whew.  Done!  Now I just have a whole stack of things to do!  But at least the 1st draft is written!  One of the first things I have to do next is print it out and read it for the first time.  I’ll do this out loud and make notes as I go.  It’s a pretty good way to see if it all works, and whether any sentences need work.  I actually read quite a bit of it out loud as I was working on it; since beginning podcasting all my fiction, I pay a lot more attention to making a good read-aloud book.

Speaking of the podcast:  No voices, for this one, just narration and enough vocal variation to be able to tell any two lines of dialogue apart.  Also, based on a schedule I’d just laid out, I should be able to start this one on the Friday after Untrue Tales… Book Three is complete and then post two chapters a week (one chapter per episode, like FWYCR) from 11/13/09 to 12/25/09.  Because, yeah, I’m going to post the stunning conclusion to the novel on Christmas day. :p

Oh, in addition to writing chapter 13, I’ve also written Appendix Z, included here:

Appendix Z: About the Zombies

Some helpful information about the zombies in this book:

Zombies are slow.

Zombies are stupid.

Zombies do not use tools.

Zombies do not use language.

Zombies do not experience romance.

Zombies are not just old, hungry vampires.

Zombies do not want to exact revenge on the living.

Zombies do not have any magical abilities or super-powers.

Zombies can only be killed by damaging or destroying their brain.

Zombies eat the living, and are attracted to the motion and commotion they make.

Zombies like eating brains, but are not possessed of superhuman strength, so how are they supposed to bite through your skull?

Zombies who did manage to eat the brains of their victims wouldn’t be much of a threat, since they’d prevent the spread of zombie-ism by doing so.

Zombies are created when a human has had fluid contact with a zombie; primarily via saliva transmitted into a bite wound.

Note: Hell is not full, zombies are not a sudden and global phenomenon bringing all unburied dead to life, the dead are not clawing their way out of graves, and this book’s cover is intentionally misleading.

Zombies spread quickly because the living are stupid, too.

I’m posting it here because it’s at the end of the book, which means it isn’t in the free preview.  Which still contains (roughly) the first four chapters of the book.  Have you checked it out, yet?  You should.  The full book’s price is, as promised, at the full eBook price of $4.99 (subject to change) over at Smashwords.  It is currently in its first-draft, unedited state.  Please let me know if you find any problems or errors in it, so I correct them before I send it to press (probably next week).  When it’s corrected, I’ll update the Smashwords copy again, and release it to “Premium Distribution” as well.

Time to go throw it into InDesign, so I have a page count to submit for the PCN request.  I hope you enjoy it.

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Yesterday, I finally started work on my new novel, Cheating, Death.  As I’ve been working toward, as soon as the first chapter was done, I got to work getting it set up on Smashwords.  My idea is to write the book “live” on Smashwords; to make the rough draft available to readers as it unfolds.  The first few chapters will be free, and after a certain point I’ll gradually start increasing the price so that by the time the book is fully written, the eBook will cost full price.  Because of the way Smashwords handles versioning and rights, once you’ve paid for an eBook you have access to it no matter what the price gets updated to or how many times the text is modified – in fact, you actually get to choose which version of the book to download, if it’s been updated since you purchased it.  So whatever price you pay, whenever you purchase it, you don’t have to pay again and you get access to all future updates, including the final one.

I plan to update the book on Smashwords every time I finish a chapter (or if I’m on a roll, at the end of each writing session with any completed chapters).  I expect to finish the book by Halloween at the latest (because NaNoWriMo starts at midnight on Halloween), and perhaps as soon as the end of next week, if the story really flows out.  (One time I wrote a book over a long weekend, so there’s no telling, maybe I’ll be done by Monday.)  Your feedback on the novel-in-progress is appreciated.  Feedback on the content, the grammar, spelling, the unlikable characters, whatever – anything is welcome.  I’d like to get the thing in as good a shape as possible while I’m writing it.

I plan on doing as much of the back-end work as possible while writing it (plus I’ve already got the cover almost finished, and I’ve just put together several pages on modernevil.com for it) so that within a couple of weeks of finishing the first draft, I should have the paperback in hand.  Then, with any luck, I’ll start podcasting the audio version of the novel on November 13th – one week after Untrue Tales… Book Three is finished on the Modern Evil Podcast… which should give me podcast content until around mid-January, 2010.

Now, semi-secretly, I’ve got at least two other (perhaps 3 other) zombie books in me, and I think 2009 is the “Year of the Zombie” so I was thinking I’d try to get them all out (& preferably in print) by the end of the year.  I’ve been working on thoughts for how those will develop, playing around with some ideas, and trying to figure out a timeline for working on them.  Back before it took me 3 weeks longer to start writing Cheating, Death than I’d suspected (and I still haven’t finished all my ‘research’), I was thinking maybe I could write Cheating, Death in September, the [idea deleted] one in October, and the [idea deleted] one (which would probably be my first Christian fiction) for NaNoWriMo.  But now I’m thinking maybe try to finish this one as fast as I can, try to finish the next one before November, write a non-fiction book (my book on Self-Publishing I’ve been talking about and thinking of all year) for NaNoWriMo, and the third (Christian) one in December (or just start it as soon as I have time).  The fourth one also has something like werewolves in it and I’m told that 2010 will be the “Year of the Werewolf”, so perhaps I’ll save that idea for then.  Or throw it out.  I hear rumor it might be derivative of some TV show I never watched.

Anyway, lots of new fiction on the horizon, most of it with zombies of one sort or another.  The first one is available starting now.  Hurry, go get it while it’s free on Smashwords, and watch how my ideas turn into a novel:

Go read Cheating, Death now.

I’m calming down.

I get too upset, too easily.  Little problems sometimes feel very big.  Little frustrations, little failures, sometimes feel very big.  I can get very emotional.  A little while ago, a few words, a realization, a revelation, a simple email, got me so upset, so angry, that my vision literally went blurry.  A few words.  A small mistake.  A communication failure.  And anger.

I’m trying to calm down, though.  I’m calming down.  Nothing can be done.  Anger can do no good.  Emotional turmoil can not help, here.  Nothing can.  Too late.

Here we are: It’s May 1st, it’s supposed to be the deadline for my contest.  You remember the one, where I ask people to tell me what Forget What You Can’t Remember is about, and the winners get free books & maybe their name in my next novel?  Timed to coincide with the Podiobook’s completion two weeks ago, when hundreds of people would suddenly be able to consider and answer the question.  Plus, by using a mid-roll ad, I could have a quick announcement of the contest inserted into the Intro of every episode of FWYCR downloaded from Podiobooks.com.  Starting three weeks ago, a couple of chapters before the final chapter was posted, the ads were supposed to be started.  This would have let everyone who was partially done with the book know about the contest, and the ad would have continued after it was complete -which is a trigger for a lot of people to go dl the rest of the book, and for many who like to listen to an entire book at once to begin- for the two weeks leading up to today.  I had also hoped that this would spur people who might not be keeping up with new episodes to try to get through the rest of the book in time to enter the contest, and that if people started thinking about answering the question 3 weeks ago they might have a better chance of coming up with a good answer by today.  In addition, my contest was announced over at Podioracket (I recorded an audio insert for them, similar to the one that was to be inserted mid-roll at podiobooks.com), and I blogged about it and tweeted it and talked about it with friends.

Yet I’ve only received two responses so far.  Two.  Two?  Dozens of people have bought the paperback.  At least 176 people have downloaded all 31 episodes from Podiobooks.com (and over a thousand have at least got the first chapter).  Something like three thousand chapters should have had a reminder of the contest in them.  Is my work so seriously a failure to engage an audience that only two people were willing to send an email to try to get a free book?

It’s hard to say.

See, the email that got me so upset was one that let me know that the person over at Podiobooks.com that I trusted to turn on the ad-insert … never turned it on.  Maybe it was my fault for not being clear enough, or for putting too many thoughts/words into a single email.  Maybe it was my fault for not checking sooner to be sure that they’d followed through.  Maybe it was their fault for not doing it.  Turns out it doesn’t matter whose fault it is – as is generally true, placing blame can’t alter the outcome of events.  Deciding whose fault we think an error is doesn’t go back and run the ad in three thousand episodes.  Nothing does.  Nothing can go back and make the hundred and fifty plus people -who were actually engaged enough with my book to keep current with the episodes and/or to get the whole book as soon as it completed- aware of the contest.

I could extend the contest.  2/3 of the people who have at least downloaded two chapters haven’t finished downloading the rest of the book.  I could extend the contest, make up a new version of the mid-roll ad, and hope that some of the people still listening will bother to answer.  That’s certainly a possibility.

Instead, I’ll probably just send books to the two people who entered, put both their names in my next novel, and say ‘fuck all’ to running contests.  And to relying on other people to do what they say they’ll do.  And to the thought that I could ever build a fucking fan base.  I’m pretty sure I could name all my fans, right now, and count them up without running out of fingers.  I’ve been putting out books for five years, podcasting books for nearly a year, and I can’t get three people to send me an email to win a free book?

fuck all

There seems to be less traffic noise in the mornings, after everyone has gone to work and before they begin to be released from it, so I tend to try to record in the mornings.  My sleep schedule has been bizarre, of late, and I’ve been sleeping starting at roughly 3AM-7AM and -despite my best efforts (hampered significantly by an ongoing and severe bout of depression) to get out of bed after only a few hours- running through the middle of the afternoon.  Today it’s further off – I put myself to bed last night at 10PM, managed to fall asleep somewhat quickly, but then my mind woke me up at 2:30AM.  I tried to sleep, I fought against waking, I felt quite … I don’t know whether I’m physically or mentally tired, but … tired, but at 3:30AM this morning, I gave up on it.  Got up.  Started laundry.  Played the Free Realms Beta for a while…

Mandy’s up now, eating a breakfast I made for her, and as I finish writing this, she’ll be getting ready for school today.  I don’t think I knew how noisy getting ready for the day is until I started recording audio books.  So, in an hour or so, she’ll be done with that and I can try to begin recording.  I’d like to get a couple of hours of recording done today, if my voice works that long.  I need to get ahead of my podcasting; trying to record at the last minute doesn’t always work, especially when I’m depressed and/or my sleep schedule is severely kinked.  Last minute is where I’m at right now, actually.  I don’t have today’s podcast episode edited yet.  Realistically, I give myself until midnight of the day I’ve said it will go up.  Preferably, it always goes up on the morning of that day.  Which, for episodes longer than a minute, means I have to have it recorded ahead of time.

((For the episodes going up on Podiobooks.com, I really need to be done ahead of time – in my experience, if I fail to have my episode uploaded & ready to go there by late Thursday night, chances are it won’t hit the site until Monday.  Which feels like I’m three days late, even if I uploaded it at 7AM Friday.  Even if it was on my own feed at 7AM Friday.  Podiobooks.com feels like the “real” venue for my audiobooks.  So I really need to be ahead.  Consequently, I think I’m going to let the Podiobooks feed run a week or so behind my direct feed for the next few books.))

Recording a half-hour episode takes a lot longer than half an hour, by the way.  (Assuming I’m not doing multiple voices, which takes even longer.)  The actual recording part tends to take me about double, so about an hour.  (Last night I tried to record in the evening, since I seemed not to have a choice, and it took me over 100 minutes to record what will be about 30 minutes of text.)  Editing what I’ve recorded – selecting takes when I’ve recorded multiple takes, cutting out dead air, background noises, mouth noises and the like – takes about double that, so about two more hours.  With my new computer, mixing together the intro, outro, multiple sections of an episode & transitions between them, leveling everything so volume matches within and across episodes… actually only takes a few minutes.  I haven’t timed it, but I seem to be able to do both versions (MEPod & PB) in under half an hour, now, including compression.  Then I have to listen to the entire episode, to be sure I didn’t miss anything during the edit.  I usually do this while uploading it to both servers & writing the episode description.  So, for a typical 30-minute episode (without character voices), it takes me 4 hours of work.  All of it while listening carefully not just to my own voice, but also to tiny background noises.

This is not work I can do eight hours a day, five days a week.  And not merely because wearing the over-the-ear headphones becomes annoying well before the 4-hour mark.  I am certainly going to try to put in a few long days over the next few weeks, though.  I am certainly going to try to get the other 8 episodes of this book recorded, edited, and ready to go just as fast as I am able, and on to the next book.  Theoretically, it should only take me a total of 40 hours to complete this entire book (not to mention I’ve already got the first episode done), so why not?  The next two books in the series are each almost exactly the same length book – so three 40-hour work weeks and I should be done with the entire series, right?

Except I’m also an artist.  And I’m also writing a book on my Self Publishing experiences.  And I’m also creating a deck of Christian cards (and a book to go along with them).  And I’m also a househusband – cooking and cleaning and the like are part of my responsibilities.  And I’m also a marketer.  And a web developer.  And a blogger.  And a filmmaker.  And involved in social media.  And emotionally unstable, currently depressed & off-kilter.

It’s only 1 week until the next First Friday, when I have another Art Walk to show at.  (If you’re in the Phoenix area, come down and see me!  I’m among the ‘Roosevelt Row‘ vendors, and I’m usually near 5th & Garfield.)  I’d like to produce some more new art before that happens (though I have plenty in stock, right now – more than I could possibly show), so that cancels out part of the next week.  I’ve only just begun writing that book on MicroPublishing, and I’d like to build some momentum in the writing of it, instead of letting it perhaps wither with only a couple thousand words.  I can’t record every day (I can’t recall now which day it was, exactly, but one day this week I managed to stay up late enough that I thought I could record in the morning, after Mandy left, at the end of my waking hours – but apparently that was when Bulk Trash Pickup decided it was time to slowly and noisily scour my neighborhood.) and I can’t usually stand to work on audio all day, when I do.  Oh, and because I want to continue posting two episodes a week to my feed, I’m doing poetry episodes again – a one to two minute episode of which seems to take 30-45 minutes to create.

So maybe I’ll get ahead by a couple of episodes in the next week.  And hopefully I’ll get ahead by the rest in another week or two.  Mandy just walked out the door.  I’d better get to it.

Some writers include everything – from my thousand-word blog posts down to my 140-character (or less) Tweets, and grocery lists besides, but that always seemed disingenuous to me.  Until I take the time to put together a book or two from my blog posts (that pot is still boiling away at the back of my mind, believe me), writing blog posts isn’t the sort of writing that I consider Writing.  Using Twitter more mostly improves my ability to use Twitter more.  Most of the time the write-every-day writers seem to be doing so in the hopes that it is like playing an instrument & they just need daily practice to get better and better.  Which is an interesting idea.  Have fun with that.

I just choose to think every day, instead.  A lot of the day, every day.  Thinking.

One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is my audiobooks.  The audio version of Forget What You Can’t Remember was completed this week, both on my feed and on Podiobooks.com.  I began podcasting the audio version of UTFBF-RoaAP, Book One on my own feed yesterday (it goes live at Podiobooks.com April 27th).  Book One will be 10 episodes, after that I’ll start Book Two, then probably Book Three – each of them about 10 episodes, since the books are all about the same length…  And then, in about 30 weeks, I’ll be out of novels to podcast.  According to the Google Calendar, where I just mapped out those 30 episodes to Fridays, I’ll run out in mid-November.

So one of the things I’ve been thinking about is that, between now and then, I’d better write something new.  Maybe the Self-Publishing book I’ve been thinking about writing will be podcast-able, but in addition to that I’d better write some new fiction.  There’s a good chance that, reading UTFBF over and over again for the next six months will get me to a place where I can write Book Four (and maybe continue from there with the series).  And I realize that since I can certainly write a book in a month (and have produced various first drafts in: 3 weeks, 2 weeks, and even 3 days, once  upon a time) that six months is plenty of time, but … I also know that for me, a big part of writing is thinking and I’d better get to thinking.  Thinking I’m going to write more books.

One of the other things I’ve been thinking, along these lines, is maybe I’ll not do that cards/book thing I was thinking about.  I dunno.  Thinking about the packaging/marketing/sales side of it has been making me queasy.  Writing the book is one thing, painting/creating the cards is another, each difficult in its own way, but then … I can’t just set it up with Lightning Source and know that anyone can walk into a book store and order it, or get it on Amazon/etc..  I can’t have it set up for Wholesale/POD at all, really, since I need the cards to be packaged with the book – I’ll have to order a huge amount of books, order the same number of decks of cards, package them together all by hand, and then … frankly, sell them by hand.  Which … I, ugh… I mean, in person sales at Art Walks and Art Fairs and even via social media is all fine, but … going to stores and trying to get them to carry my product, dealing with consignment and/or other even-more-bizarre methods everyone apparently uses for accounting for business transactions… the thought of it makes me sick.  I really like the idea of the product, but dealing with getting it to market makes me feel like shit.

Which has a lot to do with why I haven’t moved forward with the research and/or the art for that project.  At all.  bleh.  (Overwhelming depression is also a factor, but one that I’m at least able to grind some productivity from.)

I’ve got to go get ready for an Art Fair today.  Maybe I’ll get a chance to think more, in between customers.