Leveling Up from a Wannabe Grifter

In the author Twittersphere, it seems there are creators, wannabes, and grifters.

Lately I’ve felt like a #WritingCommunity wannabe and grifter, trying to build an audience when I have nothing published. After getting my rejection letter, I don’t have a follow-up plan on which short fiction magazines to try next. I am not aware of any upcoming anthologies, etc.

But my debut as a published artist happened. You can find some of my artwork featured in the following book, which is available on Amazon right now:

I’m on there, in a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of way:

But the point is, I’m searchable. I can now be found on Amazon as an author (and artist). A big step up, I’d say. Hopefully now that I’ve put something out there and actually have an author page, I may not seem like quite as much a wannabe grifter as before.

It was neat working alongside ArtAnon and Brian Niemeier (I didn’t get a chance to meet or work with Jun Ares or Artechneo.). We got along swimmingly, and I have a feeling we’ll be collaborating on future projects as well.

For my fiction debut, I’d love to give Anvil a try, which has all the qualities I admire in Cirsova and then some. So much care is put into the page-to-page layout, I can’t help but be wowed by this publication.

And I’ve come to admire a lot of the author names you’re seeing on the right, as well->

But I missed the last submission window on Anvil #2 and I’m not sure when the call for #3 will come.

The plan in the immediate is to keep writing more short stories. My ability to produce short fiction and novellas has especially improved: I can do it at a somewhat serviceable speed, now.

I’ve been creating a Sword & Sorcery world, building characters and plots (using all the lessons learned from my Riddle of Iron series of posts), to create a series of short stories. The first story will be called Hammerfall, which is already in its third draft.

The main character is Khaniel the Sojourner, a man who has the rare gift of sparkblood, but is just now discovering he’s been lied to his whole life about not only his childhood, but the world in which he lives.

Having a blood talent means the use of boon relics, special items with devastatingly powerful effects that only “Ether Lords” can create and bestow. However, these relics are vampiric in nature, offering you their boon only in exchange for your blood.

Not only do these strange, macabre relics constantly whisper their desires to the wearer, but more than four uses in a single battle means you’ll probably pass out – and maybe even never wake again.

By twist of fate, Khaniel is partnered with the mysterious Aloria of Kalise, a woman imprisoned in a cursed suit of armor. She belongs to a heretical cult hellbent on slaying the nine Godkings. And she doesn’t seem interested in backing down from the cause anytime soon.

The main villain is Ether Lord Tipharet, a magus who, through his meddling with nature, has created a rift in the sky, biting off more than perhaps even he can chew. But Tipharet is cold, calculating, and as devious as he is deviant. The type of villain who hides his secrets and schemes in the background, seeing several moves ahead of the main characters at all times.

It’s set in the world of Weyar, which, in addition to its main surface, has an Overworld and Underworld. There’s enough story floating around in my head to craft at least nine or ten short stories in this new setting. Once I’ve gotten them published in magazines/anthologies/etc., they should work beautifully as a “novel-in-stories” (a single novel composed of several interlinked short stories telling a larger, complete story arc).

From there, jumping back into full-length novels will be a tough transition, but hopefully all this practice will have paid off.

I was horrified to learn that 20 Books to 50k‘s highly vaunted “rapid-release technique” only works if you’re releasing one novel per month (I thought it used to be one novel every three months). I refuse to sacrifice quality for such inhuman levels of speed that I couldn’t possibly maintain, so I guess I won’t be using that technique, after all.

I’d rather keep writing and growing my audience organically through hard work than race a bunch of titles across the finish line all at once. The whole idea of 20 Books to 50k was to work your way up to 20 books over a long period of time. Which sounds like a lot.

But it sounds far more realistic than single-handedly feeding a book-of-the-month club.

The good news is, with rapid-release out of the picture, I no longer have to have at least five novels 100% polished and ready to go before I launch my book career. So this realization will not only allow me to get a novel out the door sooner, but it will give me more time to polish the subsequent releases.