October 6 Update

Alright, time for a long overdue post catching up on a number of secondary things. This one is going to end up more negative than positive, so skip the bottom section if you don't want that.

Cognosticon Retrospective

I'm not sure how to feel about this year's new work as Cognosticon. Or rather, I know exactly how I feel and I'm trying to decide how much weight to place on those feelings. On one hand, I want to make professional decisions based on long term evaluation, but on the other, I'm a creator instead of in a normal job in large part due to those subjective feelings of fulfillment.

Depthless Hunger exploded in popularity faster than any of my other projects, including Patreon growth... and then it stalled. I don't want to be ungrateful for an above-average level of success, but right now the project is not worth it in terms of hours of work and especially stress.

Royal Road is one of my least favorite sites on the internet, yet it's one of the only ones that offers real visibility to new creators instead of funneling everyone toward the winner-take-all algorithms of the internet. I don't want to rant too much, but a significant portion of the userbase has substantially different values than I do for stories and interacting with them is frustrating enough that I'd say it lowers my quality of life. Now, I lead a very fortunate life and this is nothing compared to the stress of a truly bad job, but it still rankles as the worst part of my day.

The thing is, I don't want to throw in the towel too early. Out of a creator's desire to finish what I start, yes, but also because this might be too early. The experiment has been going on for about a year... most of the ultra popular stories had already reached their peak by that point, but web serials have a lot of sleeper readers who wait to binge longer stories.

When I get frustrated, I frequently think about The Weirkey Chronicles: it performed poorly at the beginning, but now it's the plurality of my income. TLS was also running against the grain and I received a lot of negative feedback that made my goals feel fundamentally futile, but it changed the course of my career. I cannot know whether this is stopping prematurely or a sunk cost fallacy.

Then again, in recent months I've also discovered with TWC how a project that brought me a lot of creative joy can become an unpleasant chore. I thought I had built an audience different from the mainstream of progression fantasy and I've learned that I hadn't really, I suppose is a good lesson to learn, but my week gets just a bit worse every Saturday. It reminds me of the old Taoist proverb where fortune keeps swinging from positive to negative, so who can say?

Traditional Publication 

I don't think I mentioned it here, but last year I wrote another science fiction novel and I've been trying to shop it around since. No hits. T-T People can talk about craft or the industry all day, but it's the middle layer of agents that has me stuck.

This whole step is my least favorite part of the process by far and, if this isn't too judgmental, I feel like querying communities are a bit of a cargo cult. Everyone convinced that their queries aren't getting responses because they had the wrong format or used slightly passive voice in one sentence, then successful queries are, "ey, yo, it's like fantasy with drugs and shit". I'm not convinced agents are a good filter, it's just that publishers want some filter between themselves and everyone desperate to create, and this is the one that exists.

I don't know, maybe I'm too old in my early thirties. There's so much work I respect, from past decades to now, but the new work getting picked up these days is largely not my sort of thing. When I research agents, I see so many people younger than me waxing rhapsodic about books I didn't like and it makes it hard to keep going.

Yes, I could self-publish this too, but self-pubbed SF doesn't sell unless it's engineering wish fulfillment, and that's not what I write. What I really want is more eggs in more baskets to help secure my creative future: big publishers aren't your friend, but Amazon absolutely isn't either. If Patreon ever goes bad, I don't want to have to be posting GoFundMes with "Remember the lady that made TLS? Help her not starve!"

To be clear, I'm doing fine, I just love this career and want to make as certain as possible that I can keep doing it even through massive hits. Nothing in life is certain, after all.

A Digression 

It's possible that some people may be thinking the problem is me, in the vein of "If everyone you meet is an asshole, you might be the asshole." Yes, possibly. Some people seem much better suited to a public career in various ways, and obviously the current environments are servicing a large audience.

This is who I am, though. I am moderately good at letting things slide off me or pass through my mind, but I cannot convince myself that I like things I don't. It is entirely possible this is just the price of being successful enough to have anyone care about your work and I need to get over it. I try to limit the number of complainy posts per year, and this is one. =P

New Attempts

Anyway, like I said, I'm not giving up yet. I will definitely find the motivation to write the tenth TWC book eventually. As for Depthless Hunger, I am going to be making several new attempts to boost the story, from promotion to side content to a book release. That last one should probably have happened already, actually, but I have been continually prioritizing TLS so it got put off.

One new thing is that the Cognosticon Patreon now has side stories, including some erotica. I'd say that's good for my erotica fans, but they won't make sense unless you're familiar with the story. Putting those out did produce an immediate measurable boost, but it's hard to say what the long term impact will be.

Currently I've promised through the fourth arc, which will take me into 2025. There's a potential off-ramp after the fifth, because that will wrap up a large percentage of the story elements before opening up a new section. I want to be a creator who finishes things, though, and I don't like accepting the fact that it seems I easily become bitter and disgruntled.

I've turned things negative again. =/ Really, my intent here was to say that I'm on top of things and giving this a real shot.

Side Game Projects 

In 2024 I have made good progress on TLS, but it has come at the cost of side projects I'd hoped to incubate more before the conclusion. I don't think this is ideal, but when projects stall while I wait on other things, I put more time back into TLS and it just keeps happening.

There are some interesting seeds, definitely. I could show you some fun concept art and talk about ideas that I think will excite people here. But nothing is really at a point where I can deliver significant content to patrons after the point where I don't have any more TLS to give because the project is finished.

This might deserve its own post, actually. Eventually you will hear about more of these ideas, but I want to do that sort of thing:

1) After significant TLS progress

2) Once the projects are in a mature state where I can make promises

When writing things are frustrating, my creative energies float in the other direction, so I am actually exploding with new ideas for games. It's taking significant effort not to go chasing tangents and keep myself focused. But I want to assure people that, despite the negatives expressed here, I am brimming with passion for future projects. ^-^

TLS 0.76.0 

I have made significant progress on the final optional dungeon. I wanted to surprise everyone and say it's coming out Friday, but it looks like that won't happen. This week I just got dragged down by a number of distractions, from complex bugs to strange offers to personal stuff. We are getting close, though!