BIG ANNOUNCEMENT THINGY
You may have noticed on its web page, but if you didn’t: I will not be releasing my new novel, STONELANDS, as an ebook. Certainly not initially, and likely not ever.
It will be available as paperback, hardcover, and audiobook.
I’ve given this a lot of thought. Stick with me on this.
First off, I’m having a lot of health problems post-military and medical issues are taking up most of my time. Wrangling ebook sales is a MAJOR pain in the ass. I don’t want to give it the effort.
Secondly, I have fucking had it with the way this industry is going.
In particular, I refuse to give AI LLM scraping, piracy, and the general social media shitassery that goes along with releasing a novel any help. In fact, I want to make it as hard for them as possible.
If people really want to read what I have to say, they’ll save their pennies. Or they won’t, and it’ll fail miserably.
Realistically, STONELANDS will fail, anyway. This is not sour grapes; THE NEW MAGIC was pirated so heavily right out of the gate (off Netgalley, even!) that I lost my ass financially. It has sold around 5,000 copies, which sounds great if you’re a fledgling indie (okay, hell, it sounds great if you’re signed to a Big 5), except that I saw it on a pirate site last year with north of 19,000 ratings and a 4.5* average. I almost felt bad sending them a DMCA takedown notice. But at $7.50 net per sale, that’s a lot of money that should have been in my pocket.
I put six years of my life into STONELANDS. Why should I make it easy to steal?
More authors should do this.
Which brings up another point: I sell my ebooks at $9.99 anyway. (Which is another thing more authors should do.)
You might as well pay $10 more and get the paperback, or $20 more and get the hardcover. Which is gorgeous, BTW. Ask Santa for it this Christmas. There is also almost certainly an audiobook coming; my agent is negotiations with an audiobook company right now and frankly, this will certainly boost audiobook sales.
“You’re committing career suicide!”
No, I’m not. First off, this is not a career. This is a very expensive, demanding, and ofttimes soul-crushing hobby.
Even if it weren’t, I am under no obligation to create to anyone else’s expectations.
I have been immensely, ridiculously successful by pretty much every metric I could imagine. Short of winning some kind of major literary award, I have accomplished literally everything on my “Wanna Be an Author Someday” checklist.
Now, I’m embracing the curmudgeon lifestyle. I intend to putter around my garden, smoking a pipe, writing in a notebook, and glaring menacingly at cars I don’t recognize. Still, drop by sometime.
That said, STONELANDS is The One that I’ve been wanting to write all my life, even before I knew I wanted to write it. I’d been striving for 40 years to even get good enough to write it. Now, it’s written. Take it or leave it, but this is the culmination of my life’s work and you will read it on my terms.
(“You are zee audience. I am zee aussor. I outrank you!” — Kenneth Mars as Franz Liepkind in The Producers)
STONELANDS brings intersectionality and identity issues that I witnessed in the military, which are really goddamned important, and which I’ve never seen another author tackle, to the forefront. It also sticks a finger in the eye of a lot of people I can’t fucking stand, and who really have it coming, that nobody else will stand up to. You should read it for that, too. Plus, the sex scenes are rockin’.
Really, what I’m saying is: buy it in hardcopy. It’s worth the money.
Coupled with all this, I’ll be terminating my social media accounts, which is the author equivalent of not so much career suicide as it is moving to Nepal and taking up residency in a cave on Dhaulagiri.
Bring sandwiches. I like a Jimmy John’s Spicy East Coast Italian, extra jalapenos. Thanks.
I likely won’t be doing any more cons after WorldCon this summer, either. I’m open for interviews and podcasts, which will likely be the most you’ll hear from me.
I’ll be keeping this website, and I’ll haunt some writing forums. The rest of it, though? I’m just . . . done. With all of it. Except the writing. There’ll be more of that. But, again: on my terms. Which is how it needs to be.
Anyway. You’re family. I figured you deserve to know so you can plan accordingly.
