The Plate Spinning Act
Work-in-Progress update
PUBLISHERING (Self-Publishery?)
Right now we’re learning to work KDP and Amazon Ads. I'm very frustrated by the discoverability problem. ( I think most people are right now) There's so much content, so much noise and we are all at the mercy of the algorithms. As my friend Josh so aptly put it, it's a dull dystopia we live in.
Dull, it may be, but it's not hopeless. We're figuring it out. Keyword advertising and ACOS is not what you sign up for when you decide to write, but whattya gonna do? The Obstacle is the Way.
FICTION
I'm finishing up a short horror story. Working title: "Lovecraft Mail and Folder" which will surely change. It's cosmic horror of a sort, using the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway as a setting. I'm really, really digging this. There is certainly many larger stories to be told here.
What's cool about this is that I have recorded the planning and outlining phase. So I will be able to literally show, "How It's Written" in great detail. I may not ever do another one like this, but I think it's very interesting.
Subscribers, of course, will get this. I’ll have some kind of preview here. And the current plan will be to publish on Kindle Vella as an experiment.
HOW TO SUCCEED IN EVIL
So what I'm trying to figure out with evil is whether or I'm doing six more novellas, or just three more to finish the current story arc. The over-arching story is about Edwin vs. the Lynx and I have a bunch of great characters in which to play that story out. So I can dial up or dial down the amount of Lynx story I sprinkle throughout out the remaining episodes. Right now I'm leaning towards just three and doing the other stories I have outlined someday as random, unrelated prequel stories. Open to all feedback on this.
HOW IT'S WRITTEN -- Jeeves and Wooster
I've got about 3/4 of and explanation of the structure of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories. These are obviously a major inspiration for the current run of Evil (Cuthbert and Warner) but he's a major writer in the lineage that inspires Evil and a lot of my writing, that comes from Roman satirists through Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men and a Boat) and continues through Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. So I'm going to talk about all that.
I love making these videos, but my workload is such that one a month is about all I can manage. So my goal is at least 12 of these this year. The temptation is to make them all about films (or books that have been filmed) because that gives you great resources to edit a video together with, but I really want to get deeper into books and line level writing. Nobody talks about that stuff. And it is so important. Not only for learning how to write, but also for learning fully appreciate what you read.
REINFORCEMENTS
For content marketing for my company, I've just finished making a bunch of content. I think these two videos are helpful for for almost everyone. You might want to have a look. Or just click on them and let them play in the background. More views will really help them catch on with the aforementioned dismal algorithms.
THANKS and the ONE SIMPLE THING YOU CAN DO TO HELP
As always, thank you for your support and attention. This week the simple thing you can do to help is watch one (or both) of those YouTube videos above. Let’s influence some algorithms!