Help Me Decide What Novel To Publish Next!
And, oh yeah, I've got a new novel out this week
So. I was supposed to write my bimonthly newsletter the week after the election, but I didn’t feel like doing it, and I doubt anyone cared.
But here I am, picking myself up off the floor - and asking you to help me decide which of my novels to publish next.
Yet as I was putting the final edits on my new book The Hippogriff Riders of Oklahoma (out today! Only $2.99!), I stumbled across this passage that seemed far too relevant - a passage from a point in the book when Daisy’s been outmatched by the story’s villain and has tumbled head-first into his pill addiction:
“I knew there’d come a day when you got whupped right and proper,” Wild-Eye said.
“I’ve been whupped before,” I protested.
“No. You been beat. Your Daddy got whupped—when he realized he was goin’ bankrupt fighting the banks. And he did not take it well.”
“So what’s the difference?”
“Beat means you get set back. Whupped means they won so hard that they can dominate you—make it so if you keep fighting, they can chip away at you and yours bit by bit until there’s nothing left.”
“And you been whupped?”
Wild-Eye grimaced. “I was a proud and out gay kid in Douay, Daisy. Didn’t matter how well I fought; if three or four kids jumped me, I was takin’ a beating. And I took too damn many.”
“…until I came along.”
“No.” He snorted. “I mean, you did come along, and I’m grateful. But…I made my choice long before you stepped in as my guardian angel. Me tellin’ everyone I was a queer might get Momma kicked out of church. It might cost Dad his job. And eventually, if I really kept throwing it in people’s faces, I might end up catching a beating that’d put me in a wheelchair.”
I nodded.
“I could leave town—lotsa kids did that. Don’t blame ‘em, either. Why’d anyone wanna stay in a town that hates you?
“Or,” Wild-Eye continued, “I could…go transparent. Sand off all my edges to fit in. Take the hits they’d give me just because I used to be openly gay. And hope nobody noticed me.
“It’s the choice everyone makes eventually, Daisy. There comes a time when you face a fight that you know you’re probably gonna lose, and losing will cost you everything. And everyone thinks they’ll fight until the bitter end—but you can’t tell which way a man’s gonna turn until he really sees what that struggle’s gonna cost him. Hell, your dad was the strongest man I ever knew! I woulda bet he’d have fought ‘til Gabriel blew his horn—but once those foreclosures started piling up, he crumbled.”
“Momma leavin’ him didn’t help none,” I added.
“Point is, the reason it’s a tough decision is because fighting on isn’t always the best choice. Good chance I’d have caught a fatal beating if you hadn’t pitched in to help. Your dad saved your family house by givin’ up the farm. You might lose this one, Daisy—and fightin’ Marten and Edgar could make it cost you everything.” He looked up at Ace, tumbling joyously through the air as she chased the last threads of daylight.
“So what do you think I should do?”
Wild-Eye took a long drag on a joint. “I wouldn’t judge you either way.”
No real spoilers here: Daisy picks himself up, fights the good fight, and wins. That’s fiction… but it happens in real life sometimes.
I fear we are exiting the Fuck Around stage of world affairs and about to steer sharply into the shores of Find Out. (Don’t email me if you think otherwise; you don’t know the future, and neither do I.) And if my fears come true, the fight is gonna get exponentially harder than it has been; people will be forced to make a lot of grueling choices about whether they can fight.
Fighting sometimes costs individual folks everything. But it’s the only possible way out for everyone.
I hope you too make the right choice.
(And if you’ve got ten bucks to spare, here’s a real good book on where to start fighting. Lesson #1 is “Do Not Obey In Advance.” Lesson #20 is “Be As Courageous As You Can.” Let’s you and me hunker down somewhere between those two, okay?)
Anyway, so while I’m reasonably happy with the Dragon Kings of Oklahoma series as an experiment, I need to get working on self-publishing my next book. (It won’t be the fourth book in the series; I don’t think I’ve earned enough to justify spending quite so much on the covers for this series. And I’d hate to hire a lesser artist for book four. Maybe if the series takes off a little more.)
But I have two books that I could publish in 2025, and I like them both about equally. So I wanted to get an idea of which one tickled your biscuit a bit more. Here’s two rough descriptions with placeholder titles, and you can email me or comment on this post to tell me which one you’d be more willing to lay down $2.99 to purchase.
(Hint: “Both” is not helpful! I get to publish one!)
Option #1: The Sundering Gates
An epic generational fantasy about a small town’s struggle to invent and build the world’s first stable interdimensional portal. Lots of characters, lots of politics, lots of heart. If you liked The Sol Majestic, this one’s got that same vibe, though a bit less flowery and mixed more with a dash of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. My wife proclaims it by far her favorite thing that I’ve ever written, and so does my partner Keri, and a friend in my Discord who beta-read it keeps asking me “When’s it gonna be published? When?”
But The Sundering Gates would be hard to market (including getting a better title, if I can manage it), and it’s long - like, A Game of Thrones-sized. But I don’t feel like breaking it up into smaller books because I wrote the kind of book where people could lose themselves in for weeks at a time, and I don’t want to break that up by saying, “Here’s Intermission, give me another three bucks.” I just want you to float in the narrative.
And as a lapbreaker of a tome, it would be hard to get reviews - longer books, particularly with multiple characters, have more opportunities for people to bounce off of ‘em. And reviews are a large influx of traffic.
Option #2: Corded
Hot bisexual warriors rope-fighting for dominance in a smut-filled, BDSM-filled book. Very fast, written at a pace like Automatic Reload, filled with action and intrigue and a pretty nifty bit of worldbuilding to justify why '“tying each other up with ropes” is the primary form of combat.
Marketing-wise, it’s a great and easy pitch. (And I think the cover would be cheap.) But I’d have to do a rewrite on this one, since I finished the final pass way back in 2020… and also, I haven’t written smut before. (I think there’s all of one sex scene in my published books.) Then again, that smuttiness may be a bonus for you, but I worry about blue-balling people because I don’t have another sexy novel in the trunk waiting for you. Like a lot of my stuff, it’s a one-off.
And it’s not deep. It’s a fast-paced popcorn read, which is all fine and well. But I dunno whether that’s where I wanna go next after a trio of hot buttery popcorn reads.
Anyway. That’s the two books I’m pondering releasing into the world in the first half of 2025. Let me know which one you’d be willing to fork over hard cash for…
And if you haven’t forked over the cash for the new series The Dragon Kings series well, the third book is out today. Only $2.99. Same as the price in the first book in the series, which is very well reviewed.
And yeah. We’re all still picking ourselves up off the floor. So big hugs to all.
I vote for _The Sundering Gates_. I loved _The Sol Majestic_.
For me, I would most enjoy Option 1.
That being said, the end goal is that you make money, and marketing wise, I can understand if you go with Option 2 first, hopefully get some cash from it, and get to Option 1 later.
And, yes, while I will probably purchase both, that was not the question. Option 1 would be the one I am far more excited about.