My habit of long-standing is to spend New Year's Day doing a little of all the things I hope to do over the coming year, and this was derailed by a two-day fever and subsequent recuperation period. In retrospect, there's nothing wrong with “spend 2025 recovering” as my theme for 2025 when I consider the stressors that have lately entered my life. I am going to run with that, thus, and say that I aim to spend 2025 recovering, waking up... and flourishing!

But first! I want to look back at what I managed in 2024. Several of you are going to take immediate issue with this characterization: 'if this is managing, then you are putting many people to shame!' And I thank you all for your protectiveness and charity. But in this case, I should be clear... as the sole income in the household, I should be releasing at least four books a year, if not more, so falling down on that metric makes all the rest of them immaterial. But it's because I fell down on that metric that I did so much wild experimentation in 2024, in hopes of finding a way to make my income depend less heavily on how fast I'm releasing (more on that later).

First, a round-up!

Art

Despite multiple constraints, I finished art this year, including a few large paintings (the Everglades Unicorn, and covers for the Qora novel and Bryer's novelette), and lots of small, tactical pieces, either painted (like the stickers for the Qora kickstarter, and the void cat stickers), or using markers. I didn't sketch as much as I planned, but I kept moving, which is the important part! And I also fixed one of the major issues with my ability to do art by getting new glasses, which is already paying dividends. I anticipate more artwork in 2025, but here's the list of the majors from 2024:

• Cover for Qora Novel
• Orange Cat
• Everglades Unicorn
• Kitty Kimono
• Magnolia Mother
• Void Cat
• Stray Cats
• Third Fireborn
• Dancing Faulfenzair
• Qora Wallpaper
• Harrier’s Choice cover
• Kat Redraw
• Qora Dancing Frontispiece
• Completionist Badge

Writing

“Just keep moving” was also my motto for writing in 2024, because I embarked on two complicated projects that required a lot of backstory and continuity research (the two Peltedverse books). Qora's novel in particular took me nearly 5 months of note-taking and researching, and I still made errors! (If you haven't noticed them, I'm not going to point them out!). So I only finished two novels. I did however start a third (the gamelit I am serializing on the patron platforms) and got over halfway through it. And to keep my hand in, I wrote four short stories and one novelette. I placed all four of those shorts with editors, along with an additional five short stories that were either trunked or reprints. I don't usually do sales to presses anymore, but I wanted to meet some new people and enjoy the burgeoning community dedicated to pulpier entertainment. Importantly, it was fun! I needed to remember that the art can be fun. As much as I love and believe in the novels I'm writing right now, the pressure to get them right, and the number of ways I can get them wrong, has made them more stressful than enjoyable. (I have enjoyed reading them once they were done, though, so even that stress had compensations.)

Here's the list from 2024:

• Serial – gamelit
• FireBorn’s Legacy
• An Exile Amid Stars
• Short – Sister Prissa’s Philters
• Short – Tapa’s Adventure
• Short – Black Hat
• Short – Hate That Guy
• Novelette – Harrier’s Choice
• Anthology sales: 8 (9 if you count Brim to Dregs, sold in December, out in January)

Experiments

Now we get to the wild category, the Experimental things!

I ran five Kickstarters (four of them in a row, one per month!), just to see if it could be done and whether it was worth doing. The answers to that were 'it can be' and 'it's not particularly profitable but it was fun.' Useful data! I also have enough information to update my Kickstarter book, so that project's currently in progress.

I designed and prototyped my first special edition hardcover, which was exciting―I'm definitely doing more of those, and having the option feels very luxurious. Having a hardcover with foil stamping and ribbon and custom endpapers was a bucket list item for me, so checking it off was deeply satisfying. This was definitely one of the highlights of the year for me. Even better, art books have now opened up as an option!

Also in 2024, taking me nearly five months, I built and launched my direct sale shop... which is not a minor endeavor when you have some 70+ books in multiple formats to upload, tag, and connect to various on-demand-fulfillment arms. I learned a tremendous amount doing this (and probably have accidentally acquired an entirely new set of marketable skills, if I wanted to sell them). None of which is as important as the confidence it's given me about weathering any ups-and-downs in the retail sphere. I used to feel a lot more beholden to Amazon and other retailers; while it would be a hit to lose them, I no longer panic at the thought.

After talking about it for most of a year I finally started my Peradventure game beta in December, and that's in progress now―thank you, playtesters! I am taking a ton of notes on what's working and what's not. This first campaign is definitely less play and more discussion of how to play, but that's all to the good.

My last experiment of 2024 was to return to the con circuit, which I did as gently as possible by visiting the nearest relaxacon, NecronomiCon. Though one of the hurricanes seriously depressed attendance, it was still lovely to go and meet (and re-meet!) people, and to test my new author table set-up and sales hardware (also connected to Shopify).

Peering Forward

So that was 2024. To address 2025, you'll see why I ended 2024 with the Experimental section. Because my goal in 2025 is to increase my income dramatically, and I'm not going to grow it by doing the same things I've always done. Writing faster―all right, yes. I'd like to. But the books I've got on the docket need me to slow down to get them right, not speed up to get them out. (That would be the culmination of the Peltedverse story arcs; and even things like Kherishdar want immersion, not speed.) So I'm trying to find new ways to reach people, and my plan is something like this:

More Local and In-Person: I rarely do in-person events, which is odd because I like people and enjoy meeting and listening to them. This year I'm going to try expanding into the mall, which has a flea-market-like store that rents space to local vendors. I've rented a shelving unit for my books and I'm going to see if I can get more of a reputation as a local author. (I'd also be looking into doing this in the local bookstores but we no longer have any. The nearest bookstore is now 40 minutes away.) I also want to do more cons; I'm going to go to NecronomiCon again (that's in Florida in autumn), and this year, I should also be attending LibertyCon in Tennessee in the summer. Finally, there's a local coffee shop that just opened and I'm going to see if I can become a fixture there; I have, in the past, made a surprising number of sales via coffee shop interactions.

More Direct Sales and Interaction: I have built out the fiction part of my shop pretty well. I'd like to expand into artwork, merchandise, and more exclusive items―behind the scenes downloads, audio, whatever seems good to us all. Someone has also asked me to consider offering a direct subscription option to replace locals/patreon, so I've got that on my list to investigate. I also want to up the focus on interaction with me and other fans as part of what's fun about being invested in my work. The Discord has been growing well, with multiple read-alongs and good conversations now typical... and Peradventure is my other experiment there, because I really want to do the thousand players-to-one-GM game model and see where it goes! Peradventure is also part of the groundwork for fanwork of the kind I was previously leery of allowing... increasingly, though, I'm confident that there are enough people who care about getting it right that I can start to map out ground rules that will prevent legal and social problems. And I'd like to do more mentoring, and being senior editor for something like a themed anthology would be one way to embark on that. (Teaching is, come to think of it, another thing I'd like to do more often. We'll see if any opportunities arise there.)

More Preorders: This is a minor note, but a big bullet point in my list, because it was shocking to me how effective preorders are. Like “double the amount of sales, even if the preorder period is only a month long” effective. I don't yet have the data to tell if these sales are from people who would have forgotten to buy the book at all, or if it's just capturing sales that would have happened later when someone remembered to pick the book up, but I'd like to know! Also because planning releases gives me better control over when my revenue shows up. So, expect more warning about when things are coming out.

Get the Art Out There: Related to revenue showing up, I've let my art lie around too long. I'd like to get more things out there for it, like Best of Sketchbook Retrospective volumes and themed art books. You can only sell someone so many prints or originals before they run out of wallspace. I want to explore different ways to get my art into people's hands.

And yes, of course, I'm going to write! I have three books planned for next year: the gamelit, Surela's third and final novel, and Reese's short story collection (with concomitant Kickstarter). I'm going to leave it at that, though, because it's going to be a busy Mom year (probably one of the most momentous since Jaguar Child was born!) and everything is going to take backseat to getting that right. But I'm hoping to get partway into a fourth book.

To sum up, in 2025 I hope to chase down new ways of generating income while not failing to keep the old one (writing novels!) going. Some of those ideas will involve manifesting dreams I had always hoped for, like the fancy art books, and having books in the mall! So I'm excited about the new ways I might end up succeeding, or falling flat on my face, because I'm going to be learning and trying new things. And I feel like it's a good sign that I am excited about all this, rather than exhausted at the mere contemplation of it. Because, as I mentioned back in the beginning, I spent the first days of 2024 recovering from illness, and I am already feeling like 2025 will be the year I start rising, phoenix-like, from my slump. It shall be so!

Last weekend I decided to return to my local convention, NecronomiCon, after over eight years, to see how things had changed… and also because I missed in-person socializing. Fortunately, the con didn’t mind my signing up at the last minute, and put me on panels and sold me a writer’s alley table, so I was able to go all three days and sell a few books.

Briefly, about Necro: 2024 is its 43rd year, and it's never missed a year, even when they were forced to do a zoom version. It’s a nonprofit con of the old science fiction style, with panel programming, gaming, an art show, and a dealer’s room. In the past, it’s been fairly large, but the arrival of the enormous for-profit ComicCons have obviously cut into its attendance. The vendors I talked to said last year there were 400-500 people. This year, because of the hurricane, we probably had a quarter of that number, if that. Seven of the guests canceled because they couldn’t physically reach the con, and in fact, the committee wasn’t even sure if they’d be able to run it until three days before they were scheduled!

But it did run, and I’m glad it did, because it was a low key and relaxing event… less like a con and more like a weekend spent catching up with friends. Prior to my hiatus, I was a regular at this con, and was surprised how many people remembered me from back then; the woman who started the con came by to reminisce about how young and shiny I was when she first met me, and since she met me in the 90s, this was a legitimate observation…!

This brings me to the fact that the con skews a little old, but there were more small children than I’m used to seeing at cons, which was nice. (Especially after the tantrum some of the local furry cons threw about requiring attendees to be 18+). Since the hotel’s on university property, I talked with one of my table buddies about posting fliers on campus to attract some new people. The game room ran 24x7 all three days with tabletop games, roleplaying, LARPing, and an enormous library available for checkout so people could try something new. There was even a miniature painting contest, and the minis and paints were all supplied for you, and you got to take your figure home. I have to imagine that would be a fun thing to do over a weekend with friends: “let’s get together and play games and socialize”? Sounds like a good time to me!

The rest of the con is more modest in size, but I have to think that’s an opportunity, especially for younger people just starting out. The dealers’ room had maybe 20 vendors, and there were maybe 10-15 writers in the writers’ alley depending on the day. The art show’s panels had many vacancies, also. Though some of that was certainly due to the hurricane, I still think attracting some young adults to step into the shoes of the people who (probably!) want to retire from con-running would be a good idea.

I participated in three panels and one reading, which were almost entirely empty because of the low attendance, but that made it more fun in some ways… you can chat with the audience directly when there’s only a handful of people listening. My topics were “Redemption Arcs in Media,” “Writing the Short and Long of It” (about how to decide how long a story should be), and “The Fascination of the Other,” where I ended up impromptu moderator since we’d lost ours to travel disruptions. These were all companionable discussions, and the other pros entertaining company. I hadn’t planned to participate in the reading but got talked into it by the head of programming, because of the cancellations… so I read the first scene of “Leadership Lessons,” from To Discover and Preserve, because Vera is fun to perform. I tend to prefer funny material for readings, because it raises the energy level of the audience, and gets them responding.

Also good: absolutely no political talk that I heard at all, and the one time someone strayed onto it on a panel, I said, “Let’s not do politics… we’re here to escape,” and the whole audience did a ‘hear hear.’ I also saw signs of heterogeneous beliefs among the attendees, which was great. I’d like to return to a time when fans came from multiple beliefs and united over their shared love of dragons and spaceships.

I spent the entire weekend, when I wasn’t on a panel, behind a table. One of the good things about such a small attendance was it gave me a chance to test my in-person sales procedures. The new Shopify hardware worked perfectly once I figured out how to use it, and 2/3rds of my sales were credit or Apple Pay. One of them was even for an ebook, and the woman who bought it started reading it that night, which was gratifying. The physical set-up wasn’t bad; my new banner is great but I think my table could use some fancifying. I also very obviously need a cart to haul things because Daughter and I carried the boxes of books in and that was not ideal. Lessons learned!

I also feel, based on this con, that I probably wouldn’t be a great fit to sell at the ginormous 40,000-person cons, because what I enjoy is chatting with people and there’s not much chance of that in the crush of a megaconvention. I could be wrong, but people seem more likely to buy from me after talking with me a while. Gambling on numbers over personal connection reminds me too much of the “advertise to large numbers of strangers on Amazon” strategies that never worked well for me. I should probably try a ComicCon to be sure… if I can even get in! Those enormocons have waiting lists for their $700 tables.

I did really enjoy the talking. Two people had already heard of me; one of them bought Mindtouch on sale, and liked it, and another was on my mailing list already. I also received a compliment on my new mcahogarth.org website, which was unexpected. I stripped that site down based on my own frustration with web 2.0… I guess I’m not the only one tired of endless, hyper-polished Wordpress sites.

My sales covered my table and a little more. A third of my sales were of the business book, which makes me happy because I like to think of helping people realize their dreams. The other third were either Mindtouch or Earthrise, and if even one of those readers goes on to read the rest of the series, that’s a serious win. But I wasn’t too focused on making back my expenses… as Daughter observed, “This was an advertising expense. If you made money, that’s on top.”

I’ll be back next year, definitely. If you’re local to Florida, it’s worth considering if you love gaming and like relaxacons!

           It’s been a while since I did a business post, so here we go! and it’s about my decision this year to shift focus to direct sales. I’m not sure I ever explained that decision fully, so let’s jump back in time to Jan/Feb or so. The idea of direct sales had been floating in my head—by most authors standards, I was halfway there with my patreon-locals/etsy/kickstarter constellation. I’d been resisting the idea of focusing and consolidating my efforts though, because I was nervous about the set-up.

            Listening to Joanna Penn’s podcast is my Monday ritual when I’m commuting, and I’ve been going through the backlog, which is how I ran into to this episode with Russell Nohelty, recorded in late 2023. And he said something that went through me like a lance:

Catalog sales are very different to direct-to-customer sales. When I say catalog sales, Amazon is a catalog, Sears is a catalog. So if you remember actually getting—like I'm old enough to actually remember getting the Sears catalog, the JCPenney catalog, and the Macy's catalogs. And when you're flipping through, the goal of the catalog is to be just like the other things, like to be the blue shirt that they want. They've already curated that Macy's can curate for them, and so whatever Macy's wants, like says that they should buy, that's what they're looking at.

           That's how Amazon sales works. That's one of the reasons why people say every paranormal romance should look the same, everything with the same subgenre should look the same. It's because when people are looking through the catalogue of Amazon books, they are picking the one that looks most like the one that they have already read.

           When you're talking about direct sales, it's the opposite. It's really people who are trying to find a unique and different experience.

            I thought: that’s me. That’s why I keep floundering. I’m so stubbornly unwilling to look like everything else. The thing that people keep telling me about my work is that it’s not like other things. That’s WHY THEY LIKE IT.

            So at that point, everything else crystallized: why I’ve always had more success with more personal approaches, why I’ve always done better when I’m interacting with my audience in some form (whether it’s Mucks or Livejournal or Discord or streaming), why I love the Kickstarter experience and why it has always felt natural to crowdfund my efforts, even before crowdfunding was formalized by corporations that wanted to streamline the process.

            After that, it was obvious that I needed to launch myself off the cliff and trust the wings would unfurl before I discovered there was a bottom to the abyss. That’s when I started putting my head down into figuring out the Shopify store…which I started with in March! And didn’t launch until June! So it was a lot of effort and a significant learning curve, but I think I’m approaching happy with where it’s at. It wants more effort, but it’s already functional and earning money, and that’s Minimum Viable Product right there.

            But that brought me to the second part of the equation which was to consider whether my existing way of launching books rewarded that personal and interactive connection, or whether it was a relic of the retail strategy (you can guess the answer there). I asked then, ‘what does a direct-sales-focused launch strategy look like?’ And that’s how I fumbled onto what I’m doing right now, with FireBorn’s Legacy. I got part of it right: I am making the launch a fun event everyone can participate in and feel excited about helping with; and I’m making special editions that will only be available to people who buy direct from me. But I messed up the timeline; I wanted the Kickstarter version to be in people’s hands before the retail launch so they would be in the know before everyone else. But I didn’t push the retail preorder date out far enough, and when I ran into unexpected delays perfecting the hardcover, I couldn’t compensate. Fortunately the KS finishes the day of the retail drop, so at least people won’t get it later! And it's still an author edition with art, so it'll still be special.

            So some things go through my mind as I learn from my first attempt to do this:

• First, my old way of launching was more efficient from a time perspective: when the book was done, I put it up for sale, emailed people a few times, and was already moving on. This kept finished projects from taking up my attention, but it also meant less money, less fun, less visibility, and less reward for my long-term fans, some of whom have been with me for decades. If I visualized my production schedule as a pipeline, then it was a long period for production, a very narrow one for preparation-to-market, and then a nearly nonexistent period for launch and distribution. Very lopsided!
• Second, granting that I want to continue doing these audience-first launches, I need to plan them much farther out. That means I might finish a book and then have to sit on it for a few months while I prepare all the various launch activities, or (better), I start building up a backlog. The goal would be there’s always a book in some stage of the pipeline, and those pipelines are roughly equal in length: production->prep->launch->distribution.
• But third, this seems like a sane way to run things; it means my fans can expect and plan for projects more than a few weeks in advance. I know many of them will appreciate that because I’ve been told I’m too precipitous before and will probably be told I’m too precipitous again until I get this figured out.😅

            My immediate goal, then, is to get FireBorn’s Legacy fulfilled (probably wrapping up in late October/early November, since the hardcovers take a long time to produce) and do another test project to figure out how to better manage my timelines. The most likely thing is an art book for the Blood Ladders trilogy, because it’s mostly done already and it’s just a matter of finishing and prototyping. That’ll give me a not-fiction project to continue finetuning my production processes while I finish up at least one or two novels and get them ready for next year.

            As usual, I’m grateful to all of you for your patience while I learn radically new things! In the past five months I’ve tackled everything from hardcover layout (not minor!) to international shipping set-up to backend sales triggers/delivery systems. It has not been boring!

            All very well and good, Jaguar… show me the shinies! Okay. How about some test layouts for the art book?

           I'm excited about this one! I have so much art! I can put in the conlang stuff! There will be fancy coated paper! I'll get practice doing art books, and I want to do more art books!

           But yes, that's where I'm at. Learning a lot! Enjoying myself more than I expected! I hope you are too.