I Have a Blog?!

 Guys... I forgot I had a blog. I mean... I never really posted here even when I remembered it existed.

 

So, anyway, I've decided, having just found this blog again(seriously, how did I forget?) that I'm going to start blogging again. As I get older(I turned 40 this year...) I find myself wanting to write different things. Not just my fantasy. I want to write about the dumb, weird little thoughts I spend time on at 2 AM.

But, I'm not going to share anything I post. I'm going to keep it public, so if you find this, good job! I think it might be good for me to be able to write something potentially personal without knowing who might read it. It might help me be more honest in my art.

 

8 minutes ago my 11th book released. I've finished 11 books, from outline to final draft. 11 goddamn books!? That's crazy man... It's called Wizards of Behemoth and if you've found this post you are obligated to go find it on Amazon and buy it. It's 6th in a series but works great as a standalone. The original inspiration for it came from a desire to write a fantasy Fast and Furious. This book is not that. I mean, it has the FAMILY(Vin Diesel glower at the camera) theme, but it's not Fast and Furious. I'll get there one day. 

 But, do you want to know a secret? I've published 5 books within the last year alone. 5 books, from outline to final draft. 

12 minutes ago my 16th book released. I've finished 16 books, from outline to final draft. 16 mother fuckin' books! That's insane. It's called Wizards of Behemoth. And I actually finished writing it two years ago. But no one was buying the book I'd released before it. I was starting to worry my career as a writer might be dead. I wasn't going to stop, but I had resigned myself to maybe paying more attention to the day job.

Then I got fired. I was being replaced with a call center in India and there was a team already developing the AI model to replace the call center.

But I had a few months before the job officially ended. A few more paychecks before things got desperate.

I did the math, I sent something like 70 resumes. All to jobs I felt I was qualified for and would be moderately okay with. Then I got desperate and sent to the jobs I knew would make me consider driving off a bridge.

While all this was going on I'd written and released a book. I used a pen name. The book hit top ten in every single one of its categories and stayed there for a while. I got an all-star bonus from page reads. That book's lifetime sales at the time of this writing is around 10,672. Give or take a few hundred. I didn't do the most rigorous math. But over 10k books.

In it's first month it sold more and got 5x the lifetime ratings of my previous bestselling book. The book that was a finalist in a fairly well publicized competition. This book, my 11th book, is my best selling book, and I can't tell you what it's called because I am in love with the illusion of these two writers being distinct individuals. I talk about the pen name as though we were just writing buddies. That I'm just his publisher and he's my best selling author. And his advance was just the cost of production.

So, anyway, at a certain point I could stop looking for a new job, because this new writer was paying the bills with his book sales.

But my books, those written by James Jakins, have lost all momentum... 

About 28 minutes ago a book I wrote just released. I think it's pretty good. And I really hope someone else does too.