Were you hoping I had disappeared? Bad news, if so.
I received quite a bit of interesting feedback from my last post. It appears that my dry and morose sense of humor had several of you worried that I had given up on Silver Mystic, writing, and possibly enjoying life. I assure you, rumors of the death of my writing career have been greatly exaggerated (by me, naturally).
I haven’t forgotten about Silver Mystic, nor have I moved past it. I have moved past the concept of instant success, but you already know all that (see: prior post). But don’t worry, I’m not sad about it (anymore). In fact, I’ve been thinking about things I can do now that I’ve checked off the “did not become an overnight success” box.
Some news: I’ve begun work on my next novel.
The working title is Dream-Vision
It should be solidly dark fantasy, which means I’ll thankfully not have to face the difficulty in classifying it like I did with Silver Mystic
The brief synopsis is that it follows a father and son who have left their nomadic tribe to find and stop a mass murderer whose dreams they share. That’s the basic plot, but thematically it’s a book about parenthood.
I’m nearly 30,000 words into it, and plotwise I’d say about a quarter to a third of the way through. I’m trying to get myself to write more regularly than I did with Silver Mystic, but I’m not trying that hard because, you know, that’s just not my jam.
Wanna see a little preview? I knew you’d say yes, so here you go:
I’m really excited to be working on this one. It should come as no surprise that the premise for this project was a dream I had. In fact, this dream predates the one I had that inspired Silver Mystic, which means I’ve had a lot more time to live with the concept and stew in it (one of my favorite activities).
Some other news: I’m still figuring out the first novel
I’m not giving up on Silver Mystic. In fact, I’ve decided to work even harder to get it in front of an audience (any audience, please people read this thing). To that end, I'll be sacrificing the hopes of my wallet in favor of the promise of satisfying my ego, and publishing the entire story online for free, one chapter at a time.
Actually, I started doing that this past week, so if you’re so inclined, you can already see the first chapter at Silver Mystic on Wattpad. If you’re a Wattpad user, or you aren’t opposed to becoming one, I’d greatly appreciate if you’d follow/favorite/however that thing works my book as I work to build an audience. I may also be posting to a few more sites, and if/when I do, I’ll be sure to let you all know.
Why did I do this thing?
Ultimately, as I alluded to before, it’s much more important to me that people read the thing than I make a million bucks from it. As I continue my attempt at a writing career, the feedback I receive from a wide, diverse audience on past work will be critical to me honing my skill. That, and you know, I want to feel like I’m at least a little of a big deal. If I have a few hundred readers on the web somewhere, that’ll feel great. If some of them comment, that’ll feel greater. If some of them like it, that’ll feel the greatest.
Homework (if you’re so inclined)
Like I said above, if you want to give me a boost on Wattpad, it’d be much appreciated. I’m also exploring other places to publish, including in this very newsletter. I’d love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on that, or any other platform on which you think my work could gain visibility. Again, I’m planning on publishing the whole thing for free, so no need for fancy paywalls or what have you.
If I publish it on Substack (this service), there might be some other cool options such as discussion threads where I would participate with readers and answer questions and respond to comments. Additionally, that would mean that each chapter would be hand delivered to you in your email, which may excite or annoy you. If people are interested, I’d probably make a new newsletter that’s exclusively for that content so as not to barrage those who aren’t interested.
The part where I ask you to do stuff (again)
Just let me know what you think. You, the individual, who is receiving this newsletter. I definitely am interested in your feedback, even if it’s clicking that tiny little unsubscribe link at the bottom. Go ahead, it won’t hurt my feelings. Or you know, send me a gif that best describes how you think of me instead. That might hurt my feelings, but it’ll still be funny, so I’m for it.
Yours very truly,
Loren