A month late and a dollar short

my anniversary post...a month late.

I may have written some of this in NOTEs (as a Subscriber, you can read NOTES if you choose.) Anyway, last month was my 2nd year here on Substack. I wasn’t here, I was away on vacation. What have I learned since coming here, you ask? I learned that I can do this a lot easier than most people because I’m retired. I don’t have to worry about getting the kids off to school, or what to do with them when they’re out of school. I don’t have to worry about a lot of shit. I don’t have to work, make dinner, clean up the house and the kids and maybe get an hour in at the desk. I’ve outgrown that stage of my life.

So this is what I do, for the most part. I spend a lot of time trying to sort through my email. When I went on my vacation, I turned the email feed off, for the most part. I have yet to turn it back on. Even with it turned off, I still came home to over 400 emails. A lot of them were from Substacks, and a lot from Pinterest for some reason. Because I haven’t turned my email back on, I’m not getting 90-100 emails a day.

So there’s that.

Anyway, I’ve been putting a lot of my writing up. I’ve been participating in different forms of marketing, by joining “Throwback Thursdays.” That’s when I put a story up with links to it, because I published it when I had less than 100 subscribers. As of right now, I have 557 Subscribers. I have a total of 23 PAID, two of whom are comped. So I’m making a whopping $46 a month right now. Not exactly a windfall, and nowhere near close enough for me to publish a story and mail it to my PAID Subscribers. I’m also putting my serial novel THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY out on Wednesday, which coincides with Warrior Wednesday, where people who write fantasy put up links to their stories. You can pick up followers and Subscribers that way. I’m also posting Locksley on Saturdays. I’m doing this because I just want to finish it so I can put up PART TWO of the story.

But I’m putting it up behind the paywall, because my serials have always been for my PAID subscribers. It’s all I have to offer them. But I’ve got my price cut to 80% off — that’s $6 — until I have the entire first part of the story out. Once I put up PART TWO, the 80% sale ends. It goes back up to $30 for the year. Funny thing, even with the price as dirt cheap as it is, only three people have taken me up on it.

Three?

Even after two years, I still can’t generate enough interest in my writing to convince people that they should upgrade. Even guys I used to work with won’t convert to PAID. It’s either they don’t care, they’re not interested, or they think that readers shouldn’t have to pay for writing — especially if it’s from me. I get that. I’m on a budget as a retiree, too.

The one part of my ‘Stack that is FREE and will always be FREE, are my Stories After Eight. It used to be called SUNDAY’S SHORT STORIES AFTER EIGHT, but frankly, that’s just too long. STORIES AFTER EIGHT sounds much better. And because it’s a global world, I’m putting the stories out in the AM, rather than the PM. These are the stories I’m most proud of. They will always be FREE. These are the stories I will eventually be publishing and mailing to my PAID Subscribers once I get enough PAYING subscribers. (I need about 60-70 more.) These are also the stories I am READING out on my page. I also have them on my BOOK TUBE CHANNEL: BTC-TV. I don’t have a lot of followers there either. I have a lot of ideas, and funnily, not enough time. (How does that work?)

So, Throwback Thursdays, Warrior Wednesdays, what else is there? Oh yeah, someone decided they wanted to put a sci-fi page up, or a challenge. Whatever. Give us your Sci-Fi stories, they said. I just happened to have eight chapters in my files of an old STAR WARS story I was writing just for the heck of it. I’ve got about 48,000 words. Eight Chapters. I thought, why not? And put it up on a Sci-Fi Friday, just to see what would happen. Well, people liked it. Now I have to finish writing it. Damn! So, Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and now Saturday. That seems excessive. Thing is, when I first started writing the Sci-Fi stories, I wasn’t putting my stories up here for my subscribers to read. I was putting links to my stories in NOTES, for those people who follow me, but haven’t subscribed yet. But then, I realized that with more than 500 Subscribers, a lot of them haven’t seen my previously posted stuff. So I started putting my stories here, where they go out in my emails, like this one.

Am I putting too much out? I don’t know, you tell me. You get to pick and choose. Some of you just want the Sunday stories. Some of you like THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY, or else JACK OF DIAMONDS, my other serial. I have another serial, you know? My first serial is A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL, and I wrote it and put it up, on November 15th, 2022 when I had 53 Subscribers. I’ve grown since then.

A lot of my old stuff is now buried behind the paywall. It can stay there. You could get into right now for $6 for the year, or wait, and pay $30 for the year. Or even $5 a month, if you want to. But ask me why the PAYWALL stays up. I’ll tell you. They PAYWALL is a special place. The two serials I’m writing: JACK OF DIAMONDS and THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY, have become something more to me than just throw offs. I enjoy writing them. I’m loving writing Locksley because of the challenge with its language. I have a mix of Olde English and whatever Scots brogue I’ve picked up over the years. I throw in words from Shakespeare, and Mallory’s LE MORTE D’ARTHUR (the only book I’m using for researching the story btw; and the original book where the story first appeared.) The funniest part is that a few people have said things to me about Inverness being in this place or that, and where is Ivanore located?

I make this shit up, people!

Ivanore Castle does not exist, except in my imagination. Saxons and Vikings, invasions and wars? I made all that up, as well. I have Arthur sitting on the throne nearing the end of his reign. The War Of The Twelve Kings lasted ten years. Before that, they fought the Saxon Wars, which also lasted ten years. So that’s 20 years of his reign already gone. I’ve got another ten years of peace in there somewhere, just so I can age everyone. I want Locksley to be young, 21-23’ish, and everyone else in their late forties, early fifties. They’re old, hardened men who have come to the end of their lives, and know it. They are plotting, and petty, and just waiting to get it all over and done with. They’re waiting for the next generation to take over.

Another thing about this story, is that there is no real plot. The plot is in the TABLE OF CONTENTS, which is before the first part of the prologue. I’m writing this by the seat of my pants, as they say.

And what have I learned writing on Substack?

Yes…what have I learned?

Patience. I started this ‘Stack with nothing. I started on June 2, and for two days had no subscribers. Nadda. Zip. I’m pretty sure I started posting right away. I didn’t think about it, or second guess myself. I just put up my first story, THE AFRICAN SONGBOOK: A Tragedy In Five Acts, all in one go. I had no idea as to what I should do, or how I was supposed to go about it. It went out to my email list, which was close to thirty friends. Two of them subscribed on the third day, and then two of them offered PAID subscriptions when I didn’t have anything to give them.

They said they just wanted to support me because they were my friends and believed in me.

It took me a while to figure out how to make this work. It took a while for me to figure out what people wanted to read. A lot of them said they liked my mill stories. I put some up, but now I only put them up when the mood strikes me. The whole idea was to post on Sundays and Wednesdays, and that’s it. Once I get to PART TWO of Locksley, I will. I’ll take the time needed to write my STAR WARS story, work on my novellas, and readings. I’m thinking I’d like to try stop action animation for my BOOK TOOB CHANNEL and make my own commercials…but THAT’S a lot of work.

What else have I learned?

I’m a CREATIVE; that’s what I like to think of myself as. I enjoy my readings. I don’t know if I’m any good at it, but I enjoy doing them. I like my Novellas. (Those are the stories I’m reading out.) I like that I have no fixed plans as far as what I write. I’ve been doing this for a long time now. I started way back in the 70’s. I never tried to publish because of a lot of different fucked up ideas I had. I got lost in the Wasteland for a few years, doing drugs and just generally fucking up a lot. I still smoke dope, just so you know. It’s no big deal. Through it all, I’ve always been a Creative. I have bins full of writing going back to the first idea I had for my Magnum Opus — my Roman Epic. That’s where I found THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY. The only thing I kept from that was the Table Of Contents. I found a picture I drew and even named Jack Of Diamonds some time back in the 70’s. He was a thief even back then.

I’ve learned that I don’t suffer from Imposter Syndrome. The reason for that is because I believe I should be here. I may never have published, but I’ve always been a writer. I do have the one book I self-published, sitting on my book shelf: ROBIN HOOD.

What do I hope to accomplish?

I’ve got two years before my wife pulls the plug at work. I have two years to prove to her that I can succeed as a writer. She’s amazed when I tell her I have more than 1000 subscribers and followers. She laughs when I tell her I’m making money doing what I love best. (She isn’t laughing when I use that money to buy wine!) In two years, I hope I’ll have at least 2500 subscribers and followers. I’d like to have at least 100 PAID subscribers. I’d like to eventually build this ‘Stack into a Best Seller. I’d like to print up some of my stories and send them to my Paid Subscribers.

I’d like, I’d like, I’d like…

But more than that, I just want to stay somewhat healthy and write for the next twenty, or twenty-five years, which will bring me up to 86-91 fuckin’ years old! You see, I don’t have a lot of time here. I’m not in my thirties anymore.

My book. The copyright says 1979.