A quick note on what I want to do with this...

A look at the year ahead and where I want to go with it.

I know, I know, I already put something out today, but that was for my PAID readers only. I don’t want them to feel left out. And so I’m about to come up with a plan I hope will bring more people to my PAID page. My serial Novel THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY is coming to the end of Part One. And at 60,000 words (where is stands as of this moment), I feel good about it. My “open” is fluctuating between 27-31%. I don’t know if that’s good, bad, or indifferent. But I’m going to take a break with it and re-introduce my story JACK OF DIAMONDS.

The idea is this. Jack of Diamonds is a jewel thief who is proficient with parkour — you know, climbing the outside of buildings, jumping from rooftops, that sort of thing. I want to put that story up every other week for my PAID followers. I’ll put it up every other week. So one week Locksley, and the other week Jackie. (Actually, his name is Artemus Spencer.)

My SHORT STORIES AFTER 8 will still be going up on Sunday nights. They will ALWAYS be FREE. I know I said I was going to put a paywall up when I hit 1000 readers, but really, what’s the point? If people want to read my short stories because they like them more, that’s fine. If they want to read LOCKSLEY because he’s FREE, that’s fine, as well. If JACK OF DIAMONDS is only read by 9 followers, that’s not a problem. I feel, with having 9 followers, it gives me the incentive to write something just for them. I’ve been putting up a movie I wrote a few years back, 1917, so they could have something: “just for them.” It’s the same thing with JACK OF DIAMONDS.

Let me explain a little bit about my Jack of Diamonds story. Back in 2021, I came across a platform called VOCAL.MEDIA that allowed you to post your stories and ask for donations. I thought, hey, that’s pretty good, and started putting up terrible stories that no one were reading. So I thought that maybe I should write a serial novel, without realizing it was going to be a serial novel, and actually having no idea as to how I should write a serial novel. So I came up with the idea of Jack of Diamonds when I saw some clip on You Tube. I thought: What if… (I always start off an idea with what if), but what if there was a jewel thief and he was robbing estate houses in the countryside? What if he was a liar, a cheat, a womanizer? And so I started writing. My problem was that VOCAL.MEDIA had a strict censorship code, and I was always being told that parts of my story were rejected because of content.

It was driving me crazy. But in for a penny, in for a pound. I changed things I didn’t want to, and kept going. And then the New Year came, and, well, if you’ve been here for a while you’ll know that I suffered through work-place trauma on January 10th of 2022. I stopped writing. Completely. I wanted to, but just couldn’t. I was pretty well broken and had to take the time to put myself back together again. I went to Counsellors, had an Occupational Therapist come in once a week, and in between all of that, discovered Substack quite by accident.

I signed up, thinking I could break up my older stories and put them up in sections — five, six, seven parts — once a week. And I could write my JACK OF DIAMONDS the way I wanted to. And then the NaNoWriMo challenge came along. I’d never done that before, and told myself I had to get back to writing again. So I started a short novel: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL. I couldn’t bring it in at 50,000 words though, and kept writing until I had about 92,000 words. But I’d actually started a short story before that. I quickly put that to the side. I foolishly decided I was going to start putting the Time Traveller’s Guide on my ‘Stack. I couldn’t do that, re-write Jack of Diamonds, work on the short story all at the same time. I shelved Jack of Diamonds and concentrated on the Time travel story. When I finished, I rewrote the Short Story I was working on (NO SIMPLE REMEDY), and started putting it out on Sunday Nights, After 8, because it reminded me of After 8 mint chocolates.

I stayed with that format. Short Stories on Sunday nights, and my Time Travel book on Wednesdays. And then the book was finished. So I went looking around in my files and found an idea I had started…probably thirty years ago. I never got anywhere with it. But I did have a Table Of Contents, and decided I’d use that as my plot. And that’s where Locksley came along. I don’t like the title, so when I finish it up in the next week or two, it’s going to be released as THE BEGGAR’S KNAVE, because I like that title better.

THE BEGGAR’S KNAVE will remain FREE. But instead of coming out every Wednesday, now it will be every OTHER Wednesday. JACK OF DIAMONDS will go up every alternate week, and that will be for my 9 PAID subscribers. If you want to read it, you’ll have to sign up for it. It will be the same basic story: a jewel thief who gets mixed up with White Russians trying to bring down Lenin and the Reds; murder; gun-runners; the IRA; sex; a drug addicted detective. It’s got something for everyone. He’s everything bad you could want in a good guy, while the bad guy is doing everything out of a sense of good.

It’s good to be organized and to have a plan set. I wasn’t organized when I first started, which is why, when you look at my ABOUT page, it just looks like a confused mess. But I change it up and try to keep it up to date as much as I can. Whenever I start a new project, I have to remind myself to update my ABOUT page. I won’t have to do that for a while…maybe 2-3 weeks, and when I do I’ll move things around and fill up the ARCHIVES. I’ll leave the Archives FREE until I decide maybe I should close them off behind the PAYWALL. I don’t think there’s enough there to do that yet.

So there it is, in a nutshell. I’m hoping some of my FREE subscribers will upgrade to PAID ($5/month, or $50/year Can.) because I don’t want to have to go out and get a part time job. I’m retired, and this is my job. After working in a mill for 45 years, cutting off my fingertips on my right hand (still haven’t noticed? Look at my videos closer), burying over a dozen friends through various diseases, ailments, and accidents, I feel like I deserve a rest. While writing might not feel like a rest to some people, I look at it as a way of creating a NEW me. When people ask me what I do now that I’m retired, I tell them I write. I’m making $20/month right now. My goal for next year is to at least double that!

Tell me what you think. I may even offer special deals if I can get enough PAID subscribers. I’m waiting for a quote on how much it would cost to print up one of my stories. At the moment, I gave them the word count for THE BASHFUL COURTESAN. If all works out and enough people SUBSCRIBE, I’ll send out a copy of the novella to all PAID subscribers. If I can gather something like 100-150 PAID subscribers, I could do it just by saving up for a couple months, like we used to do when we were kids and had an allowance. (I don’t expect someone to make a donation and cover the costs, because I don’t believe in a Fairy Godmother anymore, but if 100 people give $5/month, I just might believe.)