The Long Game - Up On Write-Sex

Very, very cool! Check out my little essay on erotica writing, The Long Game, up on the fantastic Write-Sex site:

I’m not too sure whose been spreading the rumors but, believe me, I’d like to get my hands on them.

Not that it’s anything new, I admit. I’ll betcha that for as long as human beings have been putting one word in front of another word for money there’s been a whispering, a murmuring, a seductive allure that all it takes is just the right story, the perfect book, the ideal concept to launch the author from zero to bazillionare.

But that’s all it is: rumor, hearsay, gossip… hollow promises. Okay, sure, it does happen but I’ll betcha with what little money I’ve made with my own writing that the number of people who it has happened to would comfortably fit in an elevator… and a small one at that. In short, while fame and fortune can and has happened with just one book, the odds are nightmarishly against you.

But the myth—sadly—persists. The reason I’m writing this is perfect evidence: no fewer than four people recently asked me to be their book doctors, yet they all vanished once they understood the reality of what it actually takes to make even a moderate amount of money as an author. All of them had actually written a novel, each of them had put aside money to have it professionally edited, and they’d even started up the long social media ladder… but each one vanished in the space of a few months.

I’m a dreamer … hell, half my waking life seems to be spent drifting from one fantasy to another: from super heroics to an immaculately imagined life as a pulp author in the ’40s, I’m usually lost in the clouds. But while being able to support my very simple lifestyle with my writing income is only one of them, I also really try to make at least that fantasy as real as possible.

Part of that is that I really want to make that happen. I know that it won’t take one novel … hell, it’ll more than likely take dozens and dozens… and that it can sometimes take decades before my work gets noticed and, most importantly, purchased by enough people. Just look at how long it takes to build up a social media presence—and then to turn those numbers into people who actually care about what you say.

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