I attempted to share a wonderful article about writing protagonists readers want to follow, but it didn’t go out over email. READ IT HERE If you write fiction, it’s worth your time. The author is Andrea Feccomandi, subscribe to his Substack.
When I was new here, I had a theory about how to approach Substack. I wrote about that theory and then followed that theory to my first 1600 subscribers. Does that mean I knew what I was talking about? No. Not at all, but I’ve got to write for a reading public if I’m going to put time and effort into something. It’s a personal fault. To do the thing, I had to write about the thing first.
I’m about to do a new thing, and I need to write about it.
I’ve just hit 2,000 subscribers. I’ve got a backlog of essays on prose theory, and I’m hitting some lovely sounding numbers on key posts. (Let me share some really quick, but there’s more to this. I promise.
Such Was the Epiphany of Theodore Beasley is my most viewed short story with 1.21k views.
The Last Temptation of Winnie-The-Pooh is my most viewed serial. The first chapter (out of 12) has 1.15k views.
The Failure of Cormac McCarthy is my most viewed essay at 3.55k views.
My hero page with links to my essays on literary and prose theory has 16.4k views.
I get asked how I got to this point, and I’ll tell you. Join Bookfunnel. It’s $100 a year. You participate in promotions giving away ebooks, and if someone wants your ebook, they’ve got to subscribe to your newsletter. That’s the very first thing.
There’s more. Set up a hero page to guide people where you want to them to go. Make finding chapters of your serials easy. Etc. Etc. Etc.
But here’s the biggest thing: I still don’t know what I’m doing. I haven’t arrived, and I stress about how many views and interactions each post gets. It’s better now. A new post might get 600 views instead of 6, but it’s the same struggle. It’s certainly not enough to build a career as an author. I need to do something more. I need a new strategy.
MY NEW STRATEGY
For the last six years I’ve been writing whatever pleased me at the moment. That began because the editor of my first two novels was sick and was going to be out of the picture for a long while. While I waited for her to get better, I indulged myself and wrote little passion projects that I eventually published here.
I wrote a retelling of the passion of Christ using the characters from Winnie-the-Pooh. I wrote a new fantasy story about a ship that sails beneath the seas, hunting the souls of dead sailors—using repurposed text from Moby Dick. I wrote a science fiction story about a dog. It was fun, and it was all very much me. If any of this interests you, you can find my serials here and my short stories here.
But my interests are niche interests. My first novels were a mystery set in first-century Jerusalem and an alternate, LGBTQ +history of Cleopatra giving a touch of Steampunk fantasy to the history of the Library of Alexandria. I need to rethink what I want to write and where the audience is.
I’ve gravitated toward fantasy and horror, because as long as there’s some non-realistic factor to the story, I can do whatever I want. That’s been fun, but I need to look at more popular branches of fantasy.
Now here comes the really big new thing, but if it’s not your cup of tea, don’t worry. I’ll have plenty of the material you’ve always loved, but I also might just win you over with this new serial, if you’ll give it a try.