Past Years: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
This year I continued my trend that began last year. While it wasn’t conscious, I’ve jumped off the short story writing and subbing treadmill. I didn’t submit a single story to a market this year. Will it continue? Maybe not forever, but for now I am happy using my time in different ways.
I neither wrote nor published any new short stories this year, for the first time in quite a few years. But it was still one of my more productive years. In fact, I probably did at least a little writing almost every single day. In addition to co-writing with Wind Lothamer the RPG modules The Chaos Gods Come to Meatlandia and Edgar Rice Burroughs Adventures, I published my third book with Severed Press (Cthulhu Kaiju) and put together a collection of my own short-stories: Shaolin vs Vikings. That was my first time self-publishing and honestly I probably could have written a novel in the amount of time it took me to figure out all the formatting and cover design. I wrote a few other RPG materials and also spent way too much time developing my RPG campaign (which recently ended due to a gratuitous use of a WISH spell.)
I won’t know exactly how much I made until March 2017, when I can see the royalties for the fourth quarter of 2016. But not counting those sales, I made less than 1000 dollars for writing this year, and over half of that was from ghostwriting part of a novel for someone else. I mean, I would write for free but it’s still a bit of a bummer to know I’m so far from ever sustaining myself with what I love doing the most.
Currently I am working on two more RPGs, but I have two novel length projects I’ve started and need to finish. It was a rough goal to get them done this year but if I have to wait until next year, so be it. I guess I’m still treading water but since I happen to like swimming it’s all good.
Be Obscure Clearly 