Hello, and welcome back to the feast, where I hold onto my announcements until I have so many, and throw so much information at you that you’ll look at me glaze-eyed at the end. Good luck, eat well, and thank you for reading!

New Releases

In my last newsletter, I teased The Apples of New Eden, my sci-fi horror. It ended up being 57,000 words (around 250 pages), which is the longest book I’ve ever released, and my first full-length novel that released on December 24th of last year. It was very different for me, in both taboo elements, and the sci-fi elements, and I was unsure of how it would be received. I’d just like to thank you all for your support and excitement for it! If you haven’t snagged it yet, you can get it here! It’s currently 50% off!

December was my highest grossing month out of my entire writing career since I started publishing in March of 2023. The Apples of New Eden was chosen for Monster Manor’s Book of the Month, which is an incredible honor, as I’m close with a lot of people in that discord server and community. Seeing so many wins all at once was so incredible. So, once again, thank you for making this possible.

Looking forward, tomorrow the re-release of my sophomore, award-winning book, Blood & Flowers is coming out in both paperback and ebook on Amazon, and ebook only on itchio. (Amazon published things surprisingly early, so it’s actually out now, if you want to go snag a copy early! Here and here.)This has been a long time coming, and I’m so pleased with the new cover done by Yune (@/heavenlyystar on most social medias) and with the edits and expansion I did.

There are 11,000 more words in this version, bringing the total wordcount up to just over 39,000 words, which nearly makes this novel length. In this version, the holiday short, The God of Bruised Knuckles is included as well, bringing the total page count to 221 in the paperback version. I’ve said it a couple of times, but I just want to remind you that there’s nothing new plot-wise in this version, so don’t feel pressured to reread if you don’t want to! I mostly focused on pushing the haunted house aspects a bit further, and just making the prose better.

Where Else Am I?

I have some fun anthology things going on right now, most of which I can’t talk about yet, but just be prepared for some fun things coming out this year! I’m so excited to be doing more anthology work this year in addition to long form-fiction, as writing more short stories has been a long-term goal of mine.

One of them that I CAN talk about, is I’m going to be part of Smitten Land, Issue 2. Smitten Land is a religious horror quarterly literary magazine from The Laughing Man House Publishing. Issue 2 is coming out in April, so keep an eye out for my story in there, along with some other wonderful and talented contributors.

I’m running a 50% off sale bundle of my last few published itchio books, which includes EYETOOTH, UNHOLY FAVORS, and The Apples of New Eden for Valentine’s Day. It runs through the 15th, and you can snag one or all of the books here! I’m also part of another Valentine’s Day bundle with several other itchio creators, which you can find here! This one also runs until the 15th!

New Book Tonite? New Book Tonite Queen???

I promised to give y’all some exclusive first-access book news in my newsletter today, so here it is. My story Red as Blood, Black as Tar, which first appeared in Cozy Library Press’ first anthology, DEAD COWPOKES DON’T WRANGLE, is getting a slight expansion and a new publish on itchio and possibly Amazon with a paperback option if I can get my shit together on time. Y’all know that I’m long-winded, and I’ve always had a slightly longer and bigger vision for it than the word count allowed. I'm still so happy with the way it turned out for DEAD COWPOKES, and I think that every story in that anthology fits so well together. I’m so proud of that publication and the work that went into making that dream a reality! I also can't wait to see what else I can do with Red as Blood in a longer format.

Additionally, I’m planning on bundling it together with an entirely new weird west story to make it a duet. This is a story I toyed with doing instead of Red as Blood for the anthology, so I’ve been sitting on it for a while without actually writing it. It’s about two cowboys driving a herd of cattle across a desolate part of the country, when something replaces the main character’s friend/lover. I like to think of it like Brokeback Mountain if it was paranormal horror-y as fuck and had a happy ending.

I hope y’all will like this duet! I’m hoping to get it out in late March, which I know seems like a short turnaround time from publishing something in February, which leads me to the last thing I want to talk about in this newsletter.

mars, Why Do You Write So Much?

I’ve seen a couple of other authors talk about this, and their thoughts echo mine pretty much to a tee. I’ve been writing consistently for a long time, over half of my life at this point. Even when I was severely burnt out from ghostwriting, I wrote fanfiction. I can’t really imagine a life without writing, and now without publishing.

My day job, while very physically taxing, only takes up about 25-30 hours of my time every week. I’m so, so lucky to have so much time leftover for writing, and to be in a position where I don’t have to work fulltime.

It’s very important to me to be able to write and release a lot on a consistent basis as I’m trying to make this a big chunk of my income. And, I just love doing it. There are points that are stressful and days that I don’t love it and it feels more like pulling teeth than writing, but overall, I’m so glad to be here, doing this. It’s my passion, and I love that I’ve found so many people who are interested in what I write.

I truly hope that I can do this for the rest of my life, it’s always been my dream to be an author. As a kid, I never saw myself writing so much, self-publishing on such tight deadlines, but I think if I was going the traditional route with like months or YEARS sometimes between releases, it wouldn’t work for me and my productivity.

I love indie publishing for many reasons, but one of them is that I have control over my publishing schedule. I hope that eventually I can bump it back a bit and still be able to make consistent income from my backlist as more people find me and read my books, but I’m fine with my writing and publishing rate for now, potentially for the next few years. I think I’ve finally struck a happy medium where I don’t feel like I’m driving myself into the ground and still getting things out, and giving myself allowances to account for life, my day job, and my disability that prevents me from writing some days.

As long as everyone is okay seeing so much work from me, I hope that I can keep publishing a lot. I have so many ideas and I somehow keep getting more and more (and I hope that never stops!) I hope to release more books of all sizes, more short stories, and continue to be involved in more anthologies.

Thank you all again so much for being here, you reading and talking about my work truly does make this a dream come true for me.

That’s all, folks!

Thank you again for once again enduring a 1,000 word plus newsletter for me. If you made it to the end, you’re stronger than any US Marine <3

I’ll see you again soon!