Author Corner: 3-20-2022 (Patreon)

Hello everyone,

I just thought you might be interested in some of the things I learned as a writer and a human being this week, so I decided to write this. This has no connection to the story, but will be more of a little blog post, so feel free to ignore it if you're only interested in the story.

First, I really love comments as they often make me think about my story and how I can improve it, or sometimes just help me understand the parts I can't control. Case in point, I got some very interesting feedback from one of my readers on chapter 73 which was published on RoyalRoad this week and I've come to the conclusion you guys are probably reading my story in the best way it can be read.

I write five chapters during the week, take a break on Saturday, and then edit the chapters on Sunday before posting them here. As a result, I generally leave the biggest cliffhanger for Friday and the emotions of the story are designed to work with reading the five chapters of the week at the same time, as that's how I edit.

I just find that realization kind of cool and thought you guys might be interested as well. My full response to the reader can be found here if you want to read it: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/48991/game-of-gods-tales-of-the-celibate-incubus/chapter/865723/chapter-73-dragon-drive

Second, I learned I need to get a thicker skin when it comes to trolls. Over the last few days, my fiction got a 1 star review from someone who basically said it was good but didn't meet their expectations and three anonymous people gave me 0.5 star ratings. This all at once dropped my ranking on RoyalRoad by over 25 ranks just when I'd made it to rank 25.

Now, trolls on the internet are something normal, but that drop in ranking leads to a corresponding drop in new readers and I'd just been seeing an uptick in readers and a couple of those new readers are a few of my new patrons, which was getting me excited.

I quit my job to start writing full time at the end of last year, but I only have so much in the way of funds, so that loss of earning potential hurt quite a bit and got me kind of scared.

But there's nothing I can do about it, so I just have to continue writing to the best of my ability and just ignore the actions of those types of people.

Finally, third, I moved out of my apartment this week and it is amazing how hard it is to get rid of the stuff you've accumulated. I had a really nice couch and I had to literally pay people to take  to the dump as I wasn't able to sell it, and that type of waste is just amazing to me.

The process took quite a bit of time and I got a bit behind on my writing so I had to spend a bit of Saturday on finishing chapter 90, but it's kind of nice to have the move over. I'm pretty sure something in that apartment was making me sick and I look forward to moving across the country to live near my immediate family again for the first time since I became an adult.

I'm also really appreciative to know how nice it is to have a great extended family. I had to stay in town for a week due to a doctors appointment, and my uncle let me stay with him, because he is awesome.

I hope you all had a good week and I hope you enjoyed the latest chapters posted today! Thanks so much for your patronage!