My Next Project and the "Circle of Trust" (Patreon)

          Friends, readers… hello. I haven’t been all that vocal in some time, so I think I am overdue for a general update on the state of my writing and where I’m planning to go from here. More on the "Circle of Trust" later.

          As you may be able to tell based on the state of Wizard Trials that story is quickly approaching its penultimate conclusion. There is no question that this month (July, 2022) will be my last month writing that story. And where I will be left from there is a bit of an open question. I have given this some thought and talked with Lit (my editor) about it and I have decided that my next project needs to be published under a new name.

          There is no getting around it. I used to publish public chapters of my writing on a weekly basis in a number of locations. At my busiest, this included (if memory serves) eight different hosting platforms. I scoured the internet for any platforms I could find that my writing qualified to post on, and I set up accounts and posted chapters of Wizard Tournament. I posted on big communities and small, I posted on sites that specialized mostly in romance/fan-fiction/erotica (wasn’t a good fit), as well as places that were designed specifically for fantasy serials like my own. What I found is that there are only two English markets for web serials in the Fantasy genre with a large enough audience to financially support an author that chooses to publish serially: Reddit (on HFY) and Royalroad. [There are certainly other markets of decent size, but not in my chosen genre]. I have the dubious honor of being possibly the only author to have been banned from posting free content on both of these communities.

          I’m not here to talk about the reasons for my bans or argue about fair/unfair application of community guidelines, only to acknowledge the reality of them. I have been permanently barred from posting chapters of my stories in the only two markets that matter. That is an undeniable fact. I would like to fully support myself with my writing. That has always been a goal of mine. For a short time before those bans came in, it looked like I was on a path to reach that goal, but for the last year my subscriber count has been in a steady decline and I have no means of recourse to prevent this from continuing to happen, since I can’t advertise to new readers. It is the nature of serial publishing that subscribers are cyclical. New readers are always cycling in while old readers are always cycling out. That was the case for me (even when I was growing) and from the conversations I’ve had with other successful serial authors—that is always the case for them as well. Now that I have no public platform, I have no means of attracting new subscribers. For the most part everyone that leaves, leaves permanently. And no new readers replace them. I would liken the JDFister penname to the Ents of Middle Earth.

          This cannot be allowed to continue if I am to reach my goal of supporting myself with my writing. So, I have decided that my next project will be published under a new penname. I also will not be able to use any of the concept ideas I pitched while I was still publishing on reddit (and which many of you may have voted on) because it is important that nothing tie my new project to my old project. The simple fact of the matter is that I know how to write compelling web fiction and write it well enough to attract an audience… but I do not have a platform to advertise my writing under the JDFister penname. If I were to publish on Reddit or Royalroad again under a different name and it was discovered by any of the moderators of either community who I really was, I would face a new permanent ban on the basis of circumventing my old ban. Thankfully, JDFister is just a penname and I have been very careful about not sharing my real name and identity with anyone.

The Circle of Trust

          So here is where I introduce the concept of the Circle of Trust. If you are not planning to follow my next writing project, this conversation is not for you. You can stop reading. For everyone else, you have proven your loyalty to my writing. Unequivocally. You either believe my bans were a result of gatekeeping moderators selectively enforcing rules, or you simply don’t care about the drama and just want to read. A fair number of my past subscribers turned against me, some spending the time to send hateful private messages before unsubscribing, but I can now comfortably say all those people should be gone by now. It is implausible that anyone that hated me would stay subscribed for this long just to spy on me. I invited everyone that didn’t want to keep reading to leave and it seems they did.

          It has been hard for me to keep going this last year, really hard, but I have, and while I’m at a quarter of my all-time-high subscriber count, you few that are left have proven your loyalty by sticking with me this long. Shoutouts to Ex, TK, Ushwin, Morph, Rich, and DrMagic just to name a few.

          If you are reading this post, you are in the Circle of Trust. I have decided to trust you—all of you—with the secret of what my next writing project will be and what name I will publish it under. It is important that you understand what will be entailed by violating the Circle of Trust and what the consequences will be. Once I move Patreon pages, I will inform those inside the Circle (one time only) the name of my next project. If anyone breaks the Circle and tells someone outside the Circle that I used to publish under the name JDFister it is a virtual guarantee that I will once again be de-platformed. This will mean I will once again have no means of building an audience. Let me be perfectly clear about what I have decided to do in the event of this happening:

· I will immediately halt writing on my current project.

· I will never finish whatever project I happen to be in the middle of when these bans happen.

· I will create a new penname.

· I will create a new story.

· I will start writing again.

· I will not tell ANYONE my new penname. Nobody.

          It will very much be as though Wizard Tournament and JDFister never happened. I will start again from nothing and only carry with me some fond memories of that time I wasted years of my life writing a web serial that ultimately went nowhere and accomplished nothing. And I will very likely never publicly acknowledge a connection between the writing I will do in the future and the writing I have done in the past.

          So, when the new project starts, you are to treat the name “JDFister” like a dead name. It is not to be uttered to those not already aware of it. Not even to some new reader that you think is cool and “probably” won’t tell anyone. You are not even to acknowledge that I have ever written anything before. I need a fresh start. I am going to try to let some of you follow me into this fresh start. If it ends up going tits-up and my past identity is revealed, I will start over with a completely blank slate. Please keep in mind that I am taking a big risk by trusting any of my readers like this, as Lit trying to “donate” to me some 300 of his old readers from a webserial he wrote back in 2016 was how the mods on HFY made the Stalwart->JDFister connection (which they shared with the RR admins) which was the main justification they used for their ban. Some of the hfy mods also moderate on Royalroad, so if mods of either community are made aware of the connection between JDFister and my new penname a subsequent dual-site ban is a guarantee.

          Don’t think you’ll be forced to suffer in silence. I will give all my old readers their own private channel on my new discord to talk amongst each other, so nobody has to go completely mad keeping everything to themselves. I will encourage you to gossip about whatever drama comes up or references to Wizard Tournament there rather than letting slip my secret to someone that might tell the wrong person.

          So please, leave your thoughts. I have a new project ready to go, which will begin publishing before WT even completes. I have a world map, a good 40k words of worldbuilding background written up, 30k words of polished, publishable chapters written as of this moment, cover art I already commission from a talented freelance painter, and a full outline spanning potentially 1million+ words of story. I would have liked to include you readers in the decision-making process of what to write next, but after my last extensive list of good story ideas was burned, I just didn’t have the energy to come up with another list. I went with my favorite idea and dived in with both feet.

          Wishing you all the best, thank you all for sticking with me through this difficult time. I hope you will stay with me as I continue to write. I have a lot of storytelling in me; it’s practically coming out my ears. I don’t want to stop.

-JD

ps: Lit is reviewing today's chapter as I post this, so no worries there.