The State of Things & Things to Come (An Announcement) (Patreon)

Hello my wonderful patrons! Today's post is going to be a bit of a unique one, in that I want to drop the curtain a bit and talk with you all about how things are going in the wide, wonderful world of aimingtomisbehave33's erotica writing world.

The State of Things

The first thing I have to note is that I have been crazy productive lately, and have felt a degree of energy and creativity toward my writing that I haven't felt in a long while. I'm pulling in some intense word counts on a daily basis that not even a few months ago I would've thought myself mad for attempting, and I have been excited by the results that I've been able to get.

The speed bump that comes with this, however, is that enthusiasm elsewhere has been decidedly more mixed. Both Revenge of the Bikini Cheerleaders! and Senior Year Memories Ch. 42 have launched with a significant dip in readership on Literotica from other comparable recent projects, which has shaken me to say the very least. I'm aware that franchise fatigue is a thing, as the current state of superhero movies can attest, and that a series as long-running as SYM will get increasingly more limited returns.

As well, membership around this Patreon page has stagnated a fair bit over the past few months. I'm not complaining about this, you guys are amazing and often still keep me writing, but long-term my goal has been to keep the growth going with the ultimate goal of making my art a sustainable form of income, a difficult task for any artist, but one I've been hopeful for in recent years. I've been on a good trend in that direction so far, but between things slowing down a little on this end, and the last couple Literotica releases disappointing, I have needed to consider some new approaches to keeping things growing.

Things to Come

To answer a question I'm sure is on a lot of your minds: no, that does not mean I'm planning any changes to things that are already scheduled. SYM is still a top priority, and I mean to continue delivering on the series that has brought us all together here in more or less the same schedule that I've promised you all so far.

What I have been working on this past month, however, is ways to expand things to continue bringing in new audiences. As I've been hinting at for the past month or so in the semi-weekly updates, I've been working on a handful of secret projects, and now it seems like a fine time to share what I've also been up to in addition to the existing lineup of SYM-Verse stories.

Senior Year Memories Special Edition eBooks

Two things I've wanted to do for a while have been reediting the earlier SYM chapters to be more in line with the quality of the later chapters, and releasing SYM as ebooks, and now I'm well on the way toward getting both of these tasks accomplished in a two birds with one stone kind of way. For the last couple months I've been spending some of my day reediting Chapters 1 and 2 of Senior Year Memories and going fairly George Lucas on them, adding new content and scenes and really fleshing them out, truly building on the character work and, of course, the sex scenes. They've basically been completely rewritten, and did I note expanded? While each of the original chapters came in at about 8,000 words, now they're both in the 20,000 word range, with Chapter 2 (one that's always kind of embarrassed me) looking nearly unrecognizable to its original form. I have no plans on publishing these until I've gotten the first story arc (Chapters 1-6 on Lit) completely covered, and am hoping to have these released on Smashwords sometime in early 2024.

A New Series

As noted, with franchise fatigue certainly a factor in diminishing returns on my SYM-Verse stories, another plan I have had involves the launch of a new, completely unrelated story. I've already gotten a fairly significant outline done on a new story I'm excited for, as well as a solid start on a first chapter. I don't want to share too much in the way of details until I've got more on this one, but I'm genuinely excited for the creative direction and potential of this story, and I am hopeful that others will as well. Much like back when I launched SYM, I am probably going to wait until I have about 6 chapters together before I launch, so this one will be a while off yet, but, I do look forward to putting it out there.

In Summation

Again, I want to reiterate my thanks to all of you for sticking by me and keeping me going when times have gotten tough, and that I have no intention of changing how things work around here. I might go a little crazy with all the projects that I've taken upon myself, but I'm still doing a lot of good work around here, and I have no intention to change anything else I've got going on around here.

Thank you, as always, for your care and support, and as ever, be good to yourselves, and everyone else.

-aimingtomisbehave33