Patreon and Thoughts on Leaving the Day Job

Someone recently asked in one of the blog comments what it would take for me to leave the day job.  In another comment, someone suggested that I look into Patreon, noting that some authors on the site are earning $5K per month.

First of all, it's incredibly flattering that someone who's not me thinks enough of my writing that they'd want me to do it full-time. I honestly can't imagine much higher praise than that. In addition, it's pretty much a given that whenever I do leave the day job, "Full-Time Writer" is going to be the next thing added to my résumé.  That said, I'm not sure if something like Patreon would work for me, but first it might be worthwhile to talk a little about the site.

In ye olden days, many notable artists had patrons - wealthy individuals whose support allowed said artists to work on their craft rather than toil at manual labor.  Everyone from Shakespeare to Leonardo da Vinci to Michaelangelo had patrons, and it was that patronage that allowed for the creation of some of the greatest masterpieces of art and literature.  Patreon continues that tradition by allowing everyday folks to become patrons and support the artist(s) of their choice via monthly contributions, which can be as low as $1.  That's it in a nutshell, but makes me think there are probably two basic questions that potential patrons are likely to drill down on when deciding who to support:

1)   What's the ask in terms of dollars (and is it reasonable)?

2)   Is this particular artist worth it?

There may be other questions that arise as well, but I tend to think those are the big ones that would apply to my own situation, as detailed below.

What's the ask (and is it reasonable)?

As noted above, I'm not sure that Patreon would work for me.  For starters, I would have to ask for an amount that is several multiples of the $5K mentioned in the blog comment. Frankly speaking, I earn pretty good scratch from the day job (although - like most employees - I still consider myself underpaid).  More to the point, I actually love what I do.  The problem is that the job has become incredibly demanding lately in terms of time, leaving me less opportunities to write.  Case in point, my boss calls me about 8 o'clock at night a few weeks back - a time when most people are at home relaxing after a hard day's work, but here's my scenario:

*Ring*

Me:  Hello?

Boss: Where are you?

Me: At the office.

Boss: Is so-and-so with you?

Me: We're all here.

Boss: Are you working on thus-and-so?

Me:  Yes - what do you want?

Boss:  Tell so-and-so to call me.  I need to talk to them about something.

Me: Will do.

*Click*

Now, in all honesty I have to say that my boss is a pretty good guy and I like him, and this is not what work has been like for the bulk of my tenure. It does, however, provide some insight into just how busy I've been of late.  Unfortunately, work shows very little sign of letting up in that regard, so I'm way off the pace in terms of my writing productivity (e.g., I should have finished the next Kid Sensation book months ago). If I were to try to reclaim that time by leaving the day job, I'd naturally have to replace my current income. Needless to say, it would be a significant ask - it looks almost obscene when I put it on paper - and supporters on a site like Patreon might turned off by that.  

I mean, let's face it:  I'm not a starving artist.  I'm not not working three jobs for minimum wage and trying to squeeze in writing on the side.  I'm not sneaking in and out of my own apartment through a window in an effort to dodge my landlord.  I'm not parking my car in my neighbor's garage to avoid having it repossessed. I don't have a pantry full of Ramen Noodles that I'm eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

But that's not say I haven't been there.  There was a time when I was broke and hungry, and spent my last dollar on a loaf of bread - not because it made for a great meal, but simply because it was filling and would keep my stomach from growling like a grizzly someone had just poked with a sharp stick.  And when that loaf was gone, I tore apart the place where I was living looking for something to eat, and the only thing I found was a pack of coffee grounds.  And guess what?  I ate 'em...  So yeah, I've been there.

It goes without saying, however, that I'm long way from those days. And given my rumeneration from the day job, I can't shake the feeling that potential patrons would look askance at any request from me for support, although obviously my situation is a little different.  Basically, I can't say something like, "When I get $1500 per month I'll quit the 3rd job and write a short story per month, and when I reach $3000 per month I'll quit the second job and write even more..."  I've only got the one day job (although these days I'm seemingly putting in enough hours for two), so that's the number I've got to match.  So, in a certain sense, it's go big or go home.  

In short, bearing all the facts in mind, I think my ask could be construed as reasonable.

Is this particular artist worth it?

I like to think my work is good, but I'm not a media darling by any stretch.  The NY Times isn't screaming for the public to buy my next book.  I haven't been nominated for a bunch of Hugos, Nebulas and similar awards that apply to scifi/fantasy books like mine.  I don't have a mob of publishers beating down my door trying to sign me to a book deal.  (Okay, I have been approached before, but that's a different story.)  

Thankfully, none of those things are a big deal to me.  What's really important is that readers like my work, and I feel incredibly blessed by the fact that they seem to, as expressed in both reviews and sales.  Thus, going on the theory that a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll simply highlight those areas with the following, which relate to Coronation - the last book published in my Kid Sensation series:

(Ranked #2 between A.G. Riddle and Stephen King - it doesn't get much better than this.)

(Okay, I admit it:  I love the little "Best Seller" ribbon Amazon puts on these.)

(I also managed to sell 10,000 audiobooks in a little over two years)

And, while it isn't exactly a picture, here was Coronation's best ranking:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #256 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

#1 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Superheroes

#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Superhero

#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Metaphysical & Visionary

And my corresponding author ranking:

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

#22 in Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

#31 in Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

#33 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#36 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#40 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

And going back a little farther in time, here's when I first broke into a Top 100 authors category, coming in at #98 - just ahead of Ernest Cline and no-name Patterson guy.

Unfortunately, if you look today, my rankings are no longer what they were.  That, of course, is a function of not having released a new book in a while due to time constraints (which is basically the problem).  Nevertheless, in all modesty and reflecting on the above, I believe I can continue to be commercially successful as an author.  And, as I've noted many times, I actually write pretty fast.  (My hope is produce a novel every two months whenever I decide to pursue writing full-time.)

In retrospect, I like to think there are some patrons out there who would consider me worth supporting.  Still the ask is huge, and I detest the optics when I see the number on paper.  But it is what it is.  (And the idea of writing full-time has enormous appeal, so maybe Patreon is an option I should pursue regardless.)  Who knows?  I'll noodle on it some more, talk to the wife - pray about it - and see what happens. 

Excerpt From New Series: The Seventh Shade

In one of my prior comments, I mentioned the other series I'd been working on and that I might publish excerpts from them. A reader asked when some of those excerpts might be forthcoming, so here's one from an urban fantasy I've been drafting (working title: The Seventh Shade).  As with my other excerpts, the usual caveats still apply (ie, this isn't fully fleshed out, hasn't been proofed, etc.):

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The house suddenly trilled, letting out a noise that most would interpret as some kind of creak or groan. It had recognized me, and I interpreted the sound it made as one of almost extreme bliss. Like everyone else, the house had probably assumed that I was long dead (or gone forever).

I smiled as Lucia and I walked up to the front steps, then laid a hand on the wall next to the front door.

“Yes, I’m alive,” I said, grinning. “And it’s great to be back.”

The house trilled again in excitement.

Simply put, the house was a vivo domus, a living domicile. There were other houses that were alive, but most of them were either cursed, haunted, or demonically possessed. In one manner or another, the bulk of them were sinister and wicked. My family’s manse was the only one I’d ever heard of that was benevolent.

I reached for the doorknob, only to have the house creak ominously as I touched it, indicating that there was danger inside.

I glanced back towards the various campfires. From the tracks on the ground, there had been scores of werewolves here last night. There could be dozens on the other side of the door.

Doesn’t matter, I decided. Even if there were a hundred lycanthropes inside, I didn’t have to fight them all.  I only had to beat one:  the alpha.  With that thought, I opened the door and stepped inside, with Lucia right on my heels..

We found ourselves in the foyer. As I closed the door behind us, the first thing I noticed was the smell. Here, in an enclosed environment, the stench of urine – and other pungent odors – was much stronger than outside. As before, Lucia announced her displeasure with an audible hiss.

I took a moment to get my bearings. Needless to say, the layout of the place really hadn’t changed. However, the interior of the house had suffered abuse that matched or exceeded the neglect I’d seen outside. Furniture and chairs lay upended or smashed, stair railings had been ripped off, the carpet in a nearby room was soiled beyond repair, and there was trash everywhere. In short, the place looked like a dump.

Not even the house itself had escaped damage, as chunks of plaster had been gouged out of the walls in various places – most notably in the form of three parallel lines that I recognized as claw marks. Seeing my home marred like this angered me far more than anything else I’d seen. Catching the sound of voices coming from the living room, I marched intently in that direction, smoldering with rage.

There were seven of them in the room when I entered – six males and one female.  They were in human form but completely naked, as werewolves tend to do when left to their own devices. One was in a corner, urinating; the others were on their haunches in a circle, heads and hands jerking in an odd fashion such that it took me a moment to realize what was happening: they were feeding. None of them immediately took note of my presence.

There was a three-legged stool lying on its side near my feet.  I picked it up and then angrily flung it at the fellow pissing in my living room. It struck him on the calf of his left leg, sweeping the limb out from under him. Off-balance, he toppled over backwards, arms flailing. His head hit the floor with an audible thunk, like a coconut falling onto a concrete sidewalk. He lay there and didn’t move.

The sound of their companion hitting the floor brought all the other werewolves to their feet. They glanced at their friend, and then – finally noticing me – turned in my direction.

“Get out of my house,” I said firmly.

There was silence for a moment as a couple of the lycanthropes exchanged glances.

“Wh-what?” asked the female, a gorgeous but wild-haired blonde, after a few seconds.

“This is my place,” I stressed. “My home. You don’t belong here. Get out.”

As I was speaking, I had noticed the nostrils of several of the werewolves flare. I smiled internally, understanding that they must be confused. Looking at me, they likely saw someone they thought was human, but my scent probably befuddled them. Back in the nether realms, seems like there was always something chasing you in order to eat you, enslave you, sacrifice you, or worse. You learn to camouflage your smell. Thus, the group in front of me probably wasn’t sure what to make of me. Then Lucia hissed and momentarily drew their attention.

The largest of the group – a big guy about six-six in height and built like a weightlifter – suddenly shifted his gaze back to me and smiled. He had obviously picked up my companion’s scent and assumed her smell was masking my own (which wasn’t too far from the truth).

“Listen,” said the big guy, whom I pegged as the alpha, “I don’t know who you are, but this place belongs to us. Now normally, you’d get ripped to shreds walking into the wolf’s den, but I’m still feeling buzzed from our party last night. Plus, I think it’s entertaining that you knocked Nick” – he gestured towards the unconscious fellow – “on his ass, so I’m going to give you a chance. Turn around and leave, then run as fast as you can. And maybe, just maybe, you can get away before we catch you.”

The big fellow’s companions snickered, and I could see in their eyes how elated they were at the thought of hunting fresh prey.

“I’m not going to be run out of my own house,” I stated.

The alpha laughed. “Your house? Dude, we’ve lived here for fucking years and had full run of the place. Marked it as our territory. Carved our names in the floorboards. Taken dumps in the hallway.  Does it sound like this place belongs to anybody else?”

Completely livid, I clenched my fists. “You need to leave. Now.”

The alpha grunted I exasperation. “Man, you are really fucking up my mood, and I’m trying to be a nice guy here – give you a chance.”

“To hell with that,” said the blonde. “Fuck him up, Bone.”

“Yeah,” chimed in one of the other werewolves. “Tear him to pieces.” The rest of their friends murmured in agreement.

“Don’t try it, Bone,” I advised as I saw the alpha debating. “It’s piss-poor advice.”

Bone stepped towards me, but put a hand out when his companions attempted to follow, effectively telling them to stay back.

“I’ve got this,” he said over his shoulder, then turned to me. “Man, I don’t know if you’re drunk, or addled, or just plain stupid, but a minute from now when I’m ripping your arm out of its socket, you’ll be wishing you’d run when you had the chance.”

A moment later he arched his back, and a weird popping noise began to reverberate in the room. I recognized the sound as bones and tissue realigning themselves, sinew and muscle being reconfigured as Bone began to morph into his wolf form.

I quickly muttered a hex under my breath as hair began to sprout from his body. A moment later, Bone’s metamorphosis seemed to grind to a halt, but well before he had fully transformed. The result was something that was a little difficult to take in with a single glance.

Bone’s back was now large and hunched, full of muscle and obviously heavy. His hands had expanded in size, becoming hefty but lacking any claws. One of his legs had become digitigrade, the ankle extending up like that of a canine until it gave the appearance of a backwards knee; the other had just been starting to transform, but was still identifiably human for the most part. On his face, his mouth and nose had just begun extending into a muzzle. However, the lower jaw was noticeably longer than the upper, and his teeth had not fully reshaped into canines.

All in all, he looked like the failed genetic experiment of a mad scientist.

Bone let out a groan of confusion. “Wha rih ru ru ru rhee?”

His eyes went big as saucers and he put a hand up to his throat as he realized that the words coming from his malformed mouth were barely recognizable.

I smiled, noting that he was asking, What did you do to me?

Basically, I had used a spell to slow down his metamorphosis (but I wasn’t telling him that). He was still transforming, but at a much slower rate that what was normal. More to the point, in his current state, he really wasn’t designed for combat – a fact that I took full advantage of.

With one wolfhound leg and one that was still pretty much human, Bone lacked balance to a large extent. Planting my left foot, I then lashed out with my right, kicking him solidly on the side of his human knee.  The leg buckled, and he went down, yelping in pain.

Bone instinctively reached out his hands to catch himself as he fell. He did an adequate job of it, but a second after he hit the floor, I stomped down hard on the forearm of one of his outstretched hands.  I was rewarded with the sound of bone cracking and my adversary howling, then pulling the arm in and cradling it to his body.

I detached the tendril from my hip and extended the weapon, making it long like a staff. I then swung it forcefully at Bone’s side, like a golfer trying to drive a ball three hundred yards.  He didn’t go that far, but he did end up flying across the room, smacking against a wall and then dropping down to the floor.

Still furious, I marched towards him, the tendril now glowing in my hand with a crimson light. The other werewolves, recognizing that they were out of their depth, maintained their human forms and stepped lithely out of my way. (They'd obviously seen what I'd done to their leader when he tried to "wolf out," and none of them seemed eager to experience it firsthand.) When I reached Bone, I raised the tendril over my head, ready to cave his skull in. Whining in distress like an injured pup, the alpha raised his good hand in supplication, basically asking for mercy. As he did so, I saw white bone sticking out of his side, and I realized my last swing with the tendril had broken some ribs.

I hesitated, unsure of what to do. I was already in a bad mood, and these werewolves had pissed me off further with the mistreatment of family home. Moreover, they probably would have killed me if given the chance.  However, it just didn’t feel right to continue beating the stuffing out of this guy when he was clearly out of the fight.

I lowered the hand holding the tendril, but still held it threateningly. “For the last time, I’m telling you: get out of my house.”

The other werewolves, seeing an opportunity, rushed to their fallen leader and began helping him up while I took a few steps back. Once on his feet, Bone coughed once, spitting up blood. He really was in bad shape. Still, he gave me a steady look and then nodded, indicating that he understood what I’d said. His people then began helping him to the door.

“One more thing,” I said, causing the group to stop and look at me as a whole. “Don’t get any cute ideas about coming back here and getting revenge. If I see any of you around, if you piss within a mile of this house, if you so much as howl at the moon in a canyon and the echo reaches me, I’m going to decorate this whole fucking place with wolf pelts. Understand?”

Still looking at me, Bone nodded again. A moment later, his people resumed shuffling him towards the door. A short time later, I was alone in the house.

New Milestone: 10,000 Audiobooks Sold

Okay, so I haven't posted for a while - been waiting for something momentous to talk about.  It was supposed to be completion of the next book (Kid Sensation #6), but I haven't been able to wrap it up yet, despite my best intentions.  And then this happened this morning:

That's 10,003 audiobooks sold.  Obviously not a bad way to start the day.  Of course, I knew it was coming, and had been watching for a couple of days to see when I'd go over the 10K mark.  Needless to say, there are others who have done a lot better than me, but I feel blessed to have cleared that hurdle just a little more than 2 years after getting into audio. 

The weird thing about it is that, initially, I didn't even think about making audio versions of my books (and it was years before I actually did).  Now, of course, I'm incredibly thankful that I took the plunge.  (That's me taking my own advice - as stated in another post on this blog - and deciding to pursue all possible revenue streams.) The goal at this juncture is to get audio versions of all my work, but I'd really like for Kid Sensation #6 to be the next audiobook so I've held back on getting any more done.

For those interested, I will say that getting to 10,000 audiobooks was much more of a chore than doing so with ebooks.  For starters, there are few avenues for marketing audiobooks, so promotion opportuities are limited.  (If you're lucky, maybe you'll have a book selected as the Audible Deal of the Day.  Hasn't happened to me yet, but I keep hoping.)  I did get a book selected for a different Audible promotion last fall (Warden: Book 1), and it helped me move a few hundred copies.  For the most part, however, it's been difficult finding a way to get audiobooks in front of the right audience.  That being the case, I count myself fortunate to have obtained this level of sales.

As always, I'm grateful to readers (and now listeners!) for their support.  If you don't yet have an Audible account, you can get a free trial (and a free copy of one of my audiobooks) by clicking on any of the relevant links on my Books Page.  And for those waiting on KS6, I'm working on it and will try to get it out as soon as possible.