Author of Sci-Fi / Fantasy
Did you ever read an author biography, and snicker to yourself when the writer is so poor, so destitute, so hungry that they write something to put bread on the table?
I love that. It cracks me up every time. Some people gambled. Some worked their fingers to the bone. These guys wrote stuff. I'm sorry, I'm still laughing over here.
I know traditionally published authors, and they don't write for money. In fact, they do something else for money and get whatever they can from writing. That's their sauce, and if they have a slow year, it's just less sauce, because they have jobs.
When did writing become the work of the dilettante? When did it go from meat to sauce?
Well, honestly, I don't care about the "when's" all that much. Nor do I care about the "why's". But I care about the "what", which is "What do I have to do to get back to the old days when you wrote a story to make a buck?"
I wrote a passion piece called Blue Valley. First it was an unsold screenplay on my hard drive, then it was a novel that garnered award-winning rejection letters. Now it's an indie published novel that's making me a little sauce. If people love it enough, I'll write the sequel. If not, I don't have to, because it's not keeping a roof over my head or anything.
But now I'm working on a murder mystery set in the fashion industry; an industry that has kept a roof over my head for upwards of twenty years. It's commercial. Wildly so. And I think I have a better chance of getting a publishing deal with this one than any previous story. But I don't want to any more. I want money and I want it now, not in the two years it's going to take me to get an agent, let them find me a publisher, negotiate a contract and wait for them to put it on the shelf. If it's commercial for agents and publishers, it will be commercial for readers. And they're the ones with the money.
If I can get it traditionally published, I can indie publish it and make, you guessed it, more money. Coin. Bread. Green. What you get when you work.
So rather than accepting the slow pace of the dilettante, I'm cranking out the revision, because there's money on the line, and that roof over my head needs some fixing.
Blurb
At the outset of World War 2, with the government terrified of Japanese sabotage, Will Leary is sent to California to investigate a spreading, deadly blue soil. When he falls in love with the magical woman who is unwittingly causing the destruction, he must decide between science and his soul.
