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No side effects for the initial loading dose of the medication, not even at the injection sites, which is great, but also…where is my fatigue?! Everything keeps promising me fatigue as a side effect. I’ve had I don’t know how many covid boosters and nothing. I thought all the shots of this stuff might’ve made me a little tired, but…nothing.

I just want to fucking sleep.

But, of course, a few days of fatigue continues to elude me. People with chronic fatigue probably find me annoying, but I have lifelong chronic insomnia. You try barely sleeping for forty years and you’d get excited about the possibility of a few days of rest too.

I might have reactions later, as the medication begins to work (like I might have mania, as apparently tnf-blockers are used with depression now and, like most antidepressants, it tends to boost the moods of people like me a little too much). But the initial round has been…uneventful, I guess.

Still waiting to find out if the govt will indeed cover it, otherwise it’s going to be a very short experiment. I certainly don’t have another $13K a year–I’m still waiting on client payments this week and I’m not sure if I’ll even make rent on Friday, let along buy the fancypants medication I need.

At least, if the govt covers some of it, I might be able to pay my deductible in October–yesterday Dweller on the Threshold went out in the Kobo VIP email and I got really nice sales boost. It popped up to the number one horror book in Kobo Canada and ended up among the Trending eBooks carousel on the homepage (as well as a top Kobo Plus read in Australia).

That’s fewer books sold than you’d probably think, but it’s not nothing, either.

It’s timely, too, because of this month’s Patreon writing post, which looks at how indie videogames and self-publishing books share a lot in common, including the fact that everyone thinks the big sales jump will be at release when, realistically, it’s more likely to be later in the book’s life. I used Solomon’s Seal as the example (and linked to Krista’s excellent essay about it) but Dweller came out well over a year ago, and it did sell well upon release thanks to high preorders from Ursula Vernon RTing the “nothing bad happens to the cats” promo. It then dropped to nothing after that, predictably, and Watcher didn’t do well at all.

But you can never tell what will happen. Which is why I tell people, just…keep putting out books*–maybe, if you’re like me, a variety of genres, if that’s what you like–that you’ve polished and that you care about, take the opportunities that you can to get them out there (I don’t do any advertisements, outside of Kobo’s, because those ones only cost money if they sell; otherwise I rely on word of mouth). I’ve had about a year now of drastically dropping sales across the board–a combination of the loss of Twitter reach and the people who hated Livi 5 enough that they didn’t order Livi 6**, launching new series and standalones, and probably the economy and everything else. An upward trend, even briefly, is a huge relief.

And if you come here having just bought and read Dweller–hello! Thank you for buying my book! Consider joining Patreon to get the Gavin POV short story I just posted this month!

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* Okay I actually tell people do not quit your day job. If you enjoy writing at all, do not let it become a significant, or sole, source of income–do something totally unrelated to the arts for your day job. The industry is a mess. Enjoy the peace of not having people yell at you all the time for dumb things and not having the constant worry about whether you can pay your bills in two months’ time hanging over your head. I’m still publishing because it turns out I’m not particularly good at anything else lol.

** In some cases, they write to me to tell me they’re deliberately not buying any non-Livi books so that I only write Livi books, and I don’t know what to tell you but that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.