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!

* 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.

I’m very nearly at the end of Hell Fire–think there are maybe two chapters left to write (or three, depending on how long the big climax runs). Generally this is the point where the book has a life of its own and takes off, but I’m still squeezing it in around work and I am so goddamn tired. Having to spend a few weeks focused almost entirely on medical stuff and then forms and tax stuff and that ate up a lot of work hours, but I’m still only about two weeks behind, which isn’t bad considering.

The other issue is that I don’t entirely know how Elis is solving things in the climax in this book. I don’t have physical notes; I keep them in my head and it’s just “BIG FIGHT, ELIS WIN”. More than just a showing of strength, which is boring to me, I like there to be an element in the climax where the protagonist(s) get to be clever and figure something out, based on something they learned earlier (the exception is probably Witch Hunt, but then the entire focus of that was Elis killing people without her magic, then she gets it back and kills more people–the fact that she’d survived until that point was sufficiently clever).

On the other hand, it’s been an entire book of everyone telling Elis to be cautious, that she shouldn’t run her mouth off, that she is way outclassed by those they’re facing, so her saying fuck it and just having a big battle might be enough of a subversion of the rest of the book. It’s a power fantasy series, after all.

We’ll see.

I also really sat with the fact that it’s the end of August and I have not finished a single new book this year.

The start of the year, that was fine–I wrote Waverly 4 in December (as rough as it is). Now, though, I’m looking at what’s coming up this fall (again, not going into details, but it’s a lot of personal stuff I’ll be doing, and expenses I’ll have) and the fact that I have to get Waverly 2 and 3 ready for Nov and April respectively, and Hell Fire might well be the only book I finish this year.

I’m still in a pretty good position–again, I’ve got preorders set until April 2024, and Waverly 4 is slotting into April 2025 because it’s in rough shape and needs the extra time. But I really need a release every six months and now there’s a hole in my schedule for fall 2024.

Elis’s books don’t count–no one signs up to Patreon to read them, and the paperbacks…I think I’ve sold two copies of Soul Spell total since it released in May. I sold maybe three of Witch Hunt the year before. The benefit of Elis is to give me something to post regularly at Patreon (I don’t like sharing early drafts of in progress things, as the slightest negative comment can set me back drastically) while I get other stuff written, so I’m still glad to get these books done, but they don’t count as “releases” as far as royalty payments are concerned, which tend to drastically drop off after four to six months post release.

It remains possible I’ll get another standalone horror book or something done in the next several months and that there’ll be time to get in edits but…I have no idea.

I’m just going to keep my head down and work, get through these edits on A Wild Kind of Darkness so I can format for proofing and then tackle a big revision pass on Alone at Night. Hopefully I can pick up Waverly 5 again toward the end of the year and make some progress on that.

At least staring down the worst-case scenario (sales spiraling downward, patrons cancelling, my career is over, blah blah blah–it’s exaggerated but not entirely inaccurate, because this is how finicky the industry is, esp when doing this independently and relying on this income), I can just accept that now and take some of the pressure off myself. There is peace in that. Like drowning!

(Kidding, I’m not thinking about drowning.)

Getting some projects sent off today and tomorrow, then taking the rest of the week off as I’m starting the loading dose of my medication this week–four needles the first day, thinking I’ll do them Wednesday or Thursday, and give myself a few days in case I have any reaction.

I got my “compassionate” supply, eg the “we know you don’t have any money and insurance isn’t covering it yet, but you’re sick and you really gotta start taking this” stuff from the pharmaceutical patient program (which is great, sign up for that if you can), and my care package with the sharps container and other stuff. Can’t put it off.

Wish me luck (and no anaphylaxis). Dina will be on FaceTime with me when I do the shots, so I’m sure she’ll let social media know if I die or something.

The Payhip 50% off sale is on for another week and a bit, Blood Ties and Demons of Oblivion: The Series, btw. Sales page always has the latest.

Saturday nights I run write-ins at my Discord server with patrons. For those unfamiliar, we do three forty-five minute writing sessions with a fifteen-minute break in between. I used to do them like a decade ago for NaNoWriMo and they helped, so they’ve become a fun thing to do again with others. Still, I’ve been really struggling to write anything–again, burnout–and I barely made it to the first session on time.

I’ve been trying, still, to write Hell Fire. After a couple of sessions with about 60% of the usual productivity, I finally seemed to hit a breakthrough and words started flowing, which carried over to the next two nights. All said, I’ve suddenly added about 15K words in forty-eight hours.

They are not very good words, and will require heavy revision, but at least I no longer feel like I’m banging at a closed door. And when I finally looked at what got things flowing agin?

Elis, at long last, had cismen being dumb to yell at.

Like trying to write a Livi novel without her going on some kind of adventure or Waverly without giving her the opportunity to go on a misanthropic rant, Elis does best when she’s being snarky at mansplainers or otherwise letting out her rage. The whole premise is that she’s a misandrist serial killer (even though that’s more incidental to the main plot than the focus) and other than a couple of jokes in the narration, she hadn’t had a single opportunity to be, well, Elis.

So I’m still trying to fast draft this thing, then I can go back and revise. The top of my revision notes is “MAYBE ADD MORE MISANDRY”.

I’ve hit a point now that I’ve been planning for a few books, which is always my favourite part of writing (“plan” is pretty loose–it’s not that I decide a thing is going to happen, but during the course of rolling stories around in my head, which I do every waking hour, the scenes came together). Ashur is finally making one of his big moves on the chessboard and Elis sees a little, though not all of it yet.

I have to take a few days off to work on freelance stuff, but that should give the next few chapters enough time to percolate. I know roughly what will happen but not the finer details.

As I said, it’s not good writing but…we’ll fix it in post.

My TB testing was put on hold because the lab doesn’t have the kit they need. I heard from my case manager and she’s lovely and helpful, but she confirmed what I worried about, which is that I actually have to apply for a program to get my medication covered, and while yes, I qualify, I need a few other pieces in place. At this point, best-case scenario is that I get to start this at the end of the month. (Worst-case is that I’m denied, and because I don’t have over ten grand to drop on medication, I have to wait and apply next year, which will be decidedly a bad thing.)

Did I mention stress makes my condition worse?

At least the book is moving again.