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- [DIGEST] Tattoos that cure the blues...
[DIGEST] Tattoos that cure the blues...
Your weekly stackable roundup
When you’re feeling blue, get a tattoo. I love that little old time diddy…
…wait…that’s not a thing? I just made it up? Well, I still like it, so just cut me some slack, okay? Existence is futile.
Anyway, so I got a tattoo last Friday, and it’s a really special one to me because it represents my favorite series, The Obsidian Spindle Saga. That is the header image for the upcoming retail release of the series, and I love it so much that I got it tattooed on me for my tattoo shop’s Friday the 13th special.
Unfortunately, this is the first tattoo I’ve gotten since my long COVID diagnosis, and it wrecked me, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get any more for a while. Still, if I had to only get one final tattoo for the rest of my life, this is the one I would want.
My whole half sleeve is filled with imagery from books I’ve made in my career, and this is a great capstone to all of them.
If you want to share how you are doing this week, then there are two ways to interact with this post.
1 - If you don’t want to say anything, or bristle at identifying yourself, then you can reply with this nifty poll.
2 - If you’re feeling very brave, then reply below and tell us how you are doing right now on a scale from 1-5.
I am so excited to be done with the superstring of presentations I had to give for the past couple of weeks. It’s been really, really hard on my body after NINC. I know it seems like it should be easy to just sit and talk, but I find it really hard.
I’m a 2.5 this week. Better than last week, which is nice, but not by enough.
How are you doing?
WHAT I WROTE ON SUBSTACK: This week, I gave the game away when I showed readers how to set up a direct sales environment for their author business.
“Yes, there does seem to be a two-million-dollar bounty on your head,” Phil said. It had taken him all of five minutes of sitting behind his computer before he pulled that information. “I’ve heard five substantiated reports across my whisper network.”
“Who called the hit?” I asked.
“It would seem Benny’s number two put out the hit, but you have to understand how primitive this technology is—I had to interrupt phone signals and combine that with scattershot data from several disparate sources before I could even cobble this much information together… but yes, that is my best guess.”
“How confident are you in that?”
Phil shrugged. “Seventy-three percent, give or take. Enough to confidently say it, but not enough to recommend you reign hellfire down upon them, just in case I am wrong.”
“Can I reign hellfire on anyone?” I asked. “Because this is seriously hurting my reputation, and I am pissed off.”
“That’s not the thing I would be most concerned about,” Phil said. “There is a Firestarter out there, and she can actually kill you. That’s where my concentrations would lie at present if I were you.”
“That bitch took a passive role in trying to kill me, as far as I know. She didn’t attack until I showed up. This hit, though, it’s actively trying to take me down, and while there aren’t that many ways to kill me, there are enough monsters with enough know-how that I need this hit taken off me first. The Firestarter is next.”
“Umm… speaking of…” Phil tapped on his keyboard a few times. “There seems to be a contingent of assassins approaching your mother’s house as we speak.”
He turned his monitor so I could see it. The video showed a green, hazy image where a group of masked monsters with assault rifles were milling around Mom’s house.
New chapters are free, but paid subscribers can access the archives. You also get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog.
WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME THIS WEEK: In my effort to be everywhere all the time at the expense of my sanity, here’s where you can catch me this week.
#SELFPUBCON23 - TODAY - 6 AM PT/9 AM ET/1 PM GMT - I joined the ALLi advisory board earlier this year as their crowdfunding expert, and I was super excited to join their virtual conference to talk about author ecosystems. REGISTER FOR FREE
THE BOOKFEST - TODAY- I’m so honored to be giving my first keynote address at one of my favorite online conferences, run by a few of my favorite people, all about the Future of Publishing. REGISTER FOR FREE
DIRECT SALES FOR INDIE AUTHORS - NOVEMBER 4TH - Join me at the Direct Sales for Indie Authors 1-Day Event on November 4th! Discover various strategies from leading experts (including yours truly!) on how to boost your direct sales. It's free, it's informative, and it's going to be amazing. I’m doing a 30-minute Q and A at 4:30 PM ET/1:30 PM PT. REGISTER FOR FREE
UPCOMING ARTICLE: Next week, I’m talking about the light and dark sides of growth, including many of the ways I’m growing right now.
There is a darkness that comes with growth.
It's as if you are consumed inside an abyss because there is no light to guide you.
This is because you have not set a beacon yet. Once you have figured out the path to get what you want, your mind places a little light there. Every time you return, the light gets a little brighter, until it is as bright as the sun.
However, in those moments of growth, when you haven't reached your destination, you are in the dark. Your little flashlight can not see more than a foot in front of you.
It's scary, and even if you have a guide that doesn't make it much better. There is no way to stop the darkness from encroaching on you. All you can do is prepare for it.
You still have to go into the darkness. Others can tell you the path, but you have to walk it. You still have to set your own beacon.
Once you do, it will become easier and easier to go there again.
ROUNDUP: Here are some of my favorite articles of the week.
Business-y:
works like a chef, moves past ZIRP, and builds a startup program.
dissects how Zapier grows, proves that Instagram doesn’t understand the creator economy, and escapes the hacker class.
wonders why AWS wants businesses to spend less, not more, goes deep on what ChatGPT gets right and wrong about image search, and breaks down how Mr. Beast broke the economy.
nails Marc Andreessen with several good hits, ponders Jevon’s Paradox, and is uncomfortable with comfort culture.
Publishing-like:
explores where story ideas come from, learned 12 things in 12 years at Book Riot, resurfaces her old writings about being a writer, and turns on paid subscriptions.
explains why Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen was banned, releases a guide to hiring Freeland publicists, and explodes Substack.
reduces newsletter overwhelm, has fun with audience personas, turns creativity into dollars, and talks about rights, rights, baby.
helps improve the messaging for your books, combines knowledge with SMEs, slams Scholastic’s “bigot button”, and delivers judgment on The Washington Post.
Lifestyle-ish:
develops aggressive optimism, explores the Roman Empire fallacy, and is lonely while is also lonely, but in a labyrinth.
is old now and it’s great, thinks about the future even if the rest of us can’t, and bets on the lottery of utopia and economics.
is late because their friend has a hot husband, explores how Tolkien’s Legendarium differs from the Northern Sagas that inspired it, and has weird stuff happen when they wears Warren Zevon shirts.
perceives reality, gives everything to their mindset, and knows what to do when you don’t know what to do.
explores intergenerational war trauma, makes a cult classic, and encourages self-trust.
Find anything you loved enough to swoon over or hated enough to make your blood boil? Let me know.
UPCOMING KICKSTARTER: If you care about direct sales at all, you must have this two-volume guidebook to mastering direct sales for authors.
and I have been working on this book for basically our whole careers. This book contains a combined 25 years of hard-won practical experience from building our own direct sales empires and helping hundreds of authors build them, too.
If Author Ecosystems is the lens by which you look at direct sales, then Direct Sales Mastery for authors is the guidebook. Whether you are just thinking about direct sales or you want to take your business to the next level, this is a must-read book, and it’s available exclusively to Kickstarter backers. It won’t be on retailers for several months after we deliver it to Kickstarter. If you want to get ahead of the curve and hit 2024 running, then we hope to see you behind the backer wall.
If you like what I’m doing around here and want to check out the archives, you can do that with a 7-day free trial, or simply go straight to being a paid subscriber. You also get access to my action comedy fantasy graphic novel, Black Market Heroine.
Ollie wasn’t looking for trouble, but after she saved the Antichrist from being slaughtered, it came for her.
Ollie lived by one rule. Never get involved with anyone for any reason; humans, demons, fae folk, it didn’t matter.
They were all trouble. keeping her distance was how she survived in the criminal underworld for so long. Keep your head down and don’t piss anyone off. That was her motto, especially since her clients all had access to powerful dark magic.
She thought she had a flawless system for keeping her nose clean, so how did she wind up in a stolen car, with a demon spawn in her back seat, driving away from her ex-lover and a gang of demons ready to skin her alive? And why did she agree to help save the demon girl’s life so she didn’t get sacrificed to open the gates of hell?
Ollie had one rule. One stupid rule. And tonight it goes right down the toilet. Now, the only way for Ollie to get her life back is to save the girl, prevent the apocalypse, and track down the jerk who betrayed her. They will pay. Oh yes, they will all pay.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.