[DIGEST] The "off" season...

Your weekly stackable roundup

December 02, 2023

Hi friends,

I take December “off” every year, so I’ve been scrambling to spend all the money and do all the final things I need to do to make that happen. I’ll still be writing here, because I consider this a necessary part of relaxation. Many people relax by doing nothing, but I relax by fiddling with things. I noodle with a thing here, I futz with a thing there. One of the reasons I’m so productive is my constant need to futz with things.

However, in December it’s futzing on my own time. Aside from these roundups, I’ve already written everything I needed to for this year. So, all I need to do is sit back and watch things launch.

You’ll be seeing a lot of changes here in the next few weeks as I work to expand The Author Stack with new voices to round out the publication. My work is very directed to a certain mindset, and I recognize not everyone is going to resonate with it. Luckily, there are lots of other amazing writers in the space who are doing interesting work, and I can’t wait to feature them. Hopefully, you’ll resonate with at least one 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 slept for a whole 8 hours one night this week, so for a brief moment I felt like I could take on the world. Then, I double-dosed some of my meds by accident, which threw me off and brought me back to Earth pretty quickly. I was an unexpected 3.5 at one point, but I collapsed later in the week, back to a 2.

COME HANG OUT WITH ME IN LONG BEACH: I know it’s the holiday season, but if you happen to be in south LA, Long Beach, or don’t mind a drive, I’m hosting an official Long Beach Substack meetup at the Hangar Food Hall on 12/9 from 2-4 pm. Hope to see you there!

WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME THIS WEEK: I did a couple cool interviews this week.

CREATE ME FREE: I was interviewed by who asked me about the intersection of mental health and art. Kathryn created a safe environment for me to be honest and raw about my experience. READ

SELF-PUBLISHING ADVICE AND INSPIRATIONS: A few months ago, I was interviewed for Alli’s #SELFPUBCON, and it finally reached their podcast. LISTEN

WHAT WE WROTE ON SUBSTACK: This week, I released an interview I did with about building a creative business and maintaining your creativity without losing your spark. This is my first interview in our new Awesome Creator Spotlight series, and I couldn’t have asked for a better human to work with to test it.

Additionally, wrote a great article on how they built their publication to $10k in AGR using a very cool method and a very sneaky kitty.

“Do you believe her?” I asked, turning onto the 5 freeway back up toward Seattle. It was the same freeway from Los Angeles, extending all the way from the border of Mexico to the border of Canada. One long, unbroken, stretch of road.

“I don’t know.” Dexter paused, lost in thought. “Part of me does, but another part of me feels stupid for believing her. We are mortal enemies, and she has every reason to lie…but I don’t think she was lying.”

“I agree,” I replied. “She seemed sincere. She is also a cat, and they are ever only so sincere.”

“I have never met a cat I liked.”

“If it’s not her, then who? Maybe somebody within your organization.”

“Possible.” Dexter sighed. “But my men are loyal to a fault. I’m more inclined to believe it’s some new upstart trying to muscle in on my territory. Let’s head to the docks. See if anyone’s been scaling up their operations over the last few months, bringing in new weapons, hiring additional people. Somebody would need an army to take Seattle from me.”

“What if it’s not that?” I asked.

“Then we’ll look inward, but not until I’ve ruled out everyone else first.”

All chapters of The Godsverse Chronicles are now free for all subscribers. You can read the whole series from the beginning right here.

You still only get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog by becoming a paid member. You can start your membership with a 7-day free trial.

UPCOMING ARTICLE: Next week, I’m releasing one of my favorite articles I’ve ever written, featuring five reasons why it's very hard to start a creative writing business that might make you feel better or worse depending on your comfort level with embracing nonsense.

Do you ever find yourself saying “I understand this is how it works, but it’s just so dumb?”

I literally find myself doing this all the time. My wife and I often turn to each other and say “I get it, but it’s just dumb.”

We had a dishwasher repairman talk to us about how new dishwashers are way worse than they used to be, even as they get more energy efficient. He told us how to keep ours from stinking like it has since we got it.

When he left I said, “I get it, but it’s just very dumb.”

When I teach people how to succeed at this work, I often tell them “It is very dumb that the world works that way, but putting that aside, it is how it works, even though it makes no sense”.

In fact, I am starting to think that a lot of why people fail to succeed is that they can’t rationalize how dumb it all is and how stupid most of the things that work really are when you get down to it.

Even the things that make sense are usually pretty dumb. The same is true with entrepreneurship. If I’m not saying how dumb something is, then I’m wondering why everything is so hard all the time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why it’s so hard to build a creative writing business. So today, let’s talk about five reasons why it’s so hard to do this work.

ROUNDUP: Before I start telling you my favorite articles of the week, we have to talk about a thing.

I usually keep it light here, or at least light-ish, but this week released an Atlantic piece about Nazis using Substack to spread their hateful message. They followed up on that piece with another Substack article later in the week.

It’s a very small amount of accounts, but leadership has been silent about it. If you are as concerned about this as I am, then is putting together a group of Substack writers to demand accountability. If you are interested in joining, then you can fill out this form. There are currently over 60 of us.

I am currently reading The Nazi Seizure of Power, which I highly recommend if you want to learn more about why Nazis are a cancer that must be dealt with quickly and with extreme prejudice. I believe this comic about The Paradox of Tolerance says it better than I ever could.

If you believe that silencing these voices is an affront to free speech, then I 100% don’t care. There are a lot of voices that I don’t agree with, especially on the fringes of politics, that I don’t think should be kicked off Substack. Even with politics as fractured as its ever been, we should all be able to agree that Nazis are the worst.

Mostly, I resent that I have to talk about this in my non-political publication. I have a lot of political thoughts I don’t share here because that is not what you signed up for, so the fact that Substack forcing me to talk about this is…suboptimal.

Now, back to the roundup.

Business-y:

Publishing-like:

Culture-ish:

Find anything you loved enough to swoon over or hated enough to make your blood boil? Let me know.

LIVE ON 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 sci-fi satire, Worst Thing in the Universe.

Albert Ross is an anomaly. Karma doesn't think anything he does is wrong. It's a glitch in the universe that God can't fix. Every trillion or so births in the universe, there is a karmic anomaly.

That's not to say karma doesn't have its retribution. For every horrible act Albert Ross commits, karma punishes Vikram Suresh. Poor, sweet Vikram.

He doesn't know why his life is so horrible. He doesn't know why the universe is unkind. It's unkind because of Albert Ross.

That is the crux of the karmic anomaly. Karma thinks everything that Albert Ross does is actually carried out by Vikram Suresh. What a horrible lot in life.

That's why Vikram kills himself. It usually doesn't matter when a poor, miserable schlub dies, but this death has instant ramifications.

With his death, Karma can instantly see Albert Ross again and realizes its mistake. Like a rubber band, all the horrible things that Albert's ever done slingshot back to him at once, and God watches with glee as karma has its revenge.

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.