After some soul searching, I’ve decided to set up a Patreon account for my fiction. It seems clear that traditional publishing is, if not dead, at least undead, and rapidly running out of brains to keep it going. More and more excellent authors — even acclaimed, award-winning authors — have used Patreon to supplement or replace the conventional publishing route. For myself, I prefer non-profit / donation models, and over time I want to experiment with that as well; but for now I want to create a place where the people most interested in these works and worlds can find resources and community.
For the “free tier” (Followers), I’ll offer fanfic and materials related to that (drafts, maps, languages, names, histories etc.).
At the $5 tier, “Drafts and Maps”, there will be snippets of works in progress, histories, maps, and the like. The bones that go to make the soup.
At the $10 tier, “Words and Worlds”, there will be polished and completed chapters, stories, articles, custom messages and letters, and access to an online encyclopedia of words and names. The encyclopedia already has over a thousand entries, and will be expanded continually.
Many years ago I wrote that “fiction’s primary purpose was to change beliefs about how the world works. Even though it describes false events, the skillful author writes in such a way that the reader believes they could happen; and in doing so, can change the reader’s beliefs about what is possible, or the way the world works, or human nature.” In that way, fiction — and storytelling more broadly — is one of humanity’s most powerful tools for improving the lives of everyone. I invite you to join me on this journey of transformation.
Updates on various projects:
Axon Inc.: The rewrite of this novel about the invention of telepathic computing and its effects on society is going well, but slowly. For more details, see this update.
Return to Sagaia: The past couple of months have seen a lot of background planning and work on this novel about a young woman who revisits a dying fantasy realm from her childhood. Strongly inspired by CS Lewis’s Narnia, it concerns themes of love, death, Pagan and Christian spirituality, and feminism. It’ll be the focus of my NaNoWriMo 2022, so I expect a lot of progress quickly, and drafts will be posted at the $5 patreon tier.
Orphan Moon, a new short story for the re-release of Wild Enough and Free, was stuck for most of a year, but I had a breakthrough a couple of weeks ago and the story is flowing freely now. I’m hopeful I’ll have WEaF 2.0 ready early in 2023.
Truth is like a vast tree, which yields more and more fruit, the more you nurture it. — Gandhi
Axon Firings 