Which is the kinda the point. So let’s get to it:

A couple of years ago when I came off of “hiatus”, I did so with the intention of getting back into writing and, hopefully, making enough money at it to at least pay some bills. ONE bill. Heck, even a tank of gas. I tried the donation thing for a while. I didn’t have anywhere near the traffic to make that work. After that, I just said “screw it” and kept writing, although scaled my efforts waaaay back. The “three pages a week” idea was an experiment that worked well, so I’ve been doing it ever since. Still not making any money, though.

Honestly, that’s nobody’s fault. Not the readers…. and I can’t really say that it’s mine either. I don’t have the time or energy to write like I used to, and I NEVER had a clue of how to build traffic. Sure, lots of people do it, but I don’t know how. To tell the truth, if there’s anybody reading this right now I have absolutely NO clue why you’re even here. I assume you like the stories; but I can’t point to a single thing that I’ve done… no advertising campaign, no banner ads, no blog posts… that caught your attention and brought you here. If you’re one of the folks that has been around since the early days of the Alt.Dragons-Inn newsgroup, all I can say is: “Wow. Just… wow.”

The point I’m dancing around is that I’m not making any money here, and I’ve got no idea how to change that. My creativity doesn’t extend to that arena. If I DID have some ideas, then I don’t have the time or resources to implement them. All I know how to do is write, and I’ve been doing precious little of that lately. I’m sure you’ve noticed.

What you DON’T know is that I’ve been under some extreme financial pressures for the past few five years or so. I lost my job a while back, and when I finally got another one, it was paying a lot less than what I needed. It’s STILL paying a lot less than what I needed. Silly me thought I could make a difference with words. HA! No. So about a month and a half ago I started a second part-time job. It’s a work-from-home deal that’s actually pretty sweet. It’s not much, but it adds enough money into the budget to keep the lights, gas, and internet on simultaneously, something that I quite literally had problems doing on more than one occasion.

Unfortunately, the hours I put into this second job have to come from somewhere. If you’ve been around since I came off my last hiatus, I said then that if I couldn’t make money writing then I would have to divert my efforts to other things. That has happened. This is why there have been so many missed updates lately. I should have announced this earlier, but I’m a coward and I didn’t want to admit that I’m not superhuman. I didn’t want to disappoint people. But I simply don’t have time to keep even the utterly-ridiculous three pages a week schedule any more. By the time I work job #1, drive home, work job #2, spend time with the wife… you get the picture. I just can’t do it.

So what does this mean?

I am NOT going to stop writing. When the current story is finished, there will be a hiatus of a few weeks just like there always is. After that, I’ll start on another story. I can’t say what kind of schedule or format I will try next, but if you look at my productivity for the past few weeks then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what the immediate future holds. I’ve been writing almost nothing for a year. 1500 words a week? Please. Now I can’t even do that. Maybe I can do two pages a week instead, but I cringe every time I even think about it. That’s almost not writing at all. So I’m not making an “official” schedule change at this point. I’m merely saying that I’ve got things going on that are much more important than writing, and until my situation changes you can expect me to miss one or two pages a week. I might even miss entire weeks.

I’ll close by saying that writing has always been my love… the one thing in the world that I wanted to do more than anything else. But the world clearly… CLEARLY… doesn’t want me to write. It had made this blatantly obvious. I’m not giving up here, but since writing is not contributing to the monthly budget then the time I spend writing has to be cut. It has to be cut even more than it has already. I can spend an hour writing 500 to 1000 words that will pay me nothing, or I can spend it earning a tank of gas. When I was in a more forgiving financial situation, I would choose to write. But I’m in a different situation. And writing is something I can’t afford to do now. I’m going to do it anyway, but I’ll be doing it with the understanding that every minute I spend writing is time that I COULD be getting paid for. So forgive me if writing moves from the back seat to the trunk of the car, at least in the short term.

Sorry to disappoint you.

First, a recap.
The short version: The Coming of Three is a fantasy novel that I co-wrote with Danny Wall a long, long time ago. Our intention was for it to be the first part of a series that we would get published. After several rounds of feedback and re-writing (and re-re-writing), we sort of let the project fall by the wayside as we both moved on to other things. Lately, we decided to publish the most recent version of the novel as an ebook that a few people have bought and hopefully enjoyed.

Now, the answer:
We actually started working on the second book years ago, and even have the first couple of chapters already written. Not long after I put the ebook up for sale, Danny asked me if I would be interested in starting up on the sequel again. My answer to him was along the lines of: “Sure… if people show enough interest in the first book. I don’t want to work on something that people don’t want to read.” Or something like that. Danny’s answer to ME was along the lines of: “Hell, nobody even KNOWS about the first book. You’ll need to do a lot more than just put up a link on your blog to get the word out.” To that, I replied: “Yeah, I know” and let the subject drop.

I’m still on the fence about continuing the work. I certainly enjoyed writing the book, and I suspect rather strongly that the second book will be much better than the first based on the outline that we had at the time. My reservations aren’t based on the book itself, or on working with Danny. It’s purely based on my limited resources and my uncertainty about whether people WANT a second book or not. Danny is 100% right: there needs to be a heavy advertising campaign before we can generate the amount of sales and (even better:) FEEDBACK that would let me know if the project was worth my time or not. I have devoted some money to some minor advertising efforts both for the site as a whole and for The Coming of Three, but honestly I know very little about marketing products (or anything) on the internet. Nor do I have the money to do much even if I did know what I was doing. Currently I’m doing small things and hopefully I’ll hit on something that has a big effect one day.

So I guess this answer isn’t much of an answer at all, merely a statement of where things are. Yes, there ARE plans for a sequel. No, we are not actively working on it. Why? Because I’m a greedy asshole who wants to make a few tanks of gasoline off the first book before I work on the second. Unfortunately, I don’t have the resources to promote the first book the way it needs to be promoted, so we’re kinda stuck right now.

There ya go.

Regular visitors probably haven’t noticed, since they’ve probably read the story already. New visitors probably figured the non-functioning link was a mistake.

It isn’t.

I removed it on purpose at the request of another writer.

To refresh everyone’s memory: “The Wraith” is a short story written entirely by me, but which takes place in a setting created by someone else. Matthew Wayne Selznick created a world of superpowered “Sovereigns” as well as an online magazine featuring fiction… mostly written by him… that explored that setting. To my knowledge, the “Wraith” story was never completely published… the magazine shut down before the last bit of story was posted. My memory could be serving me wrong on that point, though. Anyway, years later I found the original text of the story and posted it in the Library along with everything else.

Recently I got an email from Matthew asking that I remove the story because it contained references to his intellectual property (characters and organizations that he created as part of the world of the Sovereigns).

In the interests of full disclosure, here’s the email:

Hi!

I was the editor and publisher of “Sovereign Serials,” the webzine
where most of “Wraith” originally appeared. These days, the
“Sovereign Era” is still alive and kicking in my book “Brave Men Run
– A Novel of the Sovereign Era,” several short stories and a podcast.

I noticed you have “Wraith” up on your website in its original form.
Remember that the terms of our original agreement was that you could
re-publish work appearing in “Sovereign Serials” so long as all
references specific to the Sovereign Era setting — such as characters
common to the setting, the term “Sovereign,” and all other elements
that could tie the story to the Sovereign Era setting — were removed.

It looks like your story still contains all the “Sovereign” elements.
I noticed mentions of Dr. Donner, the phrase “Sovereign,” and other
stuff.

The reason I have those terms on fiction that appeared in “Sovereign
Serials” is a compromise. I couldn’t pay anyone at the time, so I
wanted to make sure authors could sell their work elsewhere. On the
other hand, the Sovereign Era setting and all elements of that setting
(characters, situations, institutions and so on) are my intellectual
property and a brand I am actively building. I can’t have that brand
diluted with “unofficial” works out there in the wild. That’s why I
had contributing writers to Sovereign Serials agree that if they *did*
republish their work outside of Sovereign Serials, they would remove
*all* elements that link that work to the Sovereign Era universe.

Please either remove the “Wraith” story from circulation, or re-post
it with all characters, institutions, conventions, locations and other
elements related to the Sovereign Era removed.

I really appreciate your cooperation.

Many thanks,

So I took the story down. Matthew seems reasonable, and apparently I DID agree not to publish the story in its original form. I do have the option of editing the story to make it entirely my work as opposed to a work set in someone else’s setting… and I may do that at some point. That point isn’t now, and it won’t be any time soon. I’ve got other, NEWER projects to spend my time on, and I’m sure my fans would rather I proceed with those rather than re-edit an old tale just to fulfill an obligation from years back. One day when I get bored and have some free time, I’ll edit the story and put it back up. Don’t hold your breath, though.

What do I think about all this?
I was kind of pissed, actually.

Not that Matthew doesn’t have a point… I agree with his point of view entirely. There was an agreement and he has rights. If the situation had been reversed, I would like to be able to make a request like his and have it fulfilled without involving drama and/or lawyers. Dark Icon hates drama and lawyers as much (or more) than anybody, trust me.

But, see, the thing is… I wouldn’t have MADE the request.

And that’s why I’m a little pissed. If I give somebody permission to go off and write a story that mentions Jason Brooks or Zade or Magekiller and is set in one of those respective worlds… and then later on I decide to actually publish a Crusade or December or Magekiller novel, I wouldn’t then go to that person and tell them to detach their story from my intellectual property. Yeah, legally there might be reasons and/or benefits for me making such a request… but to me, that’s kind of an asshole thing to do. Hey, sometimes you gotta be an asshole and there’s no other choice… but I’m not seeing how this is one of those times. I fail to see how the presence of “Wraith” adversely affects his intellectual property or his ability to make money from it. Given a “rogue” Magekiller story that I gave someone permission to write, I would probably insist that the situation be clearly explained: Certain items are not the property of the story’s author, and the story was written with the permission. What I wouldn’t do is ask them to change the story. But that’s just me. The only reason I took the story down is because there is/was an agreement that I inadvertently broke, so NOT taking it down would have been an asshole thing to do.

So, to recap…
Dark Icon: Not an asshole
Matthew W. Selznick: ???

That’s unfortunate, as it means that there is an entire novel out there that none of you have read. Yet!

Over the years Danny and I have mentioned publishing the thing ourselves, but neither of us put any serious time or effort into it. Last year, after rescuing the files from a failing hard drive, I asked my co-author if I could just package the text in a PDF and sell it as an ebook via Paypal. We’d split the proceeds of course. He agreed, and now I’m finally bringing the (almost) lost novel to you. It’s had one final round of editing by one of the authors (me!), and it is as close to a finished product as it will ever be.

This link is to a PDF file containing the first 35 pages (or 4 chapters) of The Coming of Three. If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you my remember this previous post with an excerpt linked in it. Ignore that old link. THIS excerpt (from the post you’re reading right now) is both longer and more recent, so you should be able to get a better idea whether you want to read the rest of the novel or not. If you do, the price is just $5.00.

I haven’t set up a proper storefront or sales page yet, but I didn’t want to delay the release any further for something that I may end up taking weeks or months to do. The paypal link works, and that’s all you need.
After purchase, just follow the link back to darkicon.com, and you’ll arrive at the page where you can download the full PDF. If that doesn’t work, just email me (darkicon AT bookofdarkplaces DOT com) and I’ll send the PDF to you.

And be sure to let me know what you think of the story. If there is enough interest in the book, I’ll create a special page on the Asylum Walls for it, but until I do that you can just leave comments here.

I’ll preface the following by saying that nothing is absolute, and my mind may change about any number of things in the next few weeks. No surprise there.

I’m calling the donation experiment done. As I remarked elsewhere, there’s just not enough traffic to make that work. It isn’t that the experiment failed; I still think it can work. But I think I got a few things out of order. I need to build traffic first. With a few hundred more regular readers, I could probably convince ten or twelve of them to donate $5.00 a month vs. the one or two people who were doing it now. I shouldn’t have even TRIED the donation thing until I got that level of traffic first. So next year I won’t be doing the donation stories. Instead, I’ll focus my efforts on getting more people to the site. I don’t know how yet, but I’m pretty creative so I’m sure I’ll think of something.

It is extremely unlikely that I’m going to stop writing. Some of the things I said last year may have implied that, but that’s just not true. Not only will I not stop, but I will try like hell not to vanish on some long hiatus like I did earlier. However… and this is the important part…. it is also extremely unlikely that I will write any MORE than I’m writing right now. My current level of output is what you can expect me to continue doing. For the record, I’m talking about three episodes of “Court of the Abominatrix” a week with the occasional ‘extra’ story here and there. When CotA is done, I’ll replace it with something else. That ain’t much. But honestly, I have no incentive to write any more than that. I’m not talking about money, either… I’m talking about the emotional satisfaction of having people read my work.. With more visitors and more feedback from more people, I would have incentive to give them more of what we both like: Good stories. But right now I’m writing for what… ten people? Twenty? Five? I’m pretty sure I can sit here and list all of my regular readers BY NAME. BY NAME! Think about that, and then try to explain why I should be cranking out 30,000 words every two weeks like I used to.

…there was another paragraph here, but it was entirely too bitter so I deleted it. Screw the drama; I’ll end with some stuff you might actually care about:

After “Court of the Abominatrix” is done, I will finish “The Forgotten.” The original plan for “The Forgotten” was a short story told in three parts, of which only the first part was completed. I don’t know if I’ll deviate from the plan or not, but it will be the next project. After that, I’ll finish “In Deed,” and it will most likely be in the same format as CotA. After THAT, I am undecided. There is no shortage of things I could work on; I guess it depends on how I feel when the time comes.

Likewise, I’m undecided on what to do for all the people who donated money since August. I’ll do SOMETHING… but I’ve got no serious ideas at the moment.

As mentioned above, there may continue to be random short stories or flash fiction floated around here or on other sites, but there’s no definite plan or schedule.

And that’s about it.

This month, the bonus story earned by those who donate $5.00 to the website is called “Parker’s Last Hunt”. It’s another in a string of horror stories, although this one is much less Lovecraftian than the last few.

This story came from the internet, and I mean that in two ways:

First, I once participated in a forum discussion (no, not on the Asylum Walls) about a news story where a child died in a supposed “exorcism”. Reading the description of what was done, I remarked that it sounded more like they were trying to INVITE evil rather than cast it out. That’s when the idea of a “reverse exorcism” was born. I intended to write the story then, but I never did.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was randomly cruising the internet when I came across a supposed “interview” with a cannibal serial killer. It was purely fictional (I assume) and written pretty much for shock value… but it got the creative juices flowing.

“Parker’s Last Hunt” is a combination of those two ideas. The story is a bit more ‘raw’ than you may be used to… but then, as the main character says: “If you thought that story was entertaining, you need to be locked in here with me.” Besides, it’s a Dark Icon story, so you pretty much know what you’re gonna get…

Donate and Enjoy.

…oh, and AS USUAL, you must use the “Donate $5.00 button” to donate via paypal, and then click the link that takes you back to DarkIcon.com. You’ll arrive at the page where you can download the story in a PDF. If that doesn’t work, send me an email and I’ll fix it.

That’s hardly worth making a special blog post about, so I said to hell with that whole thing.

But there are a few things that need to be mentioned and/or explained:

Earlier, I announced that there would be some kind of update every week. Not too long after that, I started “Court…” which, by definition, would be THREE updates a week. Did I have this in mind when I made the weekly update announcement? Yup. Do I count CotA as my weekly update? Yup. Is that really fair? Well… yeah, it is. I know some people were looking forward to longer stuff and more frequent chapters of “In Deed” (and perhaps the return of older stories), but that’s a bit much for somebody who’s “50% Travel” job is actually more like 85% lately. As far as I’m concerned, I’m keeping my promise.

Next:

Things I will be working on the near future:
This week I plan on getting ahead on “Court of the Abominatrix” and getting a few thousand words written on the July bonus story. I used to have a one week “reserve” on CotA. I got lazy one week, and now that’s gone. I need it back, and I also don’t want to be in a rush to writing the July bonus story in the last few days of this month. I shouldn’t have any trouble making some serious headway on both of those this week.

Yes, I know I’m overdue for “In Deed,” and that will probably be the next thing I work on after those two things. There’s no date on it yet, but I wouldn’t look for it before July. You’ll certainly see it IN July… sooner is better, obviously.

Other things:
Right now, I consider both the monthly bonus stories and the CotA experiment to be moderate successes. Actually, I’m really excited about CotA, and I’m already looking forward to the next story that I’m going to tell in that format. There’s even a (small) chance that I may start a second micro-chapter story to update on Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday. I’m giving the idea some thought; no decision has been made. Donations are at around three a month, which I consider great given the amount of traffic I’ve got. If anyone has any ideas on how I can get MORE traffic, fire ‘em at me because that’s what I need right now. I figured the introduction of frequent updates would bring in more visitors, but it hasn’t happened yet. Probably too soon.

That’s all that’s on my mind right now. I hope you’re enjoying the stories. Feedback (with and without donations) are appreciated.

Because I’m an evil bastard, that’s why.

As always, after you pay via PayPal you have to click the link that takes you back to the site. You’ll arrive at the download page. If that doesn’t work for you, let me know and I’ll fix it ASAP.

It’s back to horror this month. “The Text” has a Lovecraftian feel to it, and it may remind you of “In the Mouth of Madness” a little. That’s intentional.

You can also consider it a revamp of the storyline from the “Sign of the Usurper” fragment that I posted months ago. Rather than simply finish that story, I started over entirely and went a different (but related) direction with it.

Speaking of related, those who’ve read some of the OTHER bonus stories I’ve put out this year might… well… either you’ll see it or you won’t. ;)

Enjoy.

Oh… as usual, you have to use the “Donate $5.00″ button and click the link that takes you back to DarkIcon.com once you’re finished over at Paypal. That should bring you to the page with the download link. If anything in the process fails to work properly, just let me know and I’ll make it right.

I put a lot of thought into whether to use “The Shadows of Stonepoint” as a bonus story or just put it in the Library for everyone to read. It sort of bends the rules of what I said when I first started giving away bonus stories. First, it’s 13,300 words… a tad bit longer than my target length. Usually if I put THAT much work into something, I want EVERYBODY to read it, not just a select few. But a few people may have been disappointed with the length of some of the previous bonuses, so I figured what the hell, at least nobody’s gonna complain about the length of this one.

But then there’s the other, more important rule.

“The Shadows of Stonepoint” is the (almost) beginning of something that I may (or may not) develop into a larger project. Yes, originally I said that the bonus stories would be self-sufficient, and they wouldn’t depend on you reading (perhaps buying) other stories just so you can appreciate them. That’s SORT-OF true with Shadows. I’ve been working on the concept of this massive, epic fantasy story for quite a while. Without getting too far into describing it, I’ll just say that, in MOST fantasy epics there are these stereotypical heroes that fight to stop the dark evil from destroying/taking over the kingdom/world. And the heroes always win. Yeah, they may die in the process, but they die winning. But what happens if they DON’T win? That’s the story I’m wanting to tell… eventually. “The Shadows of Stonepoint” is NOT the beginning of that epic… but it is the beginning of the beginning, sort of a sneak peak at what you might be seeing more of later on. The events and characters of this story are self-contained, but the story leads into other events, and those other events are the beginning of… the end of the world.

The previous paragraph probably makes no sense to you. But if you read Shadows then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. If you finish “Shadows of Stonepoint” and feel like you want to read more… that’s kinda the whole point. But rest assured that the central story of Shadows is contained within what you read… it really is just as simple as it seems. Almost.

Anyway, here’s a snippet from the text:

“RUN!” he shouted. Something dark moved past him. Vonn was still on his knees, but the shape that glided past seemed to have no legs at all. “RUN AWAY! THEY’RE NOT MEN! NOT MENNNN!!”

Someone shouted. There was a moment of eerie calm, and then the screams came. Wails of not just pain, but abject agony as the armed townsfolk met their attackers… and realized that they should have stayed hidden.

With the light of the bonfire so near, Vonn could see more than he wanted. Black shapes drifted rapidly in and out of the smoke like wasps swarming around something unseen. But these wasps bore stingers that scorched flesh to ash… or worse.

Sounds like somebody’s having a bad day.