S.L.Luck

May 19, 2022

Whew! Twelve days until Project Domain—my latest novel about an alien detention center under a landfill in Ontario—is due to my editor. I reached and smashed the 80,000 word target a few days ago, making this the fastest novel I’ve ever written. 4 months, give or take a couple of weeks without sacrificing quality. This is important to me because I’m part of many writing groups and one thing I notice a lot is authors cranking “books” out every month, some every WEEK. I use quotation marks here because no matter how good an author is, I don’t see a novel-length manuscript being slapped down with craft that quickly. It’s important to note that many of these authors are making good money doing this, pushing the “writing to market” adage, with some (if not many) openly stating that you don’t need to be a good writer, just a good marketer.

Well shit.

My author’s heart constricts a little when I read this. It suggests that books are no longer about the reader-writer relationship or story or getting lost in creation, but about money and convincing readers they don’t need craft but algorithm-like content processed, canned, and presented, no more. How personal is that? Many writers would skewer me for this, as each writer’s journey truly is her or his own, but when you take the craft and condense it like that, I think you lose the good stuff. The stuff that makes a book a keeper. The stuff that flits into readers’ minds years afterward.

Could I crank novels out like that? Sure. Do I want to?

I’d rather be poor.

On that note, Dear Readers, you have been great to me. Redeemer made it to #12 last weekend, before falling back and settling again. As my oldest book, it has the most reviews, and so is more likely to find more readers. I can’t state enough how important your reviews are, so if you’ve read Redeemer, Interference, or Lords of Oblivion, please tell Amazon what you think about it.

Lastly, my books have been snagged through Barnes and Noble by some readers, but until I have more of a backlist (that means more books), I really have just been concentrating on Amazon. As an indie author, I have to distribute my books myself and, I tell you, it’s a ton of work. Worth it, but a ton of work. I’m thinking I’ll go wider later in the year, but we’ll see how it goes until then.

Until next time, Dear Readers, thanks for sticking with me. Stay tuned and read on . . .