As I approach 800 followers, and with a new release hitting shelves in both print and e-book today. I’ve had to rethink what I do and how I do it.

For the 10 months I’ve been ‘trying’ to sell my writing as more than pay-per-story to private clients, I’ve been putting up a free story every 100 followers or making one of my pubbed stories free on kindle to celebrate.

As I get more followers who seem to like the words I say, (befuddlement abounds, really, I’m just ‘me’). I realize that I can’t keep doing this. The number of followers grows or shrinks every day with a net gain and the more I speak the more I have. I’m not complaining, I love every single one of my readers, because without you all, I’d just be a woman dreaming over my keyboard telling stories to myself.

I’m a mom, a wife, a home maker, I volunteer at school for the kids, I’m in the middle of a move where we’re downsizing. I’m working with my CP partners, working with my business partners at Iridescence and planning a heap big surprise for January with those and other business partners.

I can’t keep up.

Something has to give, and sadly, it’s the free stories. WordPress analytics tells me no one has even hit that page in a while. Whereas the pubbed short stories and novellas are doing well enough to give me hope that even if Traditional Publishing doesn’t want my work, my readers do. I’m not completely giving up on trad pub, but… after hard querying for a while now, and running through most of the agents open to my style of writing and not getting anywhere *shrugs* I’ll make my words available to the important people (my readers), somehow. (Patience hasn’t ever been my strong point.)

The free stories already there, will remain there, but my writing time is becoming so precious and it’s my truest joy in all of this. I enjoy most aspects of my newfound calling/career, but I don’t want my writing time reduced.

So what I have of it will go towards the Books, Short Stories and Novellas. I promise I’ll keep them as cheap as I can. I know how it is to not be able to afford books. I still need to afford to pay my bills though, and no one should believe that writing is easy. That it isn’t work. I think the only thing I’ve ever worked harder at is being a mom.

I may expand my patreon offerings. More patrons there can only help, and they do get to see whatever it is I happen to be working on that month. So there’s that.

If you’ve read this far, thank you so very much for reading my words in whatever fashion you find them in. If you bought them or are a patron, you’ve helped me keep writing in the most concrete way there is. If you’ve tweeted about my work, or followed me, or interacted with me on social media you’ve helped encourage me to keep going in what is a damned challenging career.

If you’ve pirated my work, I can’t condone it, even if I understand it. If there’re libraries near you, do me the solid of requesting they purchase my work (often times they will) if you’re in a country where they don’t have libraries, or you can’t get to one, do a favor for someone else, think of my name and hope for my success. Words can often be the only thread we hold on to in the dark, I don’t want people to deny themselves my words. I would ask, as a person who has clung tightly to the single thread of an author’s words before, hoping for the dawn to find me still breathing… pay it forward when you can. Hopefully the universe is listening.