Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Many-Eyed Hydra finally has a Patreon

I've faffed around with this for a while, to be fair.

First up, I'm terrible at asking for anything, so writing what is essentially a begging "giz us cash" post is alien and uncomfortable for me.

Turns out a couple of big dentist bills on the horizon are pretty good for making one swallow his pride.  (I had a root ripped out today after the crown snapped off a few weeks ago.  Ow.  I'm not sure which is more painful - the pliers or the imminent damage to the bank account.)

Secondly, there was a smidgeon of doubt.  Last couple of years I've been a bit all over the place - The H-space monster girl bestiary stuff, the long (probably too long) Monmusu Quest: Paradox walkthroughs, the bits of novels you haven't yet seen because they didn't quite get there and are currently on hiatus.  I didn't want to open up a Patreon until I felt confident I could give people value for their subscriptions.

After publishing the "Escape the Arachne" CYOA scenario and finally getting back to Literotica with a 13K word monster short story, "Night of the Nude Succubus Orgy", I feel in a much better place productivity-wise.  Another story I got about halfway through before sticking on a backburner has recently popped up and punched me in the face with a "Finish me!"  One of the hopes I have with the Patreon is that it'll free me from thinking - "I can't do the short stories like before, I need to be writing novels and things I can put on Amazon for money," and I'll just get back to writing what feels right at the time (which usually ends up turning into a series/novel or short story collection anyway).

Finally, there was the fear.  Not starting up a Patreon is a bit like Schrödinger's cat.  As long as you haven't launched it, it can't actually fail.  Once you launch it, well... reality ensues and you have to face the prospect of it only making $5 a month.

Feh, if it happens, it happens.  No-one has an automatic right to be rewarded and recompensed for their creative endeavors.

(It would be fairly soul-destroying, though, so please support me if you can. ;) )

But we can swiftly move on past all that mewling.  I've finally got off my ass and got the Patreon up.  You can find it (and hopefully back me) here.

(Having a tooth ripped out does wonders for focus.)

Some nitty-gritty.

There is only one reward tier currently ($1).  According to Patreon this is taken out the moment you back me and then again at the 1st of each month.  I will add more tiers in future when I have a better idea of what I'm doing.

My plan is to give patrons early access to stories and CYOA scenarios.  As a test I've made available a later version of "Escape the Arachne" where I jiggled the math a little and added a "hard" mode (tests fail on ties rather than passing).

This will be my plan for future CYOA scenarios and regular (i.e. non-contest) short stories and serial chapters.  I don't plan to make any of these totally exclusive, mainly because it could come back to bite me in the ass if I really want to use a particular story in a future collection.  The period of exclusivity will likely be for a week before I post the story on Literotica or here.  For some stories it will be a lot longer as they won't be put on Literotica or the blog and instead will be earmarked for future ebook short story collections.

I'll probably also post snippets of various bit of works-in-progress.  Some might become something, some might not, but the individual scenes will likely still be enjoyable.  (I have a hot one with Nicole and Madam Voluptula having a lot of fun together lying on one of my hard drives somewhere.)

Anyway it's up.  I would love it if you could support me.

Also, as I'm new to this, I would love feedback on the page, tiers, etc.  If anything seems obviously broken, or awful and cringy, please let me know.  Expect the first couple of months to be a little amateurish while I figure stuff out.

I'm hoping this will motivate me to get some new fiction out.  It's about time I reclaimed Lit's Erotic Horror category...

EDIT: I've also added a handy button link.  It does appear to go to the right Patreon page through some black magic beyond my ken.  (I might be getting too old - I was convinced I had to hack the raw HTML in the button example somehow and yet it just goes straight where I want it to after pasting it into the blog's widget section.)

7 comments:

  1. subbed. also if your interested in something like a discord to chat with your followers let me know can help set one up for you. can help give ideas and feedback.

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    1. I might be. At the moment I'm just looking to get the basics out of the way, but that's something that might be useful to have in future.

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  2. Is the pink blob CYOA in progress or has it been put on the back burner? Not rushing you, just curious since you seem to have plenty of projects you wanna work on.

    Also, unfortunately I won't be able to help with the pattern but I wish you good luck with it and with your health and with your wallet!

    (Because dentists are hella expensive man...)

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    1. I put it on hold for a couple of weeks while I raced to finish "Night of the Nude Succubus Orgy". I'm back to working on it now.

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  3. Having recently discovered your work it's uncanny you mentioned Nicole and Madam V. They are undoubtedly my favourites out of all your characters and only yesterday I stumbled on an old tweet where you mention working on a novel(la) with the two of them. Any chance of that happening at some point? It would be near my ideal. Even if not it would be great to see either of them however short. Wish you all the best with the new venture and hope you feel better soon.

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    1. The idea for it is too good for me not to go back and work on it again.

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  4. A discord server is a good idea. I know a lot of YouTube personalities offer Skype hangouts or even gaming with higher tiered patreons. You have lots of options down the line.

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