Wednesday, January 02, 2019

Ebook plans for 2019

After all the recent negativity over Patreon being a bunch of Orwellian cunts, here's me trying to be positive with plans for 2019.

2018 (and 2017) were a little weird.  In terms of word count I'm still producing a decent amount of content.  In total word count, "Escape Volumpula, the Pink Jelly" was about the same size as a large novella and "Escape the Arachne" wasn't much shorter.  The main problem with them is they're not something I can easily monetise on Amazon.  Patreon was a good fit... until they decided to shit the bed.  "Night of the Nude Succubus Orgy" was also very lengthy.  That I think could be expanded into a full novel.

The instability at Patreon has forced me to reassess priorities. Ebook royalties are a reliable portion of my income. It's been a while (2 years) since I've put any out and I want to rectify that in 2019.  This doesn't mean I'll be abandoning the CYOAs.  Given how chaotic my writing process is, there will no doubt be times when I want to tinker with game mechanics and programming rather than working on whatever ebook I'm supposed to be working on!

Here are some candidates to get done in 2019.  I'll probably expand them out into full posts later to discuss in more detail.

A new A Succubus for collection
While I haven't been as active on Literotica as I would like, I do now seem to have accumulated close to enough material for a new collection.  I don't have my stockpile of stories to use as collection (or even Patreon) exclusives.  About 4 or 5 brand new ones should be enough to finish a collection.

Succubus Summoning 301
This is probably the thing I need most to stabilise my royalty income.  While I am terrified of fucking it up, I think I might just sit down and let the story go where it wants to go rather than obsessing about not wanting to let people down.  (Please don't kill him, Rosa and co.  I have bills to pay!)

These two are my highest priority.  The collection because it's easy.  Succubus Summoning 301 because it's long overdue.

Tales from H-space
I've been trying to figure out what to do with the bestiary shorts for a while.  I think they could make a nice themed short story collection, possibly a regular ongoing series.  It would require rewriting and expanding the better ones into "proper" short stories as I don't think they are high enough quality in their current state (and I never really felt I got the accompanying "monster manual" file entries right).

This could be an easy win.  Or the rewrite process could be nightmarish.  The concept as a slightly more grimdark version of the Monster Girl Encyclopaedia was always a good one.

Sandwiched by
I've given up trying to chase my tail on hitting a regular monthly schedule with these novellas.  I want to relaunch them with new covers.  I think the best way to do that is to stealthily write them all in advance, then release them on a monthly basis over a year.  Another stealth project I'll keep quiet on until the whole thing is done and ready to release.

Okasare Kenny
Similar to Sandwiched by.  This is perfect as a novella serial released monthly over a year.  I already know I can't chase my tail in terms of deadlines, so the best thing would be to write it all out in advance.

Both have been screwed up by me in the past through a twitchy desire to rush something—anything—out.  I want to get away from that mentality and just focus on getting the proper groundwork done to be able to release them as I originally intended.

Then some speculative projects.  I'm not going to force myself to work on set things given that it made a mess of my productivity last year.  These will jump up and down my priority queue depending on how burning hot the desire to work on them is.

Night of the Nude Succubus Orgy
I think the short story could be expanded into a full novel.  It would likely be a strange mix of nasty period horror (the initial sacrifices and rituals) mixed with modern-day pornfest.  Could work.  Maybe…?

The Succubus Trap
The Nicole novel.  The first couple of chapters are really hot (Nicole and Madam Voluptula tag-teaming to fuck someone's brains out) and I think it would do really well as a novel, which makes my inability to get beyond chapter 3 incredibly frustrating.  Maybe I'll finally figure out how to bust through that block.

The Succubus Invasion
Another one I've already written multiple chapters for, but haven't quite got it to click.  It's also a strange mix of nasty sexual horror and goofy pornfest moments.

Jackson in HRPG-World
Less a novel than 8 short stories set in game-parody worlds.  I wrote the first four, hit a wall on the fifth and it's been stuck in development hell ever since.  Given I have nearly half the material written already, I should really focus on getting this done and published.

Then the really speculative stuff.  I don't think I'll get to these, but I might suddenly get a burning desire to work on them and I want to try and raise my productivity by letting enthusiasm dictate what projects to work on rather than trying to brute force specific ones.

Bubblelicious
Themed collection set around a soapland-style massage parlour.  Stemmed from a single short story idea.  This one is probably super-speculative,

Invading the Hive
A H-space novel, themed collection?  The bee girl entry for the H-space monster girl bestiary ended up getting a little long and complex.  I think it will likely be seven or so elaborate sex scenes featuring bee/wasp monster girls stitched together with some kind of underlying plot.  I've had a similar idea for a slime girl cave kicking around for years.  Maybe another series prospect?

There are others, but they're either far from ready or been left on hiatus long enough to require a degree of archaeology to dig up.  I might post them as glimpses into my ideas file for patrons.

My plan is to try and be more flexible in 2019.  Trying to force things out backfired far too often in 2018.  I'd rather have a 10-hour day working on some of the speculative stuff, than limping to a 2-hour day trying to brute force a more "important" project.

Anyway, that's a glimpse of my current ebook project plans.  Let's hope 2019 will be a lovely year filled with sexy succubus smut!

-manyeyedhydra

9 comments:

  1. I'm really looking forward to see more of Nicole and her friends, as well Phil & Co. and also the sequel to Night of the nude succubus orgy that I found really delicious!
    Wish you good luck for this year!

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  2. Is it possible that you are simply spinning to many plates at once? That was a very long list of projects there. It's great news that you have so many ideas on the go but if you tried to give your attention to all of them I suspect that none of them would ever see completion.

    It would be awesome to see some more ebooks from you. They are nice and simple for us to buy & download, there is enough content in them that we loose ourselves in the story (like with most good books) and given the uncertainty of patreaon and literotica, might also be the most stable option for you too?

    but whatever you do, please don't be chopping up your stories into tiny pieces. It kills them just as surely as it would a living being. The readers imagination has to take off on a runway that is only 3ft long before it hits the "to be continued" line.


    With regards to trying to avoid killing phill, have you considered some capacity for replacement in case of accidental breakages? Kind of like verde finding a way to grow new phills in her garden or whatever kinky methods of fixing the problem when preventing it from ever happening doesn't work out.


    Just some thoughts in the vague hope that one of them might actualy be useful to you amigo. I hope none of it sounds over opinionated or anything.

    I look forward to seeing what M.E.Hydra twistedness 2019 might bring.
    Happy new year to you and yours. May it be creative and prosperous.

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    1. Yup, I think Warren also voiced the same concerns below. I know I should just pick 2 of these and work on them until done. Every time I've tried this, the wheels fall off after a couple of weeks and my writing productivity drops to a trickle. On the plus side, I never really toss anything in the trashcan, so most of these projects are already at varying degrees of completion. I'm hoping that by keeping myself flexible to work on them when the mood takes me, I might actually get some of them to fruition this year.

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  3. Good to hear you havn't forgotten about Okasare Kenny.

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  5. I do know that there are some chyoa erotica series on Amazon so it is possible to do it in Ebook format. One series I read (With monster girls) has it set up so your choices are links that jump you to different parts of the book (like one of the old written chyoa books). As a side note I was going through your old post and came across your problem with machine translations. Ironically the MGQ discord i'm on has a tutorial/solution for them and if you or anyone is interested I can drop a link for either the tutorial or group. (the group has been mentioned on DArgoth's site a few times i think)

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    1. I think I've read the same books. Those are possible, although I think they need to be relative simple - small degree of interaction, long passages of text. I probably should have started with something like that, but couldn't keep the gamer in me on a leash and had to come up with some form of crossover between Fighting Fantasy and Monster Girl Quest! I might give an ebook CYOA a go at some point if I can think of the right plot.

      Dropping a link to that tutorial wrt machine translation would be very much appreciated. (I also need to get into the discord thing myself...)

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  6. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B798PYbcn-Q1eGc3SEVmRGxKaTA
    it's titled loss of cause and effect, there is a read me in the folder. As for the discord I can send you a link at anytime you'd like if we can work out a secure method (i think i get lynched if all your fans flooded channel). Fair warning the channel of death and desire is as it's name implies and was originally made because of Gnosis.

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  7. I can't wait to finally read Succubus Summoning 301, hopefully you make it lengthy.

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