Post-mortem
Discover more from Pulp Empire
Last week, I shut down the Witchblood Kickstarter and announced the end of my efforts in publishing. I made an outright plea to friends, family, and fans last Monday. It fell on deaf ears as it failed to move the needle at all on the project.
I put a ton of effort into prepping the Kickstarter and trying to make it as wide a launch as I could. That clearly did not work. Maybe it was the change of genre. Maybe it was simply hubris on my part that I created an idea that would intrigue anyone. I don’t really have that answer. If you chose not to back the Kickstarter after checking it out, I’d actually love to hear why. You can respond to this newsletter by mail or on Substack and let me know your thoughts.
Witchblood was my last-ditch effort to try to make a career out of publishing my fiction. The mental effort needed to throw my work out into the world and have it met with a wall is simply too much for me now. I came down with the worst flu I’ve had in a decade this week and I have to think the stress of the Kickstarter didn’t help me any.
My books will remain in print. My website is still up to help people find them. I don’t have a desire to make anything else anytime soon.
I’m not done writing.
I phrased my post on social media carefully. I still have DC: A New Dawn articles published every weekday on Medium through this Friday. I still plan to complete the two-year project with a launch of the road between Millennium and Invasion next year. That will come with a format change as I look at a week’s worth of comics in a single post, simply because that fits the format of both Medium and Substack better. I’ll have more on that in the next newsletter.
I likely will continue to write fiction as well, but I have no plans for any kind of publishing any of it. Maybe someday I’ll try submitting it to publications. But you shouldn’t expect much publication news from me anytime soon.
I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t hurting.
I begged people to support me and not a single person showed up from all my posts and pleading. I realized a long time ago that my family had no faith in my writing abilities. Siblings and parents treated it as a joke. I took those jibes. I let them fuel me as I worked my ass off to do this while also working a full-time day job. Maybe that’s why I’m so angry that I have so little to show for it. I’ve proved them right by not moving the needle at all.
Pretty sure I’ve got a lot to talk to a therapist about.
And more to come…
Pulp Empire will still come your way just about every Monday. I have other irons in the fire, including a few stories sitting at other publishers waiting to see the light of day. I’m ironing out the final plans for paid subscriptions here. I’m simply closing off the avenue that quite possibly brought a lot of you to this newsletter in the first place. If you want to take this as your chance to hop off, that’s okay. Like the project though, I’d love it if you would share why. If you don’t wish to do so in public, you can email me at nicholas.ahlhelm@writeme.com with your thoughts.
Currently reading: Too Many Bullets by Max Allan Collins. Currently listening: 1989 (Taylor’s version) by Taylor Swift. Currently watching: Harley Quinn Season 2.
I’ll meet you back here in seven days.
Post-mortem
I'm glad that I have a family that does encourage my writing efforts, unlike your situation. Therapy might help; it has for me.
You just reminded me of the fact that Thomas Hardy gave up writing novels after "Jude The Obscure" wasn't received well by the public, and he only wrote and published poetry for the rest of his career. So there is life after fiction.
As I said before, I enjoyed reading your take on DC and Marvel comics on Medium, and maybe a longform book version of that could fill the void you would have giving up fiction.
Lots to digest. I wouldn't take it personally. I can't tell you if you should or not. But remember that money's tight with inflation skyrocketing since COVID. My sales have dropped off a third since last year. I've stopped eating out 3 months ago because I need that money for elsewhere -- combined with outrageous fast food prices. I don't make a living at writing. Only a small percentage of writers do. But I am *compelled* to write. That's what keeps me going. I simply can't not write. I've found the time I put into publishing is worth it for me. I've self published a little and work closely with a small publisher. All my books make enough to pay for the time I spend publishing. Very few pay for the time I put in writing. But I'm writing for me, not money. I'm publishing for money. And speaking for myself, I never support crowd funding. Don't ask me why. Occasionally I'll buy the product afterward, but there are so many book on my to-buy list that most of what I buy are not new books. Maybe try some Kindle-only work, since that take virtually no time to publish. Good luck.