A year later, I have four books on KDP and KU, and they’re making money. I’m not talking about a buck here and a quarter there. Think hundreds of dollars most months. Not riches…but would I have made more in tradpub? Not likely. So I tossed tradpub overboard, and for the first time in my 42 years as a published author, I control my writing career completely<\/em>.<\/p>\n What happened? Sad Puppies<\/a>. In researching the phenomenon I found people who were facing the same problems I was. They were writing adventure stories in the old style, and getting sneered at. They dared question the elites who dominate tradpub and con-oriented fandom, and were called every name in the book. I reached out to them, and they pulled me in the door, handed me a drink, and made me one of the gang. I was called a moral coward at one point for daring to embrace the Puppy culture, but by then I just laughed. I had already won that argument. I had new friends, and they had my back.<\/p>\n One of those friends is Brian Niemeier, a new author whose path into indie publishing has been very much the same as mine. His debut novel intrigued me: Nethereal<\/em> is a seamless blend of space fiction and a sort of theological fantasy that admits to a deeper strangeness in the universe than most are willing to accept. No spoilers here, but I will caution that people with an instinctive dislike of fantasy may not care for it. Radical materialists will probably loathe it. Their loss. In truth, I’ve never seen anything remotely like it. I’m now reading it a second time and will review it here as time allows.<\/p>\n So on that note, I’ll turn it over to Brian, who has a few words about his new novel. I bought it an hour ago and (obviously) haven’t read it yet, but I have this sneaking hunch that I’m not going to be disappointed.<\/p>\n First things first: thanks to Jeff Duntemann for lending me his platform. The higher elevation lets my voice carry farther. [Ed: About a mile less high than it used to be!] He’s given me a few digital inches to announce the release of Souldancer<\/em><\/a>, the sequel to my debut space opera-horror novel Nethereal<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n My indie publishing journey has felt like riding a spaceship at relativistic speeds. The past months have seemed like days, and in that time I’ve gone from an obscure SFF writer with a couple of short story publications to an obscure SFF writer with enough reader loyalty to get my first book into the Sad Puppies 4 top ten<\/a>.<\/p>\n I’m quite sure that my readers wouldn’t have had Nethereal<\/em> to suggest if I’d stuck with my initial plan of riding the tradpub rejection carousel. I can now focus on writing, and it took less time to release a second book than the big publishers often take to do initial edits. It’s a crazy time to be alive in a lot of ways (read the news much?) but it’s also the best time in recorded history to be a writer<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you’ve got a story to tell and the discipline to tell it in prose fit for public consumption, you can be an author. You don’t need the Manhattan crowd. The only people you need are readers. If your primary motivation for writing fiction is anything other than pleasing your readers, you really don’t understand writing.<\/p>\n Yes, the money is thin. It’s a long game. Hardly any authors ever got rich, even back before publisher advances began imploding. Self-published millionaires are likewise extreme outliers, but the data show<\/a> that indie allows more authors than ever to at least earn a decent living. Not only are NY publishers no longer the boss; they never were the boss<\/a>, and it’s not surprising that readers are flocking to authors who understand that publishing sovereignty rightfully belongs to those same readers.<\/p>\n And so to my new book Souldancer<\/em>. It’s a true sequel to Nethereal<\/em>; not the second part of a single story split into two halves [Ed: Or three halves?] like certain Hollywood adaptations of popular YA books that I will not name. The action picks up a generation after the first book’s ending, and we immediately get to see the changes that resulted from the prior story’s climax.<\/p>\n As Jeff said of Nethereal<\/em>, it’s almost impossible to say much more about Book 2 without spoilers. I can say that Souldancer<\/em> features stronger romance and horror elements than its predecessor-and yes, it’s scarier than a book that’s largely set in Hell.<\/p>\n I appreciate the chance to launch Souldancer<\/em> here, because my own SF sensibilities could justly be described as contrarian. Fans of Nethereal<\/em> (including Jeff) have told me that, for all of its nods to classic SF, gaming, and anime tropes, they’ve never read anything quite like it.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Announcing Souldancer<\/em>, Soul Cycle Book II by Brian Niemeier<\/strong><\/p>\n