Since The Dark Necromancer went to our editor I've been working on a handful of other projects. Unfortunately, my brain doesn't like to keep going in a series when the last installment is not completely finished and ready for release.
This is one of the reasons you got The Prisoner of Tardalim before The Dark Necromancer.
But the extremely long time it took to write TDN burnt me out on the overarching Kalda storyline. That coupled with the shift in our family dynamics by my wife returning to the work force left me unable to really commit a lot of time to working on Elven Secrets.
I tried a Sword & Sorcery tale, but even that was rough to work on. So I looked at something else...
Rewind two years ago. My wife asked me to put some stories I told verbally to our kids (and luckily recorded) onto paper. But I was so mentally focused on finishing The Dark Necromancer that I put it off. I tried using some speech to text options but it created a single block of un-punctuated text, which just stressed me out.
Fast forward to September of 2024 I finally began to put the words of those stories to paper, transcribing my recordings by listening to them at half speed. About that time is when I collaborated with my friend, Rob York on a Kickstarter for his film, Curse of Crom 2. As my newsletter subscribers know, I offered a digital bundle of my books to people backing the campaign, but for my own readers who already owned my books I offered that newly transcribed story since it was in the same narrative vein as Rob's film.
I said I wasn't going to put that story on Kickstarter, and in fact I was really only going to keep it for my kids and maybe occasional book signings.
Well, I'm eating my words.
Finalizing that book, which is now When Corn is Cursed, made me realize I had a lot more to offer readers. In fact, I had about 20 books worth of recording all similar in size to When Corn is Cursed.
And that's when Spookies™ was born.
What's Spookies?
Spookies™ is a series of children's fantasy thriller/horror stories set in the Legends of Kalda universe, but taking place on Earth. Some of mine and my father's readers know that my dad's original story ideas started as a portal fantasy. In the 90's version, a father and son are whisked from a camping trip in the Unitas and taken to world of Varland also known to our Kaldean characters (such as Iltar and Cornar) as Kalish.
These stories take that original premise of bridging our world to Kalda, but with certain elements of the Kalda universe bleeding into our world.
As I mentioned above, I had 20 stories worth of recording. As of the writing of this article, fourteen of those are ready for editing.
You can read all about the process on the campaign for the first four books: When Corn is Cursed, Don't Go to the Mall, It Came from Under the Shed, My Grandpa is a Mad Scientist. But the TL;DR, it's much faster than writing a Tales of the Amulet novel, or even a novella.
There are plans to make 64 of these stories (I've already got 34 ideas/outlines on top of those first 20).
But with so many stories I needed to figure out a way to raise money to cover production costs. Of course, crowdfunding is the answer to that. But what kind of crowdfunding?
Direct Crowdfunding
Because we're still in the middle of fulfilling The Dark Necromancer we can't launch another Kickstarter. Plus we'd have to take down Elven Secrets and I don't want to do that. You can't have two Kickstarters going at the same time, or the possibility of having two Kickstarters going at the same time.
When I finished the first four Spookies™ books we were still waiting on edits to come back for The Dark Necromancer. Throughout the winter I kept producing more Spookies™ stories, turning the recordings into manuscripts.
I intended to get the first of these stories out by the beginning of fall and start releasing one a month. But as we crossed into 2025 I doubted we'd have enough time to fulfill TDN's Kickstarter and run one for Spookies™ 1-4.
Then the idea came to me:
"Why not host a Kickstarter-esque campaign on our website?"
Shopify has all the tools that Kickstarter possess, except for reward surveys, but all that info is collected at check out. And if specific custom information outside what's collected is needed, all I need to do is message the customer.
A major difference with this route is that money is collected when someone "pledges" vs at the end of the campaign. But we can make the page look very similar to a Kickstarter campaign, showing how much money has been raised, how many backers are particpating, and how much time is left.
Here is an example from the first Spookies™ campaign:
Sure, the interface is different from Kickstarter but its a format most people will be familiar with. In fact, it'll probably be easier for more people, particularly those who haven't used Kickstarter.
Now, there is a huge risk by crowdfunding this way.
Since you're collecting money at the time of backers "pledging" you're obligated to fulfill this campaign regardless of how much you raise. So, unless you're capable of fulfilling whatever you're crowdfunding without raising money I don't recommend doing this.
Plus an author's website is an "unknown platform" so there is resistance that needs to be overcome in order to get customers to purchase.
But for this project, which will only cost around $1200 for editing and is the only expense I need to factor in, I thought it an adequate risk.
Would I try this with Elven Secrets? No way. At least not yet, not until I know I can raise $20,000 or $30,000 directly on my website.
Spookies™, however, is a great way to test out this method.
Another plus for this is that since we're cutting out the middle man--the crowdfunding platform--we're able to charge less and make the same amount. Sure, some authors might keep the price the same as if they were on Kickstarter, but we can drop our "reward tiers" by about 10% and still make the same amount.
In conclusion, I think there is a lot of potential with selling directly to readers. We as authors can make a dedicated fulfill time career with a smaller readership than what's required to make the same earnings at retailers.