Newsletter for the Week of 12/29/23- End Of Year Roundup, and Looking At The Year Ahead!

News: 2023 was a year worth remembering for me. It was the year I became a professional author. I sold my books. They are a physical thing you can pick up and hold, download on a phone or tablet, even listen to in the car. It’s a mind blowing thing. Just in Slumrat Rising, since March, I have written roughly three novels worth of books. I say roughly, because I’m not quite done with Vol. 3, but Vol. 2&3 are both considerably longer than Vol. 1. So… there is that.

Some rough numbers you might find interesting- Slumrat Rising peaked at #9 ranked on RR. Not long enough for me to make the cutoff and get the badge, damn it, but we did! It is now around 201, which is meh, but out of 53,000+ stories on the site, I consider very respectable. (Fun fact- To The Far Shore is ranked 91. I can’t explain it, but I’m happy about it.) Slumrat has 1.36 MILLION views. Which is nuts. With average views north of 8k, and that’s with Vol 1. Taken down.

Look, is it ego stroking internet points? Yes. Do I like having my ego stroked? Also yes. I’m like every other damn author- equal parts depression and insane optimism. Anything that keeps me tilted towards the sunny side will be cheerfully embraced.

Next year is going to be nuts. Slumrat Rising Vol.2 is dropping March 5, 2024, Vol. 3 is not officially announced yet, (I don’t think) but expect roughly November. They like to push ‘em out quarterly.

To the Far Shore get bumped up the priority list in January, meaning that I expect to have it ready to go in the spring- after Vol 2 drops, so ballpark May? It’s already written, and the first half is heavily, HEAVILY edited, so… not a ton of work left to do on it. I have a few covers made for it, and I’m trying to decide which one I really like. Oddly tough.

I also cannot be fucked to pay someone to typeset it for me, so… need to get vellum or something and learn to do that. Apparently it’s not a hard or long process. Here’s hoping that’s true.

Starling (Name subject to change because there are a MILLION books with the word “Starling” in their title) is still a work in progress. I have commissioned two covers for it to see what I like. One is… not great, TBH. It’s not terrible, but it’s not “Wow, I really want to read this super interesting looking book!” Eh. Fingers crossed for the second one. I will have it done and out the door between May and August with any luck.

Fair to say that 2024 is going to be PACKED.

Weird Philosophy Ramble:

I am going to keep this haiku-like in brevity, because I’m doing family stuff right now, and it could turn into a ten page essay if I don’t.

Why Gnosticism?

Well, first of all, there isn’t any such thing.

No really, there isn’t. There are various early Christian sects such as the Valentinians, the Sethians, and others, but they didn’t refer to themselves as such. They were not unorthodox- they were pre-orthodox. Literally, they predate the Christian Orthodoxy. Ireneus wrote against them at length specifically to try and prevent them from becoming Christian orthodoxy! So there are no “Gnostics,” even though we can talk about “Gnosticism.”

Ok, cool trivia, but why Gnosticism?

Well… if you dig into the RR tags for Slumrat Rising, you will notice one that doesn’t quite seem to fit. Not reincarnation- I know people wondered about that one for ages, but we got there. No, it’s the “Satire” tag. I didn’t put it there for no reason. I do think of Slumrat Rising as being, amongst other things, a satire. Specifically of Cultivation novels. And one other thing, but that would be kind of spoilers. Eh, you may be able to put it together at this point, but for now- secret.

Cultivation novels are almost exclusively built around a quarter-assed ripoff of someone else’s eighth-assed understanding of Daoist internal alchemy. Which is fine, in that we are all writing fiction, not academic papers. Points are not awarded for strict accuracy to the source material. BUT since most cultivation novels are pastiches of earlier cultivation novels, they use the same damn tropes over and over again. And out of the bullshit tropes that litter the genre, arguably the most BS ‘Get The Author Out Of Trouble’ trope is “enlightenment.”

God. Damn. Enlightenment.

Motherfucker sits on a rock for an unspecified period and BOOM! Now they can punch a hole through a mountain. But with their cosmic grade understanding of fire. Of all the horseshit. And the authors universally use the copout that “Enlightenment can only be hoped for, never sought,” to avoid having to explain why everyone isn’t sitting on rocks for unspecified periods of time to get mountain perforation power.

Alright, super, great rant. Gnosis, though?

Dear reader, do you know what the word “Gnosis” means? It is a Greek word meaning “Knowledge” with the implication of personal, experiential knowledge. In a religious context, which is how the word largely reaches us, it means knowledge one receives through direct experience of, or participation with, the divine.

You know. Enlightenment.

And here’s the thing about those early Christian sects, the thing that made them “Gnostic” was that they (speaking VERY broadly) felt that in order for someone to get to heaven, they had to have personal knowledge of the truth of the world. Not something they learned rationally, but directly experienced.

Yes, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but I think you can see where it’s going from here. And illusion or not, people are going to want dinner in a couple of hours, and I’m going to be the one cooking. So. I’mma go do that.

I hope the last few days of 2023 treat you well, and that your 2024 is spectacular.

Warby