Given last year's prolonged absence, I figured I should make an update post as per what's going on with the website this year. Well, to be honest, I don't really know. I've gotten a little bit of the creative spark back, but I'm having a hard time maintaining it. I'd like to do some more erotica work this year, but while I have ideas and plans for projects, I'm having an extremely hard time making any of it come together. The Break Year did little to recuperate me, and while I've always been a neurotic flake of a writer, I've really gotten lost in the mental weeds over what to do and to what degree I even want to keep doing this kind of writing. I have many long-winded reasons, but you’re not here to read my excuses, you’re here for sexy fun stories.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I can provide them like I used to. Maybe this is just an extended, but still temporary slump I’ll eventually climb out of, or maybe this is the wind down to finally quitting erotica. I doubt the latter, but then again, I haven’t felt this scatterbrained and burned out about things for this long a stretch before.
Still, as I said, I have some ideas. Partly, I would like to continue working on the Omnymphotents concepts, both fleshing out the Omnys themselves, as well as doing shorts and scenes involving their Empowered. While I'd still like this to be a sillier, just-for-fun series, I’d also like to build on it a bit more solidly than just doing random flash fic sex scenes.
Part of me has also wanted to return to more adventure-focused erotica, alla the Civero, Centurions, Jahi’s Invasion, or Paramour Powers settings. However, it’s hard to keep these kinds of adventure stories consistently sexy; some have barely any actual sex at all, and the plots certainly aren't always erotic. Just look at how little sexy stuff is in the Phallica series; I think those stories are still enjoyable, and definitely some readers like them, but I also know some readers will probably be turned off by stories with a lack of sexual content, or they just don't want to slog through the superhero and sorcerer adventure elements to get to the good parts. So, I'm not sure how much I should really pursue this angle. Obviously, I'll ultimately just write what I want to write, but if it turns out writing genre-fiction-with-occasional-sex-scenes is a dead-end for most readers, then it's probably something I won't bother continuing.
As for the Sex Mage World, I have to admit, I really feel like I’ve wrung the concept out as thoroughly as I’m going to, as far as stories I’m interested in actually writing. I know I say this every year, and every year, I manage to come up with new SMW stories, but it’s really gotten to the point where I feel like every time I sit down to write a new SMW story, I am just retreading the same scenarios and phrases I’ve already milked to death. Yes, there is still a ton of potential yet untapped, but a lot of that potential lies in stories I just don’t feel much interest in. For example, writing a political drama about the Queendoms is the most obvious thing I should have already written five years ago, but I hate political dramas and don’t know how I’d go about writing one even if I didn’t, so that kind of story is probably never happening.
That said, I do still have a couple of SMW ideas in the works, but no idea when/if they’ll come to fruition. And moreover, I’m sure whatever else I write will probably involve some very Sex Mage-type sexual content anyway, even if it doesn’t literally involve Sex Magic, so hopefully even my non-SMW stuff will still appeal to those looking for that.
So, what does this all add up to? Well, I’m sure I’ll probably end up tossing out some random Little Scenes here or there, probably futz around with the 3D model stuff some more when the whim takes me, but otherwise, this is likely to be another low-productivity year. The projects I do have in mind, I’m going to have to take my time getting to and working on, and might fall through anyway.
As for monetization efforts, the Patreon was automatically closed because I didn’t utilize it for too long, and I’m going to keep it closed for the foreseeable future; I can always reactivate it when I think I’m ready to go back to it. I think instead, I would like to focus on making some more ebooks, because I keep getting sales on those, despite how irregularly I publish. I might make more money in a year on Patreon, but that only works if I have the productivity to justify its use, whereas ebooks can keep making sales even during unproductive periods. For right now, the plan is to turn the aforementioned iffy projects into novellas or anthologies for sale, some of which I’ll still post for free on the blog if and when I publish.
And that’s about it. Thanks again for your support, and we’ll see how this year pans out.
