I just googled “constructive procrastination portmanteau” because I could swear there’s a goofy word for what I’m doing right now. The irony is about to make my head explode.

Anyway, before that I moved Healers off Gumroad and enrolled it on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program (KDP Select on the back end). That means that all my stuff is currently only available on Amazon — ebook, print, and KU if you have a subscription. I could actually offer the print versions elsewhere under those terms, but I never dove into figuring out any other system, so those are only on Amazon too. But by happenstance, not necessity.

This is not because of undying loyalty to Amazon. Just to be clear. Nor do I think I really have to apologize to anyone for my decisions, something I’ve done frequently over the years and want to stop doing. I’m trying this out to see if I can reach a wider audience again. More readers read the first two Healers books on KU than on Gumroad and Kobo combined. The third one has never been on it. We’ll see how it goes. That’s all.

More dauntingly, I lined up the first ad I’ve run in 5+ years. It felt weird. But exciting. Just for The Healers’ Road, which will go on sale for 99c on Dec. 12-19 on Amazon US. (Annoyingly, you can only run such a sale in one country, once every three months. I am aware of the rest of the world, I promise. THR‘s all-time readership is only 75% from the US.)

Working on a second ad in the same timeframe. We’ll see how it all goes. Maybe it’s easy and effective and this becomes the new normal. If not, well, I’m out about fifty bucks and that’s that. I think I just got tired of saying “oh, I’ve been doing this for 9 years, but I haven’t advertised since 2015. No reason.” It’s not out of principle; it’s out of lack of focus and the existential fear of being perceived. And I’ve managed to get enough distance from my work that the latter isn’t as much of a factor. It’s not a pure product to me — it’s very much a passion project — but it’s a project, and not literally me as a person. An important distinction.

Otherwise, still working on the 3-novella sidestory cycle for Therapist and the concept/very early outlines for Healers 4. The Healersverse side story I had talked about previously is (heh) sidelined for now, because I didn’t like how the dynamic between the leads was developing. Unraveling it and course-correcting would delay Healers 4 even further: more productive procrastination! Let’s just skip it for now.

Finally, confession time: There’s a lot of talk in self-publishing spaces about audiobooks. Audiobooks are great. I don’t have one yet for two reasons. 1) cost* and 2) I don’t have canonical pronunciations of most of the made-up names and words in Healers, and I’m fine with that.

* not so much that I don’t have it in-pocket — I have enough for at least one book — but that the books haven’t made enough to finance their own audiobooks yet. Which is probably backwards according to hustle culture, but oh well. The gold rush can continue without me for the time being.