Changing Plans

Sustainable pace, and snacks, are key to staying productive as a writer.

If my experiment works, MFS will become the place where you, the reader, can read and give feedback—and help to shape—the stories published here.

Recap

When I began this Substack, my plan was to focus on establishing a cadence of publishing fiction and getting both my first novel, The Good Killers, and my nonfiction book, Security Issues of Personal Medical Devices, available on Amazon. After I finished the MFS series for the stories Coyotes in Winter and Where This Mystery Takes Us, I simply cleaned up the manuscripts a bit and made them available as ebooks on Amazon. (More info on all these can be found at the Books section of MFS.)

As a result of my initial plan, at the beginning of 2024, I had a novel, two novelettes, and a nonfiction book out on Amazon, two novelettes and several short features published on MFS, and a novella under way (as My Favorite Suspects). I had some book sales and had reached the first Substack milestone of 100+ subscribers 🥰.

Now, halfway into 2024, I’ve completed the novella—the last chapter coming in the next week—and have announced the next mystery story series, They Also Breathe Fire.

That was fun, but, it’s not gonna be sustainable. Time for a new plan.

Literally my expression when I wrote the next line

What Could Be Next?

If you’ve been following the My Favorite Suspects story series, then you may have noticed that it’s the longest story that I’ve published on this site (so far). It currently sits at 27,000 words, which puts it solidly in novella territory. Considering that it started as a short story of about 3,500 words, that’s quite a change! And, honestly, I’d like to push it out a little further. I feel like there is more that can be explored in the characters to bring out their motivations and provide more context. There’s at least another B-story in there.

To be a writer is to conquer fear, or something, I don’t know, maybe I’m overthinking this whole writer jazz, I mean, it’s not like anyone really reads these captions anyway. I’m honestly surprised that anyone reads any of my posts. On a side note, have you checked your own stats lately? Did you notice that you can see both how many people open your emails and, even worse, how many actually read the email all the way to the end? That’s pretty freaky, and a little depressing, considering how few actually read all the way to the end. Anyway, I digress.

Lessons Learned

But… I’ve been listening to your feedback, and I understand that you’ve having difficulty keeping up with novella-length fiction in serial format.

Another lesson I’ve learned over the past year is that I don’t have the bandwidth to work on both MFS and separate novels, as I tried to do with The Good Killers. For this current series and the next, my plan is to publish novella-length stories to the MFS Substack, and then take those novellas and expand them to full-length novels.

Here’s my thinking:

1. My publishing schedule for MFS really helps me stay on track and productive as a writer.

2. The MFS format constraint of 1,000-1,400 words per episode also makes a nice, singular unit of action that can be plugged into a novel-length chapter of about 5,000 words.

3. From a practical standpoint, novel-length fiction sells better on Amazon.

4. From another practical standpoint, a novella is about the longest work that someone can follow in serial form.

Based on my experience punching My Favorite Suspects from 3,500 words to 27,000 words, I think I can push it out to a short novel length—again, because I think there’s more story there, and those additional elements would be easier to follow as a single publication and not serialized.

My current draft of They Also Breathe Fire is novella-length. I’d also like to see if I can push that out to novel length. That story is based on the Rossi/Lopez characters and there is backstory and subplots that I’d like to incorporate. I think, again, it will serialize better as a novella.

Benefits for You

If this experiment succeeds, then I may have found the formula that I can follow to accomplish my long-term publishing goals while managing a separate career and raising a family. MFS will become the place where you can read and give feedback—and help to shape—the stories published here.

By enriching the serialized books specifically for longer-format publishing, I’ll be able to provide more value to my readers than if I had simply reformatted the MFS-serialized manuscript. I can also use the books for nice gifts to my most avid readers! Who knows? Maybe I’ll go crazy and give them different endings!

Hey, Look, New Subscribers!

Lastly, I’d like to give my sincere regards to the new subscribers and followers! I hope you’re able to find everything you want to see. Be sure to check out the Story Guides for chapter-by-chapter listings of the fiction on this site.

And we’re done!

Thanks for reading all the way to the end.

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