So I have two I'm working on at the moment. One is a 30,000-word-per-book erotic novella series: El Sexorcisto! The first book of which is already finished. It's so mindnumbingly over the top that I unironically hate it. Here's one paragraph from it: The other is a more straightforward, non-erotic series, World of Catgirls. Strange thing about World of Catgirls is that I was already teasing with the basic concept for a while. In fact, the same concept that became World of Catgirls was also the original root of Enekai of Kollidor before that spun off into a more action-oriented story. It began as a Dragon Ball fanfiction, oddly enough, and it wasn't a catgirl but a Saiyaness. I kept imagining "what if some loser pleb had a Saiyan wife?" That tail. Oh my god, that tail. Anyway, I've been assimilated into the borg. I even got a nifty card! Except they spelled my first and last name wrong and it's for cardiology for some reason:
Interesting tidbit. I guess he assembles his harem after the big fight. LOL I like over the top stories, but that one is REALLY over the top. It's also great to have most of the book about some adventure, and not just about getting more and more hot babes in bed. So good luck, and let us know when you publish. I really like the World of Catgirl idea, but non-erotic? Can it be a harem and be non-erotic? I'm confused, feeling dizzy. Must. Sit. Down.
Won't say anything specific or spoilery, but spoilers no. That's the "climax". It's a story called El Sexorcisto! Harems and Ultraviolence. How would it not be so cartoonishly over-the-top? When I say "non-erotic", I mean more in the sense that it couldn't be labeled "erotica" like the first one. And even then, it's only erotic because of how over-the-top it is. Now that I think about it, the actually erotic part of it is about ten pages out of a bit over a hundred, so that probably doesn't count even then.
White Zombie — Black Sunshine The Rival Sons — Pressure and Time Pink Floyd — Nile Song The Flying Eyes — Nowhere To Run The Ramones — We Want The Airwaves Hawkwind — Silver Machine Led Zeppelin — How Many More Times? Greta Van Fleet — Highway Tune Deep Purple — Highway Star Electric Wizard — Solarian 13 Steppenwolf — Born To Be Wild
Loving that dinosaur rock soundtrack! You need a cover that looks like it was painted by Frank Frazetta or Boris Vallejo.
I had 16 pages of lewd content in a book of 250+ pages word document in length I still get hammered for the book being "non-stop sex", so, ya might want to be aware that even if the content is way low if its in there at all people are still going to call it erotica, even if the lewd moments serve the purpose of spotlighting how broken a character is.
Yes. There are readers so puritan that if your MC sees a flash of ankle of a lady, they'll give you 1 star and with a big "PORN! DON'T BUY!" It's ridiculous.
I mean, there are readers that complain about swearing in these stories, usually with the refrain that it makes the books "not kid-friendly." And that's treated as a negative. I understand that you're not supposed to go overboard with cursing, but even a casual "what the hell" gets this lobbied at authors sometimes. As a result, I sometimes wonder if one of the reasons gamelit consistently sells so well is because many readers are actually parents buying/gifting these books for their Let's Play-loving children. Which, as you can guess, concerns me because I genuinely do on rare occasions think about who my audience for a story might be. Or is it that most readers are middle-aged men who grew up back in the era where cartoons, comics, and video games were all treated as purely child-friendly tripe thanks to excessive censorship? I don't quite get gamelit's demographics.
I wonder what GameLit demographics, too. Most of the people I hear from on social media are well into their adulthood, but that doesn't mean that it's not dominated by 16 year olds.
I'm starting to consider a more minimalist cover. Not just because I don't want to blow through all my money for something that will likely sell ten copies total this year (though I do hope for ten thousand times that number!), but also because I came up with a hilarious idea that's just as over the top as the story. What's more, I've been playing with El Sexorcisto more and more until I accidentally increased the word count to 40,425. Don't worry, it all makes sense in context so it isn't really fluffy. And longer's always better. Why didn't I just put this into El Sexorcisto 2!, you ask? Because. And why am I planning sequels of a throwaway harem story if I don't expect it to sell well? Because I actually like writing this and want to see where it goes. Considering I'm going back to over-the-over-the-topness for Wukong X, it's good to get practice in. Also, I may have kinda sorta accidentally deliberately ended on a complete cliffhanger, so at least completing the arc will likely lead to more satisfied readers than not. As a result, it's entirely possible this may go up to 50k words in the end. Which is honestly fine by me, though it means World of Catgirls is getting pushed back.
Looks good! Might want to shift the guy's head & neck a little to left (his right), it's off center on the torso.
Now that I've formatted the story and closed it out, the final word count is 43,125 over roughly 200 pages. A solid novella. Book 2 will be roughly as long, and I'll get on top of that one in October. Right now, my plan is to publish a bunch of books in one single day: October 1st. There'll be three under my name: Ghosts of Smoke, El Sexorcisto!, and Eyes of the Pyramid. Then there's one under a pen name. Planned pricing is $3.99 for Ghosts of Smoke and the pen-name book, $2.99 for El Sexorcisto!, and permafree for Eyes of the Pyramid. EotP will be a subscriber bonus, though. That's 'Wave 1'. Wave 2 will start up as soon as I'm ready to publish the next batch, but I will instead release the books on different days. So let's say that I have Vulgar Display of Power, World of Catgirls, and El Sexorcisto! Z ready for November 1st somehow. I'll publish one of them on November 1st, then another on November 7th, then the third on November 14th. Repeat for December, where I'll have Maximum Overviolence, World of Catgirls 2, and El Sexorcisto! The Third for that month. This is a shit ton of work, yes, but I can get it done because I have both Write or Die on my side and I've learned the art of transcription editing (i.e. copying down your writing over again) which is actually pretty damn effective.
