Disclosure: the series I’m working on has nothing to do with pirates, I’m just an asshole who likes to talk in pirate-speak sometimes.

I’m 50ish pages in already. I spent a few weeks plotting out the course of the series, and I think it’s good to go. This time I’m aiming for a 5-star production, so we’ll see what happens. So far I’ve been trying to strike in the 3-3.5 star range, but as it turns out people tend not to review things of “average” quality. A lack of reviews leads to a lack of sales, which also leads to a lack of reviews. Ultimately people review things they really like or really hate; seeing a genuine 3 star is rare. Those types of reviewers are out there, but the volume of exposure you have to have in order to grab one of them is pretty high based on my back of the envelope numbers.

As for why I’d intentionally ship an “average” product, it’s pretty simple: not every interesting concept is a great concept. For instance, I consider the interpersonal relationships in Her Things very interesting, but not intensely gripping.  It’s fun to watch the characters interact with each other as you go through the story, but not really memorable in the long run. No matter how good breakfast was this morning, you probably won’t remember it a year from now, you know?

It’s fun, but hard to sell.

This time I’m cranking everything up to eleven by working on what I think is an interesting and great concept, a wee lil’ epic spanning three or four novels.

Hopefully writing them will be just as fun as the previous two novels.