This is kind of just a vent post. I've self-published a bunch of novels, and a few years ago a small publisher published three of my science fiction novels. I churn out about two novels per year, and have four or five right now that are ready to be published, I'm just waiting for the voice actor I'm working with to finish recording the audiobook of the second book of a historical-fantasy trilogy I finished writing and editing a year or two ago. I'm thinking of producing my own audiobooks myself.

I'm working on a new novel that I'm really excited about, one that's been in the back of my head for at least fifteen years, and it's coming easier to me than anything I've worked on in years. Yesterday I wrote seven pages in about an hour in the morning before work, which is a lot, and very fast, even for me, but it's not an unusual rate with this book. This book is almost three hundred pages long right now, I only started it about six weeks ago, and I've written it so fast that when I look back at earlier sections, I barely remember writing them, and can enjoy them almost like a random reader, and they seem pretty good to me, but I'm pretty sure that when I publish this book, no one is going to read it, and no publisher will risk publishing it.

My current projects are:

• historical-fantasy LitRPG trilogy about four modern American teenagers teleported to 11th century Byzantium (only the first volume has been published, there's also an audiobook);

• Imagine if the OG StarCraft was a novel, but more communist (finished but not yet published);

• Freya McFadden's The Housemaid, but with a stand-in for Jeffrey Epstein (finished but not yet published);

• a diary about working as a blue collar worker. I was publishing it online chapter-by-chapter until it got me in trouble with the police, even though I kept everything in the book vague and anonymous. I can’t publish it until I leave the country;

• What if a planet identical to Earth appeared on the other side of the solar system right now, and we found out that people lived on that planet, except on that planet, it's the year 1492? (I'm writing the first draft now)

I write these books for fun and out of boredom. Sometimes I'll get home after a long day of work, I'll be exhausted, I'll take care of dinner and my kids and keeping the house clean, I'll check the news and watch youtube or tiktok for an hour or two, and then there will just be nothing left to do except write and research. I have been immersing myself in the Aztecs and the Maya for a week or two now, for instance.

Still, I'd also like to be a famous writer and pay the bills with my work, but years have gone by, and I would guess that thousands of people have spent money on my books total. For this to be more than a hobby, that needs to be thousands of people per month, not over the course of, like, six years or so, which is how long it's been since I "went pro" as a writer. I know people are going to tell me that I should advertise and promote my work, and I actually spent a lot of time doing that, and it just drove me nuts and went nowhere. People here can critique or offer advice if they want, I'm just venting. I didn't post links to my books but if you're curious about them, you can message me. They were on libgen, but that never works anymore. I'm not sure if they're on Anna's Archive.