by Lazarus Black
I am never quitting caffeine again.
After a very long trek across the country and back doing conventions including San Diego Comic-Con (aka Comic-Con International) and GenCon and DragonCon, I needed a break. I didn't get it. Not complaining. My family needed me.
And in doing so, I somehow decided that I would save money by cutting out my morning coffee.Â
Bad. Baaaaaaaaaad. Never again. More than just the caffeine headache punished me. Depression snuck in out of nowhere. My ADHD got worse – only able to focus on the negative of everything around me (though there is a lot). And minor obstacles delaying my writing career appeared to be an insurmountable, even though I knew they wasn't.
I'm still waiting on reviews. I know 2 readers for a fact are in the middle of it. I know several others have long TBR piles to get through before even attempting it. All I can do is wait. I would love to put more books in people's hands right now - but I am almost sold out of the first print run, and my daughter just started art school and all my book profits went to her art supplies. *shrug* What are you gonna do?
I hesitate to release the eBook for several reasons. First is that I really should have positive reviews to promote the eRelease with. Without a campaign promoting it's value and quality, it will just die in the algorithm and languish in obscurity. Second, and this is new, AI companies are illegally scraping copyrighted works to train their software with to ruin authors lives. And many of them are literally illegal. As in, people are buying ebooks, then cracking them and sharing them on illegal website libraries for others to read for free, and the AI companies are using these cracked illegal copies. I would love every AI company to be disassembled and every person involved with their development severely punished for human rights violations, but that's not going to happen. (Sorry, topic is one of the triggers for my depression.)Â
So I am thinking about ways to fund a second run. Kickstarter might be an option, if they don't take issue with it being a second print run instead of the first. I am still selling the cover artwork as high quality prints on http://Lazarus.Black, so anyone interested in helping the cause, that would make a difference. But it will likely not be enough by itself. I was approached about a writing job for a company, but I won't hold my breath. The two previous projects I was approached with died almost instantly. It's the nature of the business. Worse, creatives are essential to projects but companies absolutely hate it - which is why they are trying to force us into extinction with AI generated content.
Oops. I'm spiraling again. Sorry.
My next post will more positive. But at least now you have a better window into who I am.
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy my stories.