never stop moving forward

Harley Ione Varyan - The Last Borg on The Spark . . . Moves Forward.

When opportunity comes a-knocking, you better be ready. 2024 is quickly proving to be a year of blessings, serendipity, and perfect timing. Those of you who’ve followed me for some time might know that my family’s housing situation hasn’t always been the best. We’ve moved more times than I’d like, each time to a place with a couple of pros and twice as many cons.

Our current apartment is the best we’ve had thus far, and it’s still too small for our family. Plus, it exposes my children to cigarette-smoking neighbors who are poisoning their lungs and the unbelievably loud noise of a major highway so close to our windows that it sounds as though we’re sleeping under an overpass.

Having just secured a new home for my family to move into this July/August, I feel very positive about the future. We move into a 3-bedroom, 2-bath townhouse in a quiet and safe neighborhood, where the only “noise” is the sound of happy children playing during recess in the elementary school a building over. The landlord is a good friend who knows my wife and children's struggles with our previous homes, and this townhouse is the answer to all of them.

We’re going to have a back porch for our hammock, a front porch for my Puerto Rican family to sit and gossip about neighbors, and a washer and dryer in the unit so I don’t have to take a hike with laundry for four, up and down stairs, and across fields of grass.

I know these are first-world problems, folks, but you have to understand that they pile up, and they're more than inconvenient; they’re time-consuming. All the time I spend dealing with these little annoyances would be better spent writing words into my manuscript.

Even though the move is still months away, I feel a tremendous weight lifted off my shoulders. We’re going to have space, privacy, and quiet, and while the rent is higher than I’m paying now, thanks to my fantastic day job as a medicinal cannabis farmer, I can afford it. And it’ll lead to more words being written.

This is wild. I take care of my family, write books, and grow cannabis. Everything I do is something I love. How lucky am I? Is this really my life?

Wow.

Today (Sunday, April 7th, 2024) features the penultimate episode of THE WRITER’S DEN. We’ll wrap up the following week with the finale. Then, BOOKS BY ADRIAN enters a new phase. While I have my ideas, I can only share so much with you just yet.

As many of you already know, I’m making a transition across my author platform. Instead of focusing on interview shows and using my platform to showcase other authors, I’ll be turning the tables on myself and instead showcasing my own work in a greater capacity.

The idea is to use my free time to develop my own content, rather than spend it coming up with interview questions and researching others. I truly loved doing the interviews, but making all those animations and organizing all the guests was very time-consuming and not at all conducive to the writing and completion of a novel. From now on, if I’m spending time on video production, or livestreams, it will be in the service of my own writing and my own career.

I hope that sounds less douchey and more entrepreneurial.

The new Books By Adrian Author Platform will look something like…

BOOKS BY ADRIAN

• Bi-Weekly Newsletter: This formerly weekly newsletter will now come your way every other week.

• YouTube:

  • Weekly Writing Sprints - Completing short stories, flash fiction pieces, and chapters of my second novel, MYTHIC: THE FACE OF GAIA.

  • Original Videos - Including Vlogs, BTS content, BookTube content like reviews and bookshelf tours, and select essay videos on my influences.

  • Readings - Scenes from audiobook chapters will be turned into animated renditions.

• Website or Patreon: This next part is still up in the air, as I could go one of two ways.

  • Either I re-launch my Patreon, producing audiobook readings of a chapter each month for my Patrons, and later collecting those into a full-length audiobook that others can purchase…

  • Or I can do the same exact thing on my own website. The downside is I think Patreon’s reputation and existing user base would net me more subscribers/patrons than my own website would. The upside is that hosting a membership plan on my own website would reap most of the profits, rather than sharing a portion with Patreon.

  • Like I said, the platform on which I’ll be releasing these audiobook chapter renditions is still to be determined, but you can expect a final announcement from me within the next month or so. Whichever option I decide to go with, you can expect the membership to be either $1 or $2 per month. Nothing crazy. There will also be a FREE tier where you can participate in polls and read my weekly blog.

• Discord? I am completely undecided if I should add my own Discord server into the mix.

  • It would mean promoting and maintaining a whole new community, which is, of course, a lot of work, but it could also prove very beneficial to the Patreon/Website Membership Plan.

  • There could be spoiler-talk channels where we can discuss my books, I could host Q&As, or movie-watch-parties…

  • The possibilities are endless, but I’ve tried it in the past and had no success. Perhaps this time will be different? Perhaps I should wait to see what size audience my Patreon brings in? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

I’ve already begun creating some of the content listed above. Following the finale episode of THE WRITER’S ROOM, I’ll be taking two weeks off of YouTube to dedicate some of my spare time to creating more of it and storing it up for a regular release schedule.

Lots of changes coming down the pipeline. I’m excited! And I hope you’ll love it.