Superego 4 Update

Also some general announcements about this newsletter and my writing

Not the actual view out the window from my home office.

Just to update you all, the first draft for Superego 4, the final book in the series, is now finished. It’s an extremely incomplete first draft at 75,000 words, and I suspect it will be the longest book in the series when I actually go back and fill in everything that’s missing, but hey, it’s on its way. It looks like now it won’t be out until next year, but at least I’m not going to George R. R. Martin it. The final fate of Rico and Diane has been put to paper.

BTW, I normally would put this sort of announcement in Frank Thoughts, but I’ve decided to stop doing those as I found them kind of lazy. I want to focus on doing more new and interesting things with my Substack, so that means actual book announcements will be back to being their own things. My goal with this Substack was always just to write what I enjoy and not worry too much about how well it does (though money is always motivating), and to do that, I need to keep pushing myself and not fall into any comfortable habits.

I’m not sure what will happen after I finish Superego 4. I do want to spend my time writing longer, more involved short stories like It’s Coming. As for the next novel, I’m not sure. I do have plans for more Hellbender, but that series has unfortunately been kind of niche (though I love it) and I might want to try some other things as well. Also, I feel awkward promoting my side stuff (this Substack and my novels) too heavily now that my day job is writing and I feel like I need to focus most of my energy on promoting what actually puts food on the table (BTW, subscribe to Bentkey! Check out Chip Chilla and Mabel — they’re great!).

Anyway, I now have to get Superego 4 into the actually readable second draft. Then the alpha reader — the lovely and talented SarahK — will give it a read. Then I will make the third draft for beta readers and will do a call out for those (and will also post the beta here on this Substack for all paid subscribers curious to see it). After adjustments from the feedback, it will need to be edited (and SarahK has edited all the previous Superegos which takes a lot of time as she’s very busy). So, again, I’d expect the final version to be out well into next year. And then I’ll have a complete series! That will necessitate some major promotion despite any apprehensions

This is the other image ChatGPT 4 and DALL-E 3 made for me. It hasn’t quite mastered lettering, but you can see it’s trying really hard.

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