I’m making plans for a new Kickstarter campaign, once the rewards for Centurion have been delivered. I’ve mentioned some of my thoughts elsewhere, and while I have two RPGs on which I am working, I actually want to do something with fiction first. I’d like to gather all of my Sword Noir stories in one place. The publishing rights for “A Pound of Dead Flesh” have been back in my hands for a little while, and I’ve got two other stories done that I have not been sending out for two reasons: 1) I’m lazy and 2) there are few paying markets for fantasy and even fewer for heroic, sword & sorcery fantasy.
Kickstarting my own short story collections could sidestep the issues of heroic fantasy markets while still firing up my motivation to write. Another reason is to test the waters for possibly Kickstarting a novel. Three finished novels, one of which is a standalone and the other two are first books in series – a trilogy and a duology. Should I be successful with the short story collection, I might be able to take a run at funding a novel. I’d probably fund one that is already written, and then, if that’s successful, look at funding a novel and writing it over a year, delivering 10,000 words or so every month.
I know Kickstarting RPGs makes more sense. I’ve had success with those, both using Kickstarter and more traditional funding models – as in paying for it all myself. I have two games in development now, and either of those could be ready for November. While Kickstarting either Nefertiti Overdrive or Direct Action would be cool, I’m more enthusiastic about a short story collection.