Plum's Writing Plans - the future of Cyber Dreams, new projects, etc.

BIG SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't read book 6 of Cyber Dreams, you might not want to read this post. I don't think I'm posting anything specific, but general spoilers abound. Even so, I'm opening this post for all of my patrons because it will impact everyone.

Hi everyone!

This post has been in my head and in a dozen rough draft forms for a long time. I’ve been stressed about it, depressed about it—entirely too emotional, however you look at it. Anyway, this is going to be a long, perhaps meandering, post, but I hope you’ll bear with me and read it all. I’m mostly going to be addressing my readers who enjoy Cyber Dreams, but if you’re a Victor of Tucson (VoT) supporter, you may want to read through this post because I’ll be talking about future plans, in general, and some of those plans will involve VoT.

I want to start this post by expressing my deepest gratitude to each and every one of you. Your unwavering support, constructive criticism, and eagerness to read my work have been the driving force behind my writing journey. Thanks to you, I can confidently say that I am a better writer today than when I began.

Now, to rip the bandage off, I will take a break—something like two months—from writing cyberpunk. You might wonder why I’ve written “cyberpunk” and not “Cyber Dreams.” We’ll get to that after I explain why I’m taking a break:

I have a deep love for Cyber Dreams. The characters I've created in this series are like family to me, and the readers who enjoy this story are the best, kindest, and most supportive I could ever ask for. However, the reality is that Cyber Dreams doesn’t sell as well as my other ongoing fiction. It’s not just a slight difference in sales; it’s a significant gap. For every VoT book I write, I would need to write five Cyber Dreams books to keep up. The simple fact of the matter is that “fantasy” sells a lot better on Amazon than “cyberpunk.”

I’m okay with that. I love Cyber Dreams enough to keep going with that level of sales, especially with the support you all give me on Patreon, but I have a problem in the not-too-distant future: Victor of Tucson isn’t going to go on forever. I can’t do it. I can’t write about Victor in perpetuity like some other authors seem to be able to do with their characters. Victor’s going to reach certain levels of power in the next few books that, frankly, feel like the right point to let him fade into the sunset (or die or retire, or something like that – I won’t spoil Victor’s arc here.)

The point is that Victor pays the lion’s share of my bills. He supports my family. So, if I’m going to prepare for Victor’s tale to end, I have to get some other irons in the fire. I have to try my hand at another story or two and see if I can’t find something successful that might take Victor’s place, and, unfortunately, I need to get started on that now before I get to the end of the VoT series. If I wait until the last book is done, I’ll be too late.

So? What’s my plan?

I write six chapters a week. Three for one series and three for another. At that pace, I can complete two books in around four months. Knowing that:

•  I’ll keep writing Victor of Tucson with my current schedule – three chapters a week. I’ve just started book 9 and have plans for 10, but it might stretch to 12.

•  I’ll revise and polish a book from a new series I have almost completed—Vainglory.

• Because Vainglory 1 is almost complete, I won’t need four months for it. I think two is a safe bet to get everything revised and finished up.

• After I finish posting Vainglory book 1, I’ll start writing my next cyberpunk book, but it won’t be Cyber Dreams; it will be a new cyberpunk series set in the same world but in the megacity of New York (actually in “New Brooklyn,” but those details will come.) It’s tentatively titled Neon Dust.

• This story will take place around the same time as Cyber Dreams. Why? Because I want to maybe come back to Juliet someday; I don’t want to say this new story is 50 years in the future, for example, because then that will impact the timeline of Juliet’s life, and I’m not ready to say I’m done writing her story yet.

• It will be a more “zoomed-in” look at cyberpunk life. We’ll focus a little more on the day-to-day, the struggle and grind, the friends and enemies, the upgrades, and the setbacks. Everything will be done with stakes that are important to the characters but not necessarily world-impacting (like in Juliet’s story.)

• I intend to create characters you fall in love with, just like Juliet and Angel and Aya, but I know they won’t be the same, and—oh, God, why am I tearing up writing this? Jeepers!

• After I finish the first book of Neon Dust, I’ll evaluate how things are going with Vainglory and Cyber Dreams and everything else. Basically, I’ll need to decide at that point if I write the next Vainglory book, write the next Neon Dust book, or try to think of something new. I have 3 to 4 days a week I can work on something other than VoT (until that series wraps up), so it will be a matter of what I really want to do weighed against what the readers want most.

Having some new IP out there, hopefully gaining new readers, will make me feel a lot more comfortable about the impending end of Victor of Tucson. Of course, these new stories may flop, and then I’ll be back to square one, trying to think of some way to juggle all of this. Don’t get me wrong—I am not complaining. I can’t stress how grateful I am to be able to write for a living. Having some small success, though, has provided me with a new kind of anxiety: Can I keep it up, or do I need to start taking classes to get recertified as a teacher? (Yes, I let my certification lapse. Oh, the hubris!)

You might be wondering why I don’t go right back to Cyber Dreams after I finish posting Vainglory’s first book. First of all, let me say that I’m a wreck right now, having wrapped up the Epilogue of Cyber Dreams 6—a feeling much more profound than any other book I’ve finished. I can’t stress how attached I became to those characters, and, honestly, I feel like someone important just walked out of my life. It’s really kind of a trip . . . Anyway, I have some reasons for not wanting to continue that story, and I’ll post some of them here:

• Juliet is undeniably OP by now. She’s super-fast, super-skilled, has psionics, an AI “sister” that can hack into anything, and equipment and ships that are obscenely powerful and versatile. She’s built relationships with highly capable mercs, wonderful friends, and a True-AI. And let’s not forget about her powerful connections throughout the Sol System.

• This series started as a zoomed-in cyberpunk novel with all the gritty details, the worry of working with strangers, the fear of betrayal, and the thrill of a new upgrade. I can’t see that being the same going forward. We’re moving into space opera territory, and I’m not sure I can or want to write that. Maybe?

• I feel I did a lot right with this story, but I also know I made mistakes. I think Juliet ramped up in power and wealth too quickly. I intentionally pushed her into a massive conflict with a powerful megacorp and intended to keep that stewing on the back burner for much longer than I did. I guess giving her a powerful AI and forcing her to be on the run dictated the trajectory of the series more than I thought it would.

• I’m also the kind of person who does good writing when I’m excited about something, and right now, I’m not feeling that for Cyber Dreams. It feels “done” to me, but if you read today’s chapter, you can see that I left the possibility of more books wide open. I know my feelings might change after a break.

Finally, I'd like to say that, if you're a fan of Cyber Dreams who didn't see any of this coming, I'm very sorry if you're feeling upset right now. That was certainly never my intention. I hope you'll see where Juliet is, be happy for her, and then look to my next cyberpunk series for some fresh faces and fresh adventures.

All of this said, I fully anticipate that some (many, who am I kidding?) of you who sub to my Patreon for Cyber Dreams will cancel your memberships, and I hope you understand that I have nothing in my heart but gratitude to you for the time you spent here. I kind of hope you’ll stick around long enough to read the first few chapters of my revised Vainglory story (more about this coming in the next day or two), but if you don’t, I wish you well.

If you do cancel, please be sure to remain as a free member. That way, you’ll get news and updates from me, some of which might involve Cyber Dreams. I hope you’ll consider returning when I start posting my new cyberpunk fiction—as always, the first 25 chapters will appear on Patreon before they show up on RR or anywhere else.

Thank you so, so much. I truly appreciate you all,

Plum Parrot