This work was painted in oil on canvas. It's big, measuring about four feet wide. The idea behind this painting was to describe a synapse firing as two characters passing a bit of information between them. Many people who see it incorrectly believe that it depicts Adam and Eve and I usually just let them think that. Below is some preliminary work I did for this piece.
Last night, my old computer froze up again, prompting me to complete the setup of my new machine. I like it so far, though a couple of things aren't ideal. In general, the keyboard feels great. The keys have the good travel and snap. But the arrows have slightly different placement than I'm used to, such that I keep hitting ctrl instead of left arrow. Also, I hate Windows 10's endless, long updates and have yet to take the time to stop them from interrupting my work.
I'm still in publishing limbo, waiting for the printed proof of Psychic Avalanche to arrive in the mail. Work on my next story is going okay, but I still don't have a main plot/central theme. Psychic Avalanche is about a drug that makes people telepathic. That's a nicely-contained idea that's easy to communicate. So far, the story I'm now working on is messier. It can't be described in a single sentence. Hopefully, that'll change as the work progresses.
At the coffee shop this afternoon, I met someone attempting to peddle a book that they'd written. It was a short work about an emotionally charged subject and was selling at a price point of twenty dollars. That's twice what I sell my printed novels for. When I got home, I looked the author up and discovered that their book came out in 2019. So they weren't out promoting a new work, but had in fact been at it for a couple of years.
I'm much lazier about selling my books. Sometimes I fill a bag with them and talk people into buying copies, but I usually only do this for the first month or so after a new one comes out. I also keep the coffee shop and local bookstore stocked with copies. Mostly, though, I sell physical books one or two at a time to friends and friends of friends. It's not clear to me that increasing the effort I put into promotion would increase sales. My experience suggests that people will buy books when they feel like it, regardless of what I do or don't do.
It's funny, the painting featured in this post was every bit as much work as publishing a full length novel. It took months to complete, from conceptualizing the work to preliminary sketches to the actual execution of the painting. As a product, this artwork is worth about five grand. I'd price it at 4800. As IP, it could potentially be worth somewhat more in terms of print and NFT sales. But that's still not a lot for months of my life.
The profits from books don't come in all at once like the profits from art sales. Instead, they trickle in, with occasional flurries of sales driven by online activity. This produces perpetual revenue streams rather than singular sales events. As a freelancer, I've learned the value of perpetual revenue streams. They make personal economics sustainable.