After 9 long years of toil, I'm at last a "real author" with a published book

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As of last night, the Indiegogo made by my publisher, Vivid Books to fund the printing of my first physical book reacher 360% funded. You'd think 100% would be enough but they aimed low, 100% would've only paid for paperbacks. With 360% funding all copies can now be hardcover, as depicted in the header image, as well as coming with dust jackets that are not pictured. To me, those are the boxes you need to check in order to call it a "real book" and thus myself a "real author".

Of course I know there exist no official criteria for what constitutes a "real author" except that they write. But that always felt like copium to me. I'm hard on myself for the same reason athletes run with ankle weights or drag chutes. It took me nearly a decade but I accumulated an audience, an oeuvre, and at last a publisher willing to take a chance on me. Fingers crossed, this is where the real "author money" starts rolling in and solving all of my poverty related problems.

The Indiegogo can be viewed here. Pledge if you like, the backer rewards are cool little physical trinkets modeled after magical artifacts from the stories themselves (the book is an anthology). There's an orgonometric optical detector, a sort of monocle used to detect invisible parasites:

There's an Abraxas pin, used to anchor yourself to your home dimension when traveling between dimensions, ensuring you're able to return:

There's a potentially glow in the dark 3d printed statue of an orgonovore, one of the aforementioned invisible parasites, which doubles as a pen or stylus holder:

Of course anybody who pledges $35 or above gets a physical copy of the book itself. The $15 tier gets you a PDF of the ebook if you'd prefer to read it on Kindle. The $100 tier gets you a signed copy, which may be enticing to some of my long time followers who were reading my stuff back in the Steemit days. As I said upfront it's already funded out the ass, the only stretch goals we haven't already hit that I think would be worth it are the audiobook and the embossed dust jacket ones. If you feel so moved, I'd be grateful for the additional support, but honestly it's already gone so well I could hardly ask for more.

It's been an interesting learning experience finally working with a publisher to make all of this happen. There was a lot I didn't know. They really lean on you to self-promote to whatever audiences you already have (as I'm doing now) because they're as invested in your success as you are. That's a reassuring feeling. They've said if this one sells well, they want to make it an annual thing, releasing another anthology or novel by me every October. Fingers and toes crossed (the excruciating pain is worth it for the additional luck).