Hello wonderful people,
You may be wondering why you're receiving this email, and the answer to that is simple. You signed up for it. You might not remember signing up for this newsletter because I haven't sent one in two years. That is completely on me. Just as a refresher, I'm Darrell, I'm an author. You may have read my book SWIFT, one of my web novels, Exsanguinate or Intercosmic. You may have even found this from various guest appearances I have done. But, rest assured, you signed up for it because I'm too lazy to steal an email list and I'm right below the limit of subscribers before MailChimp starts charging me. I self-publish books I'm very cheap. You may not be interested now, but you were at some point in time.
With that out of the way, you're probably wondering why I'm sending this after two years. Like so many things in life, it's complicated. I've spent a good portion of that time creating a YouTube channel called Ultra Black History. The channel takes a look at some of the lesser known moments in history and I usually upload at least once a week. Most recently I took a look at the life of boxer Emile Griffith.
Now for the sad part. I lost my confidence. SWIFT is a book that I wrote and published in less than a month after my father's death. I've always said that I write purely for me and sometimes other people find enjoyment in that. During that time I really needed to write a story about grief. A story where a young man loses his father and needs to find a new path in life without his number one supporter. To my surprise, a lot of people bought that book, and still continue to buy that book. More so than the rest of my books combined on the month to month. Admittedly, that upset me a little. Majority of what I write is science fiction, or urban fantasy. I like space marines, hunting vampires in big cities and trapping people in video games. Yet my biggest success as an author came from writing Urban Fiction.
On some level it hurt me that my best seller was in the same genre as novels such as Foodstamp Bitches. I say that with all due respect to Teresa Patterson. She is building an empire over there. It just hurt because I spent so much time writing science fiction and fantasy for people ask me when the SWIFT novel is coming out. It drove me crazy knowing I was dropping 52 chapters a year for two different web novels; the equivalent of two novels a year, every year for 5 years straight, and nobody cared. It just took me a while to understand, people do care. People read the web novels, they donate to support them and when I publish them in book form people by them.
YouTube actually got me over that hurdle. YouTube is random. You can do everything you're supposed to do and a video that you worked on for weeks will get 42 views, and then a short video made about people drowning in poop will get thousands, every day. However, the way YouTube is set up you can't just take a break. You have to move on to the next video. I got hung up on SWIFT and I realize that now.
Through that time, I never stopped writing. I still write every single day. I started another web novel, Virtual Vagabonds so if you've seen that, I really thank you for being tapped in with me. I sent a single tweet about it; I don't know how you saw it with the ridiculous amount of tweets I send.
I feel this newsletter has gone on long enough, thank you for sitting through all that. Feel free to reach out to me on social media, or respond to this email.
Be safe out there.
