Some of you may have noticed that two weeks have gone by without an installment in the latest Martiniere Stories serial, The Cost of Power. Part of that has been due to life stuff—vaccine reactions to Covid and RSV, recovering from a horrific colonoscopy prep, two trips to Portland, that sort of thing.

But part of the reason for no new installments has been my questioning of the effectiveness of doing this serial work. Oh, Prodigal’s Return has been completed (which is what you have been reading) and I’m working on the next book of The Cost of Power trilogy, Prodigal’s Crucible. It’s not a question of running out of material. If I were to serialize all three books, well, I’d have material through 2025, long after the trilogy has been published.

No, it’s not a lack of material.

Rather, it’s a growing dissatisfaction with the lack of results from this serialization.

No feedback, even when I’ve asked for it.

No purchases of completed books.

It’s clear that I have readers who only value free work, and…while I like being read, at some point I want to get something back, whether it’s a review of other work, a review of the completed serial when it goes up as a finished book, or even just a like or a comment every now and then. Consideration of other, related, work, and purchases of other books.

That isn’t happening.

Furthermore, the growing risk of having my material stolen for A.I. training purposes outweighs any value of trying to use this platform for promotion. What I am seeing both on Substack and on Notes is a higher value being assigned to lightweight, shorter stories from people who aggressively network on the platform and spend most of their time pitching their writing.

That’s not me.

Believe me, I have been agonizing over this decision. However, the process of putting up a section from Prodigal’s Return is not without effort. I have to choose the selection, check the formatting, come up with a catchy line to attract reader attention, link the previous installment, then after posting link the episode to the previous installment so that people starting later can easily click through.

It takes time, and while some of the process can be automated, not enough of it can be to make the time spent worthwhile.

Of late, I’ve found that I’m starting to resent time spent on efforts that don’t seem to gain me any significant results as far as advancing my writing. Alas, Martiniere Stories is falling into that area. Not the books themselves—I’m still working on the trilogy, and it will be out in the first part of 2024.

But as of today, this Substack is closing. I will probably archive if not delete all of it in the next few weeks. If anyone wants to beta read the rest of Prodigal’s Return, contact me and we’ll talk (I fully expect a complete lack of response to this as well, however. Surprise me).

It was an experiment that didn’t work, alas. That happens in publishing.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride with Gabe and Ruby.