Hello, and welcome back. First, let me just say that I'm glad April is in the rearview. If there is one period in the whole year I hate more than any other, it's tax time. The amount of time it takes away from doing things that I actually like is just gross. Anyway, let's talk about how I failed and succeeded over the last month. As an aside, if you're on Twitter, please give me a follow. I'd love to be able to hit the follower count needed to open the monetization features for the site, to see what I can do with them. More site funds mean more stories and new revenue for experimentation. The ErotiKInks account needs 250 more followers.
Loathing
My intention was to have the next book out in April, Cheerloathing. As you know, that was a miserable failure. Several things contributed to pushing the timeline back. Tax season was one of those. Did I mention how much I hate tax season?
Number two, revising, editing, and updating The Second Place Sister to get the Author's Edition out in time to meet my deadline for a dual release with All These Roadworks. Going line-by-line through a huge manuscript that is eight years old is rough. As a result, though, that story is stronger than it was before and so much of what I wanted to fix has been done. If you previously purchased this book, you should have received an email with a link to download the updated version.
That includes an order via the stand-alone book page, the DomCo Debauchery Pack, or the Family Fun Pack. If you chose not to have the site save your email address from your order, you likely did not get this link. Feel free to shoot me a message if that's the case, and I'll be happy to send the download link over for you. You may also want to check spam for the email.
Reason three for the delay is the sheer size of this book. It was my intention to crank out a nice little novella about the size of Altering Annika. When I hit chapter twelve, I wrote in a little bit of Sara's backstory. From that point on, she completely took over the entire story and everything changed. That one little piece totally altered the plot I had been going for.
Maybe it was because I had been editing The Second Place Sister, and all of those old flaws were in my head. I saw all the places where it went wrong, or where it was weak, and what I would have changed if I'd had the experience. So, Cheerloathing took on a new life and (in my opinion) will be the premier Tori Hamlin book thus far.
The story just grew and grew, and my target 30,000-word count hit 100,000 and still didn't stop. Then, it finally hit close to The Second Place Sister and I suddenly had a ton of work to go back and do. That's continuity, pacing, editing, revisions, and the sex. Based on last month's polls, a lot of folks like the sex scenes but a good number of you would like more physical detail. So, since those are the important bits, all of the sex scenes (and there are a ton of them) got expanded.
I feel pretty confident that everything will be in a good place by early May for a release. With that, I'm going to briefly touch on pricing because this is a gigantic book. I've always priced books in tiers according to length. The Second Place Sister was the exception until recently because that book was old enough and it was a huge draw in gaining new readers. It's still available to read for free, however, the Author's Edition got a price bump up to $9.99. That's based on length. All told, with the original book, plus the bonus stories, it comes in at 704 pages. Even the stand-alone book is huge, but I underpriced it intentionally. Now that it's been fixed, illustrations added, and there are 100 more pages of bonus content, it was time to make an adjustment.
Here are the pricing tiers and I have no intention of changing them for the foreseeable future.
10K words and under: Freebie + $.99
10-20K: $1.99
20-30K: $2.99
30-40K: $3.99
40-50K: $4.99
50-60K: $5.99
60-70K: $6.99
70-80K: $7.99 (except Edge)
80-90K: $8.99
90K+: $9.99
Given the length of Cheerloathing, I am considering splitting it into two books to give folks the option of what they'd like to do. We'll see. The story can be thought of in kind a before and after context. There is a very dirty slow burn lead-up to an important, awful event (similar to Second Place Sister), and then the event and explosion of raunchiness that follows said awful event.
For now, however, look forward to seeing this book soon. In the meantime, enjoy this HentaiArtist2000 illustration for Sara, this story's terrible villain.
Latinas
One more reason that Cheerloathing got delayed was due to my work with Lisa X Lopez. Lisa and I have a close personal friendship, and I'm a big advocate for helping friends. Especially when those friends are gorgeous, slutty, and creative. Lisa is all of those things, in addition to being a big supporter of my work. When you write sexy stories, you don't exactly get a lot of support from friends.
When you do have friends that really encourage you and cheer what you do, I think it's important to also support their creative endeavors, even if it's just letting people know they exist. While Lisa is a solid writer in her own right, it was hard for her to find her niche. So, as friends do, I encouraged her to dial in on one thing that really gets her off and dig into that.
There is one thing that Lisa loves and that's the hotwife, slutwife, cuck humiliation thing. Fortunately, that's a huge niche with a lot of interest. So, she went to work on it and published three books that are available on Kindle Unlimited and doing very well. If that's your thing, I encourage you to check them out. If it's your niche, you will find them every bit as filthy as anything I write. And I do mean dirty, dirty, dirty. They were so well received that she had to open up a new page on her site for commissions, as people began to contact her on Reddit asking for custom stories.
In addition to the new writing, Lisa is jumping into the world of adult content creation in other ways. A lot of that will involve writing, but also video and photo work. So, good buddy that I am, I've been helping out getting the tech part of that in good order and assisting with, um, content creation. So, if hot Latina women doing naughty stuff is your thing, you'll probably enjoy following Lisa's creation of an erotic empire that will span the written and visual spectrum. Those things will range from soft and sexy to hardcore. Bookmark her link here. Follow her on Twitter.
What's coming down the pipe?
Getting Cheerloathing out will be my first priority for the month. Once that's done, I'll be digging into the next DomCo book, The Traitor's Council, followed by Korrupting Kayla, Book Three. When things feel stuck, I plug away on my dirty sci-fantasy The Waygate Wanderer, which will eventually see the light of day. If that wasn't enough, I'm working through setting up the next iFem book, which I discussed in the April Roadmap.
New shorts will be coming out, too. Those, I'm determined to get back into so there's more freebie stuff to read between releases. I've already got a pile of them going, mostly incest-themed, so look out for some off-the-wall family fun throughout the next few months.
With all that said, that is the current plan! Thanks, as always for reading my rant, and for the continued support. Also, if you haven't had a chance to read my interview with All the Filthy Details, feel free to check it out.