Went yesterday to an Author Meet & Greet in Narragansett. I had the best table–right at the door.

I sold nothing.

All around me, (memoir, children’s books) they sold at least 2 copies. I sold nothing.

I’m still depressed over it. But as I was thinking about it on the way home, I realized two things.

1. The story is too niche.
2. The market wasn’t right.

The story is about a bisexual wizard, in the US Army, during the war in Afghanistan. My audience is guys who are into the military and fastest on a fringe basis. They like reading military stories, but aren’t into the nitty-gritty.

I’m probably not going to sell anything at the next two places I’m going to, because of the same reason. My market isn’t there.

Makes me wonder if I should write to market, if I’m going to make any sort of money out of this.

I have the feeling too, that my editor doesn’t even like the story. She did two books ahead of mine, knowing that mine needed to be done by November. Supposedly we pushed back the date to October, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening. If the second book doesn’t come out in November, then I might as well hang up this series. I’m tempted to say the hell with trying to publish in general.

This third book is a bear because I’ve been stuck every single time on the interrogation scenes. Grimaulkin is stuck on the prison scenes. Why? Because I have no experience in either one of those things. And I’m not going to sit down and binge watch Oz for the prison scenes.

If I go to Comicon and sell nothing there, not only will I be out of $300, but then I’ll know that my story is too niche. And the 50 or so people who has bought it so far either did it by mistake, or that is where my true market is.

So maybe I should write a book for the general market here (my memoir-in-three-parts is still in my head). Nothing I have is really good for a general market. I could pull out Casey and do some historical fiction, or clean up Blood From a Stone. Or do something entirely different.

At this point, right now, I’m too depressed to write about anything. The muses are crying.