What's my Story?

Hello all! My name is Zach Long. I’ve been born and raised in Arkansas, and am an independent author. I’ve been writing stories since I was about four or five years old, listening to them for just as long. Earth is my vacation home, but unfortunately I’ve run out of time shares in Fiction Land, so I have to make a living here! I’ve been trying to break through into official publishing channels, the publishing houses and agents, for over five years now, and met no success. It’s rough, and I went in with rough expectations—Stephen King had to send out his first book forty times, so the story goes, and I though went in with that understanding, things are way the heck harder than King’s younger days! Don’t worry, I’ve written down all the rejections on a list…

So I bounced around from job to job, making enough for groceries and rent, when in fall of 2022 I began working at a liquor store. Hated it. Perhaps it was a hidden blessing, or perhaps it was the store itself, but I’ve never worked in a place I hated so much as till then. Something vile about it and the industry. Anyway, it was, oh, about late November when I was on my break and chit-chatting with one of the regulars, outside, on the steps. Never learned his name; he had sandy-blond hair and a dopey face, and he kept flirting with one of my lady coworkers, an airforce cadet dropout. I was telling him my hopes and dreams and plans; he was kinda drunk, if I remember right, when, as I was talking to him, I had a eureka moment—“By God, why don’t I try to be my own self-publisher!” He seemed happy at the idea. My mind went to work.

My first plan, which I also told my liquor store coworkers, was to be like the literary magazines of the 1800s. Remember Charles Dickens? A Christmas Carol? Or Alexandre Dumas, Pere, who wrote The Three Musketeers? Never sold a whole book in their lives; rather they sold books, chapter by chapter, in pieces, to the magazines—in order to squeeze out more money. (Dickens had a lot of gambling debts to pay off, so he pushed the process and made it popular for the time.) Now, I don’t have any gambling debts, but I do want to make a living; my want, my hope is to make an eventual living by writing, entirely, on account that writing is an impractical skill that is my only practical skill.

The whole next year, 2023—right, I quit my liquor store job because the new management needed a fall guy to punish for something and I was the fall guy, and then days later, I found work at a restaurant that is owned by the man who previously owned the same liquor store, before he sold it to a franchise. Small world. Anyway, I’ve spent the whole of 2023 so far in getting my half-crazed plan together—my own self-publishing website! I’d draw the whole web-art, design the site myself, figure out how to exchange money, and sell my stories chapter by chapter!

…Except that I’m a doofus who jumped in not knowing what the heck he’s doing, so most of this year (2023) was building up capital before finally, finally, trying to launch this website. And then kept running into more goof-ups until I found what I think is the following solution.

Right now, I got this blog, the one that you are reading, that is—my public face. My Internet hotspot. My main attraction of this three-ring circus I’m building on the fly. What does this blog do? Make controversy! See, I’m a crazy person—I’m a writer, an author, who hates the industry. Isn’t that biting the hand that feeds you? No, because I’ve never been fed, so I’m biting off the hands and feet of ‘the writing industry’ just out of spite. Spite, and because I fundamentally reject a good chunk of what the overall ‘entertainment industry’ is built upon—dull capitalism and Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth bullsh*t.

The aim of this blog is, yes, to chit-chat, to get public attention, and to redirect you to my publishing platform, SubscribeStar, but this blog is also one gigantic sh*tpost against Hollywood, publishers, magicians, wizards, gurus, esotericists, post-modernists, absurdists, and to some degree the existentialists. Got all that? Above all—I’m going to p*ss off nerds for a living. Seriously, I hate them. Never mind that they’re my kin group, they’re going to be my biggest obstacle in my career. Why? Because whatever I make, they’ll take it, run with it, and pervert it, to make it their own, to make themselves look smart. And then they’ll have the gall to say to me, with the full force of their over-education “I know your story better than you do.” But what are nerds? A person who understands, and enjoys, complex topics but who self-tricks himself into thinking he understands all topics.

As for the actual money side of things—Gah! I realized I’d never get this off the ground unless I found a trustworthy platform. That platform is SubscribeStar—it’s like Patreon. It’s off-brand Patreon, yet has good, clean record and is used by other ‘content creators’ that I admire. Why not actual Patreon? They’re now too big and corporate to be honest anymore, and can bully their content creators for obtuse reasons now. Too risky for a new guy like me. SubscribeStar is small enough to be honest with me. You? You’re also the source of their income, they know better than to p*ss you off. You don't have to worry too much about them.

How this works—like with Patreon, you choose a subscription level with SubscribeStar. I set up the tiers, of ‘X dollars/month’, you select a tier you like, SubscribeStar and you exchange money information, done! They skim off the top every month, so that they can get paid, and then I get the rest. What do you get at each tier? Go check it out!

But, out of honesty, I will set up the tiers at $1, $2, $4, $5, $10, $15, $20—there-abouts. Obviously, SubscribeStar wants you to choose the higher tiers ‘cause they get to skim off more money. Me? $4/month, more if you like me or believe in what I do. It matches up to the initial plan—one chapter or short story a week for a dollar each; each month giving out 4 normally, or 3 stories if I’m having a bad month and/or need to rest my brain.

This blog? Free. I’ll keep it money free and ad-free as best I can. I’ll set things up on Facebook and try to figure out that daft-app, Instagram. (I’m not going anywhere near Twitter!)

BUT WHAT DO I ACTUALLY WRITE? Silly stories. Action stories. Adventure stories, horror stories. I grew up in the 90s, so most of my entertainment was an odd blend of colorful, goofy, strange, and plenty of dark, abandoned warehouses. Dark and goofy, a-hyuk! Just, fun. Actual FUN, not the absurdist crap or sarcastic junk that’s the norm these days. I make fantasy worlds, and a sci-fi galaxy, and even a series closer to home, about a group of goofball monster hunters in Arkansas.

My plan? My roadmap? Not intending to go national—I’d get big and burn out in today’s climate. I’m starting slow. If I can become a recognized Author of Arkansas, I’ll take that! Otherwise, makes stories till I drop dead, live life, and find someone who’ll start a family with me.

My current roadmap? Open up business, publish chapters of my sci-fi novel, the first in the Zeta Galaxy, and put out short stories.

More to follow!