Storytellers are constantly absorbing impressions: the sights, sounds, smells, and vibe of the world. What is becomes what could be. Meaning is extracted and communicated.
But the problem with being a sponge is that you soak up a lot of negativity.
Australia has a classic anti-smoking ad where a sponge is squeezed to show the tar from smoking cigarettes dropping disgustingly into a beaker.
For some storytellers, that tar (all the heartbreak and suffering in the world) is squeezed out to become a bleak portrayal of survival and resistance. Sometimes that very bleakness becomes a rallying cry.
But for me, I don’t want to pass on the negativity. It stops with me. The stories I tell are about good people inhabiting interesting, hopeful worlds. Conflict is part of life, but it can be positive not simply destructive. My stories push back against the negativity I’ve absorbed.
The lungs as sponges metaphor is useful because one of the cures for the world’s negativity is to breathe the fresh air of joy. So, I search out stories of hope and resilience: the scientists assembling building blocks of knowledge to solve our problems; communities caring for each other; cute animal pictures, all the wonder that exists beyond the negativity and which will outlast it and prevail.
A storyteller is a bridge between the past and the future. In a sense the present is unknowable. We experience it, but we understand it as the past or as the future.
I know you’re saying, “How can we understand the present as the future?”
Take a moment to think about it. When we were living in what is now the past, what is now the present was a possible future.
Pause with that thought while neuroscience comes rushing in to explain why this is important.
Our expectations shape our perceptions.
Therefore, what we believed in the past (creating our expectations) shapes what we believe we’ll experience in the future, and because expectations are so powerful that they literally shape our perception, the present moment is defined (to some degree) by what our past self expected of the future.
Have I muddled you? Do you think I need more coffee and a brisk walk in the fresh air? (Yes, yes, I do).
A storyteller takes the past and the future and provides a meaningful link between them. That bridge is the present moment that we consistently experience, but seldom occupy. We are journeying in a tension between the past (learning, regretting) and the future (anticipating, planning). A strong story reduces the friction of the journey, either because the truth of the story removes any conflict between our expectations and experience, or because the emotional arousal of the story overrides the conflict and our brains pour more energy into shaping our perception to match the story.
We are each our own storyteller, but our stories can be influenced by determined external storytellers. People who tell us we’re weak can train us to tell ourselves the same story. Or perhaps they’ll tell us that we’re trapped, and then, we’ll tell ourselves that we’ll never scale our metaphorical walls—and all the time, we never see the open door. Storytellers that give us strength and compassion, connection and hope are the external storytellers we should listen to and wrap into our personal story. Our journeys aren’t easy, but the bridge between the past and the future can be stronger and stranger than we currently imagine.
In the last few months corporations and government agencies have been advertising for storytellers. The new job title might sound as if they hope to recruit the Brothers Grimm, but my take on this is that they’re actually after someone who can clarify the organization’s value and purpose, and the journey the customer/citizen will go on with them. Eve Macdonald suggests that what they actually need is an editor.
The rise of the corporate storyteller is part of the convulsions of AI integration. The bulk of the deliverables of a marketing campaign can be produced by AI (or so its proponents promise). This means a hollowing out of marketing agencies and departments. Graphic design, statistical analysis, social media moderation, all of it is being buffeted by claims that AI can do it—not necessarily better—but cheaper, and perhaps, faster and more personalized. Once the system is in place, the AI agent can handle it. ::insert doubtful hum::
But for the system to work, and for corporate leadership to believe in it and fund it, there must be clarity about what it will deliver. In short, what consistent, coherent story must it tell? How will the organization know that the AI agent is staying on message? And when the environment changes, how must the story change?
Corporations and government agencies are really hoping to employ spiders. These are rare people who consume vast amounts of information and connection, and can filter it for meaning and a meaningful response. Sitting at the center of a web of incoming and outgoing information they influence perception of the organization internally as well as externally. The CEO is the public face, the schmoozer, and the one who makes decisions (depending on how active the board/government minister is). The spider, or storyteller, is the one who ensures the clarity of vision and consistency of message that the CEO sells.
Guess what? As an indie author, spider is now another hat for me to wear. It’s actually useful because it validates efforts I already undertake: studying the market, anticipating social trends, keeping up with new technology and publishing platforms, and communicating my own perspective on these things.
To be honest, I’m not a very good spider. If I was then I’d have a one sentence answer to the question: why does anyone need my books?
But I’m working on that puzzle. Why, in your seventy years of life (if we accept the biblical three score years and ten for the sake of rhetorical flair), would you invest hours of it to journeying with my characters and exploring my imaginary worlds?
Perhaps the corporate world is right and the answer is that a storyteller creates a solid path forward, out of the confusion that is reality. A good storyteller provides hope.
“Empty courtesy” is an old-fashioned term for an act of routine politeness, which is devoid of emotional investment. As the opposite of rudeness, it could be defined as caring. It’s not, though. It is, instead, a means of moving smoothly through the world. It could be as simple as a person saying, “I’m sorry”, when they’re not and they have no intention of altering their (mis)behavior.
In many circumstances, empty courtesy is sufficient to sustain superficial relationships and business and social dealings.
However, for people who want genuine relationships and genuine change, empty courtesy is a frustrating brick wall. They bounce off it, and, if they’re smart, they’ll go and look elsewhere to have their needs met.
AI-generated communications are the equivalent of empty courtesy. They meet the social requirements, but without engaging at a deeper level. For many people that is exactly what they want. I find this shocking, but I’m growing to accept that the emotional dullness of AI meets, even satisfies, many people’s fear of others and of change.
For those who want a deeper connection, I think we need to coin a term that signals that there is a person at the other end of a communication or creative endeavor who is also seeking connection. People are trying out human, genuine, non-AI, and other terms. I think the buzzword of a few years ago, authenticity, has fallen by the wayside.
Artisan became the descriptor for specialty or craft, rather than mass-produced, items.
I’m not keen on calling myself an artisanal (as in non-AI) author, but maybe “guilded” as in belonging to the collective or community that is authors and readers. I don’t think that’s quite the term either, but I am keen to see how we express this opposite of empty courtesy in the creative arts and communication more broadly.
Enemies to lovers is a popular trope in romance and all its spin-offs, most notably romantasy. Who doesn’t enjoy a rival romance? But I think an underdeveloped aspect of it will be drawn out over the next few years, that of the vengeance or punishment element of a nemesis. People want retribution stories as well as a redemption arc.
So, we’ll have nemeses to lovers as a growing trope with the initial conflict, the bitter frustration, the resentment of their own feelings, and then, the decision to choose mercy and hope and move forward.
Justice is a complicated subject. Fiction has a powerful role to play in providing ways of seeing the world and emotional frameworks for processing it.
Nemeses to lovers is a trope that doesn’t require us to defeat our enemies with violence. I’m eagerly anticipating how authors will find a path from fury and grief to healing, hope, and love.
Welp. Readying a book for a paperback edition is as time and energy intensive as I thought it would be. I finally did it, though. Stars Die is now available in paperback! Paperback editions of Hexes Fly and Rogues Lie are underway.
After researching my options I chose the easiest path to getting my books into paperback, which turns out to be remaining in Amazon’s scary embrace. So, I have Amazon-supplied ISBNs and the process of Amazon linking the digital editions to the paperback editions ought to go smoothly. Ought.
I thought I’d pull back the curtain a little on what went on behind the scenes over the last couple of months. (I’ll spare you my muttering, squinting, and violent stabs at the keyboard and screen). Basically, I wanted to share the pricing screen with you.
The books in my current series, Caldryn Parliament, average around 90,000 words and I’ve priced the digital editions at $4.99 (all pricing in US dollars). When someone buys a digital copy, Amazon takes 30% of the list price, leaving me with roughly $3.50 per book. If the book is borrowed in Kindle Unlimited I get about $2 when it’s read from cover to cover. (If my math is right. I’m having doubts. But it’s close enough).
It might seem that I earn less from Kindle Unlimited borrowed copies, but that’s not true. People borrow far more readily than they buy (and I understand because that’s me as a reader, too), so volume more than makes up for the lower price. Kindle Unlimited is crucial to my survival as an indie author. Please, please keep borrowing and reading my books in Kindle Unlimited!
Now, to the paperback edition.
Remember, getting the formating right was a pain in the beep. And for all that effort, and by raising the price to $12.99 (slightly above Amazon’s minimum of $9.99 retail price), I get a whopping $3.06. Yup, that’s less than when someone buys the digital version. And if they buy from outside Amazon, via Expanded Distribution, I get … $0.46.
So, yes, I want paperback editions available in the interests of accessibility (which is the same reason I compromised and used Amazon’s virtual voice to provide text-to-speech editions since I can’t afford (money, time, energy) to produce professional audiobooks right now). However, financially, I’m better off writing the next book. It’s certainly far more enjoyable!
Okay. I’ll let the curtain fall back and hide the reality of publishing once more.
I love being an indie author. I’m incredibly grateful to be living this life. But it does include hard choices.
For now, I intend to release paperback editions of all eight Caldryn Parliament novels, probably a month or three after the digital editions. However, until I have a lot bigger breathing space, I won’t be bringing my backlist into paperback.
2026 is the year where I finally increase my books’ availability and discoverability. There are a lot of things happening and even more thinking, testing, and questioning behind the scenes. Not everything I try will work, and hence, some things will change and change again.
First up, and unchanging, my focus remains on writing new books. This is what I enjoy and it is what, by far, brings in the most income. New books are what allow me to write full-time.
My new books will release first on Amazon in Kindle Unlimited. I’ve spent a decade building my readership there, and I am a Kindle Unlimited reader myself. Kindle Unlimited is core to my author existence.
Which isn’t to say that I’m a huge fan of Amazon.
Cory Doctorow is credited with coining the term “enshittification”. My understanding of the concept is simple. A company identifies a business-to-customer relationship and inserts itself in the middle. For the purposes of this discussion we’re talking author-to-reader, where author includes the publisher. The company inserts itself by offering an easier experience. Everyone is happy. Then the company begins exerting pressure. As alternative arrangements become less and less viable, the company siphons a bigger share of profit from the relationship. The business and customer may be unhappy, but their other options are worse. For many businesses, the other option is failing to cover costs. Yikes.
So, yeah. Amazon pretty much defines how books get to readers.
We have independent bookstores. Authors can sell direct to their readers. Libraries are gold.
But I have looked and looked and looked, and for a small indie author like me, there is no comparable income stream or access to new readers.
And to be brutally honest, I’m exhausted. The energy to build an author platform elsewhere is literally non-existent for me. I salute the authors who are challenging Amazon. I am so grateful for the bookstores, librarians, and reviewers supporting them. But I lack the energy for the fight.
Which leaves me in the nasty position of dependency on Amazon and having to adjust to its whims. It gets to dictate terms, and the best I can do is try to soften the impact for my readers.
A few months ago, Amazon changed the exclusivity clause for Kindle Unlimited so that digital books available in Kindle Unlimited can now also be shared with digital library services like Overdrive and Libby. I am using Draft2Digital to get my books into libraries. Most have been uploaded (it’s been a long process).
If you use your library’s subscription to Libby or a similar digital book service then you can request any of my books. Your library can also say no, but fingers crossed! I am quietly excited by this opportunity to get my books to people on tight book budgets or those who choose to avoid Amazon.
I’m also looking at paperbacks. I know! I have been promising paperbacks for years. This time it is happening.
Draft2Digital has a paperback creation service. My focus is on getting my current series, Caldryn Parliament, into print. Depending on how that goes, and other demands on my time and energy, I’ll work through my backlist.
Audiobooks are the other long-term promise I’d like to honour this year.
Podium Entertainment has been brilliant to work with and I’m delighted with the quality of my audio editions with them. However, with Caldryn Parliament I’m looking at an eight book series and Podium is unable to make that commitment upfront. Eight books is huge. I understand their reservations. However, I also want a consistent experience in audio, so I’m looking at other options.
One of the lesser discussed benefits of negotiating is the reality check it provides. If Podium sees a risk in my eight-book long commitment, I also need to consider it.
I have considered it and I’m going ahead!
Caldryn Parliament forever!
However, audio-publishers’ lack of interest in other series in my backlist is something I’m taking far more seriously. It means they’re not viable as audiobooks. Certainly not with my limited resources (time, energy, and money).
And this is where Amazon pounces and increases its enshittification (pardon my French).
On the one hand Amazon gives (i.e. allowing my ebooks into digital library services), and with the other hand it takes away. Let me introduce you to the recently initiated Amazon Virtual Voice.
To make it easier for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors to quickly and easily produce an audiobook version of their eBook, we launched audiobooks with virtual voice in beta to the U.S. marketplace. KDP authors in the beta can create audiobooks with virtual voice (computer-generated narration) in addition to the audiobook creation options available through ACX.
With virtual voice, authors can create an audiobook in minutes by:
Selecting an eligible KDP eBook from their Bookshelf.
Choosing from 80 voices—including American English, Latin American Spanish, Castilian Spanish, Australian English, British English, French, and Italian. Authors can also set a different voice for each chapter.
Setting a list price between $3.99 and $14.99.
Previewing and editing the narration before publishing.
What does all that mean?
If you ask me, it does NOT mean audiobooks. This is Amazon’s text-to-speech program slightly improved and repackaged. I can’t find the guide, but there is a way to listen to kindle books that you download to your phone. Virtual Voice is basically that, but with Amazon pushing the author into doing the tech bit of turning on text-to-speech and checking it for errors.
Sadly, it’s the best option (in terms of my limited resources and low reader demand) for my backlist. So, I’ve been slowly adding the Virtual Voice feature to those books in my backlist that don’t have audiobooks and pricing them as low as Amazon will let me. This makes my backlist more accessible, but on enshittified terms. Sorry.
Attempting to win back author and reader approval, Amazon recently announced a change to its Digital Rights Management (DRM) terms. This is from the email it sent authors:
Starting January 20, 2026, Amazon will make it easier for readers to enjoy content they have purchased from the Kindle store across a wider range of devices and applications by allowing new titles published without Digital Rights Management (DRM) to be downloaded in EPUB and PDF format.
I like this. I’ve always been happy for readers to buy my kindle books and convert them (generally via Calibre) into epub or other formats to save and read on other devices. It’s why my ebooks are DRM-free.
In short, there are a lot of changes ahead. As I get some breathing space later in the year I might also look at swapping out some of my older series from Kindle Unlimited to other platforms. But I’ll warn you if I do!
Apart from making my books available beyond Amazon, the reason for testing the waters with other booksellers is discoverability.
Amid all the other challenges that AI has introduced, its impact on search is such that discoverability is even harder. My books have to be mentioned (preferably positively!) in a lot of places for AI search to report them to new readers. This is why you’ll see authors asking readers to do things like add their books to Goodreads or similar sites. We need AI to judge our books as sought after. It’s a self-reinforcing spiral.
It’s not actually new. Algorithms, especially in Amazon, have never been neutral. They either reward or punish books, moving them up the rankings or hiding them. Interest is rewarded. Read-through is gold. Reviews are superstars. Miss any of these factors and your book bombs.
If you’ve read through to the end of this mind-spew of some of the things worrying me and the path I’m trying through the publishing swamps of 2026, you are a legend. It’s a lot. And I haven’t even mentioned some of the alternatives to Amazon that I’m keeping an eye on (such as Yearn Media).
I need to go write, which is the part of indie publishing that makes the rest of this mess worthwhile—well, that and your enjoyment of my books!
Annually, as the year draws to a close, I start thinking about my publishing predictions for the next year.
This year I’m focused on the power and hiding place offered by nostalgia, and not necessarily of a time past, but of a vanishing reality.
When I was growing up I read and re-read Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery. It was published at a time (1908) when most of its audience lived in cities and life on the land was being romanticised.
Pollyanna by Eleanor H Porter was published at a similar time (1913), although without the rural setting.
Both had orphaned heroines, but critically to their broad appeal, both presented the child as a reason for the adults in the novels to open their hearts.
Children want to be loved.
Adults want the courage to love and be loved.
The appeal is obvious today when so many of us feel exhausted; beleaguered, even.
I suspect that rather than a rural setting where the agricultural industry has stripped out small communities, the contemporary nostalgia will be for big suburban yards, neighbors sitting on porches, and an orphan finding a home. What aspects of contemporary life will be celebrated in these books I’m not sure, but I think freedom and independence will be as important as family.
When I was checking publishing dates for this post, I also looked up the Australian equivalent novel, A Little Bush Maid by Mary Grant Bruce. Norah lost her mother, but her father was a large and beloved part of the novel, along with her brother and his best friend. It was published in 1910. Celebration of the rural idyll was alive and well even Down Under. (Warning: racism and sexism are both on display in this series, as was true for many of the books from the era.)
I’ve been reading and listening to marketing gurus’ best guesses on the impact of AI on communicating with and engaging people. One of their biggest concerns, naturally enough, is how to ensure that there is still a job for them. If the AI can do almost everything (if you’re curious Forbes has a good article on this automated vibe marketing), then what remains for a marketer?
Since once of the hats an indie author wears is that of a marketing manager it’s a question that concerns me.
The answer seems to be to step back from basic content creation and, instead, invite people to share your experience; that is, do something and communicate what you’re doing as you do it. This is what TikTokkers and Youtubers have been doing for years, so it’s not really a radical idea. I’m not even convinced it’s the right answer regarding how to assert our humanity against the rise of AI controlled communications.
Perhaps, though, the marketing gurus are on the right path. Sharing their experience is a means by which someone who is an authority on a subject demonstrates that authority. We judge them, respect them, and follow them because we see what they can do.
I actually think that authority (in the sense of being respected for one’s knowledge and experience) may be what causes some communications and communicators to stand out as islands in the sea of AI-generated garbage. These islands (authorities) can’t be moved by the latest fad, won’t wash away with the tide, and can’t be swamped. They endure because people trust them, and because they honor that trust.
And now for an apology.
I’ve had to delay the release of Hexes Fly. Originally, I scheduled it to come out June 26. I’ve pushed that back a month, and it will now release on Saturday July 26.
Similarly, Rogues Lie will now release a month later than planned on Saturday November 29.
2025 has been far more chaotic than I ever imagined it could be and I need to add some breathing space to my publishing schedule. I hate doing it (so much!) but if I’m advising other people to be kind to themselves I need to follow that advice, too. I’m so very sorry, though, that you’ll have to wait an extra month.
I had no idea that card decks had become a thing beyond fortune-telling, but Jane Friedman reported on them being a new product market in publishing.
I have no time, and therefore, no plans, to create a card deck, but I can imagine how simple it would be to feed something like The Lord of the Rings series into an AI, set specific prompts, and have it spit out quotations for themed cards.
A little bit of me is wistful. I’d love to have the time and energy to create fortune cards for the website and some sort of widget that randomly gifted you all a fortune cookie when you clicked Giddy’s paw.
Yes, authors’ dreams of what they’d do if they won the lottery are a bit different to other people’s. More time to write! Yay! But also more time to do side projects. Yay!!
Side projects like finally—finally!—getting my ebooks into paperback and maybe even hardback.
I was fascinated to read about the success of book subscription services where they curate the box of books they send their customers. And now, that curation is going to expand to include publishing.
The wheel goes round and reinvents itself.
Short stories for raconteurs are another example of the old being reinvented.
I’ve long been a proponent of the idea that if you want to learn pacing and how to tell a story, practice retelling jokes and anecdotes. I know, it’ll probably bore your cat silly listening to you recount Joe Bloggs from the watercooler’s fish-that-got-away story, but you’ll become familiar with the rhythm of a story; its high points, tension, what you can leave out (oh yeah, a large part of story telling is removing the deadweight).
Ratika Deshpande has some suggestions at Reactor for short stories suited to retelling around a campfire. I’d never considered choosing the short stories I read for their retelling value, but I guess it’s a natural extension of relating news and gossip from social media.
We’re all storytellers.
In what I’ve been reading news…
Mariana Zapata has a new book out, The Things We Water. Although she started out as a contemporary romance author, The Things We Water is a paranormal romance. What I love about her style is that she takes her time to tell a story and while she doesn’t wallow in emotion, she doesn’t shy away from it either. Her heroines are often Cinderellas. They struggle, but they are always kind.
