Why I write things other than Portals of Infinity.

Someone made a comment today that basically implied they wondered why I wrote things other than the Portals of Infinity series. Well, it's really pretty simple: Money.

You see, when you write a series, it has a 'sell-through rate', which is how many people who buy the first book, buy the next, etcetera and so on. Now the POI series has had a pretty good sell-through rate for me, but still, the number of people buying them has decreased and will eventually get to the point where it won't be worth it for me to write them anymore.

Book 6, 'Reprisal', sold one-fifth the number of copies as book 1, 'Champion for Hire'. Book 7 I know will sell even less than that. Book 8? Book 8 may very well be the last book of the series, if I can't get people to start being interested in buying the later books in the series, without them having to read the earlier books. This is why I took the numbers off the cover, Reprisal can be read without having to read the earlier books. Book 7 will be the same. I want to try to make the books such that people will be more willing to pick up the odd one, and if they like it, maybe read some of the others.

While I enjoy what I do very much, I can not continue to do it, if I don't make any money at it. So between each POI book lately, I have put out something other than a POI book. After book 7, another Shrean book (this one is not a sequel to the prior one) will come out. A sequel to The Hammer Commission, is also in the works. Because if I can't attract readers to my other stories, and get those other stories to sell, then I'll have to go back to consulting and quit being an author. Both are full-time jobs (to be honest, the consulting gig pays about 3 times what the writing gig pays - I just like this more).

Yes, it would be great if I could write only the Portals of Infinity books, and continue to make a living off of that. I enjoy the world, and the freedom I have with it. I've been trying to write a POI book that focuses on Nikki, as an attempt to let me do more writing in the POI world. I hopefully will still be able to do that, and I can keep the POI books coming out, even if I may have to cut back to only two of them a year. But only time will tell.

And as to why I tend to use cats in my books? Well as I've mentioned elsewhere, I used to raise, train, and even own, big cats. I spent a lot of years with cougars, leopards, lions, tigers, servals, caracals, etc. And by a lot, I mean over twenty. As for Rafael, Rakshasa are Indian demons that look like tigers, but really aren't. I thought it would be easier for people to make the tiger comparison stronger. They also in the myths feed off of hate, fear, anger and build those emotions in people by shape-shifting into the guise of other people in a village and sowing dissent. Eventually they eat the person they've been targeting. I thought it would be fun to have an American College student who was a womanizer (very much like someone I know in real life) become one, and being an American decide he was more into sex than violence. I threw that character into 'The Hammer Commission' for fun, and was surprised that there were people who asked me to actually expand on that character. So I did.

But yes, I like big cats. Sue me. Hopefully one of these days when I move back out into the sticks I'll get one last one, just to have that back in my life again. Of course that would mean no more vacations, but eh, life is full of trade-offs.

So anyway, hope I didn't ramble too much, but if you want more POI stories, then get more people to buy them! :-)

Thank you all,
-John