Freelancers

Newsletter Archive

FREELANCERS #21 - 01/03/24

Hello!

Hope you like chapter 2 of Lost Souls last month. Big thanks if you bought the book. It really means a lot to me.

This'll be a shorter newsletter. I feel like I have a lot and not so much going on post-release. A quick progress update, a shoutout for my wife, then a chat about TTRPGs.

Progress Update

Lost Souls is live! I haven't had my celebratory C'Plus Orange that I have after releasing a book, but one's waiting for me. Let me know if you know that drink. It's my all-time favourite and they don't make it more. I have only 11 or so left and it's a shame :'(. Will trade signed books for discontinued orange pop.

I'm going to slow down a bit to focus on marketing. Finally go through Mark Dawson's Ads For Author's course. I was told to not bother doing too much hard marketing until I have 3-4 books on the shelf. With 1.5 out, I'm going to try ads and other avenues to get the word out. My wife's been sharing some marketing advice from her yoga adventures and I've been reading similar bits in my research about mindset and thinking in terms of finding readers, not chasing sales.

Going forward, I'm going to try a schedule where I divide up time each week for marketing, writing Phoenix Company, and dipping into side projects. As usual, my mind is overflowing with things I want to create. Got inspired to do some research and start sketching out a Freelancers video game. Something sci-fi akin to a game called Slice & Dice. Highly recommend checking it out, by the way. It's been my go-to game on mobile for a while now and I still love it. Software these days is robust enough that you can cook up something legit without any coding knowledge.

But main focus is still writing Phoenix Company. Looking forward to diving back into Book 2, The Phantom's Gambit. Further flesh out some new faces you'll recognize from Lost Souls.

Buy Lost Souls

I mentioned my awesome wife above. She's another one I can't recommend enough. I know lots of people are like me, sitting most of the day, possibly curled up like a shrimp with a leg up in the chair. A lot of people could use more movement in their life.

She's got a very accessible platform online with short videos that's perfect for getting in bite-sized stretches on break, at home, whenever and wherever. If you want more in-depth programs, she can help with those too. I always appreciate being able to tell her about any trouble I'm having with flexibility or mobility and she can figure out something to help alleviate the issue.

She's the best. Click on the image or button below and check her out.

Check out her website

After taking a break for a year or so to push out Lost Souls, I'm getting back into tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). These are collaborative storytelling games like Dungeons and Dragons, if you didn't know. I started playing Pathfinder as a GM in 2012, and it's been an amazing outlet for creativity while hanging with friends ever since. A bunch of concepts, moments and characters in my books were dreamed up in one of my games.

I've been around the space enough to have a strong appreciation for games other than the ubiquitous D&D. It's great, but there's a whole world of awesome systems out there for almost every vibe a table could want. I'm currently eyeballing Stars Without Number, a Star Wars conversion of Burning Wheel called Star Systems that tries to capture the feel of the original trilogy, and Cyberpunk 2020. If I had a crew who were cool with it, I wouldn't mind streaming or uploading a recorded campaign online at some point.

If you're into TTRPGs as well, hit reply and tell me about your campaign, characters, anything you think is cool. Would love to hear about it. Always nice to nerd out.

If you have any questions or comments for me, go ahead and reply to this newsletter, email me at aesteriaworld@gmail.com, message me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GCCamacho27, or on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/gccamacho.bsky.social.

If you've read my books or others, please leave a rating or review on appropriate sites like distributors, Goodreads, Bookbub, etc. I'd very much appreciate it.

Thanks very much for reading. I'll be going back to fun short stories with the Freelancer team on the 15th. Have a good one.