His message informed me that they are:

• “Introducing account activation and maintenance fees.”  
• “Applying an annual maintenance fee of $12 (USD) to accounts whose earnings from book sales total less than $100 over the preceding 12-month period.”
• “Offsetting a portion of the steadily rising costs we pay to maintain those accounts, including compliance, security, and infrastructure upkeep.” 

Why would they do that? Well, as the email states, legit indies are being punished because of AI slop:

Like many platforms, we’ve seen a significant increase in automated and low-quality account creation in recent years. This onslaught from automated content farms threatens reader trust in indie titles and risks indies being associated with low-quality “slop.” A modest activation fee can make a real difference and allow our team to stay focused on supporting genuine authors like you.

So, enshittification has infected both book production (people using AI tools to write very quickly) and book distribution (Draft2Digital being asked to distribute the slop and then finding it produces no money).

Indie authors like me who don’t produce slop but also haven’t achieved massive sales are the bystanders caught out by this decision.

Being listed on Draft2Digital gave me access to Bookshop.org, Apple, Smashwords and a swath of other book retail distributors in one place. Yet, for reasons I don’t understand, I’ve never sold a single copy of Chaos Calling through their platform. My ebook sale landslides have always happened on Amazon and Kobo.

I was looking forward to changing that pattern one day, but Draft2Digital has forced my hand. To make staying with them worth it, I’d have to sell between 50 and 75 copies every year on their site alone.

The math just doesn’t make sense.

I’m sad to leave a place that made my work more accessible to libraries, but I’ve closed my account.

I sent my designer a message this morning. We’ve pulled the relevant buy buttons from my home and book pages.

Will Chaos Calling be available on Apple & Google Books?

The short answer is not right now. Apple requires me to have a US tax ID, publicly listed address, and phone number on my website.

Google Books wasn’t included in Draft2Digital’s distribution but I found their backend so confusing I gave up.

I have to ask myself: am I in the business of a) optimizing to sell books or b) write them? With a backlist as short as mine currently is, B is the clear winner.

I don’t write for a living. My attention is always divided between creative work and the work that pays my bills. Thinking about ebook distribution isn’t my priority right now. Draft2Digital simply forced my hand.

I’ll revisit down the road when I have more books available, but Chaos Armor remains my focus.

Can I buy an ebook directly from you?

The good news: My ebook files exist in all formats because I use Vellum to make them. Which means, if you want a copy of Chaos Calling in a format other than Kindle or Kobo, you can send me a DM on Instagram and we’ll work something out.

Creating an online store is something I’ve avoided since it takes energy away from writing. I’ll consider it in the future when I have more of a backlist. That’s partly why the Draft2Digital decision is so disappointing.

Thanks for understanding!

The post I’ve pulled my indie book from Draft2Digital appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

I’d be lying through my teeth if I told you that my decision to re-write Nintendo’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses (FE3H) as a novel-length, golden route, romantasy action story was fully intentional.

Back in 2024, I hit a challenging roadblock in my work on The Xenthian Cycle and needed a break. Enter Into the Fishpond, my seven-month obsession.

Registered members can read Into the Fishpond on AO3. I’ve also tagged all my reflections on what writing a novel-length project on AO3 taught me.

If you don’t know the game, FE3H pits the heirs of three nations against each other, first as academic rivals and then as opposing generals.

You play as Byleth, a nonbinary mercenary turned reluctant professor with their own secrets to unravel. Whichever leader Byleth champions will conquer the other houses and impose their vision on the continent.

The character writing is excellent, and all the endings are heartbreaking in some way. The game design forces you to make hard choices across the board, which makes it compulsively replayable (e.g., I’ve finished three out of four routes.)

As I began work on Fishpond, I knew a few things:

• My adaptation would be a romance. Since our setting is a secondary fantasy world, it’s technically romantasy.
• The principal character is from Earth and enters the game world aware of the story’s cannon events. In fanfiction circles, this structure makes Fishpond an Isekai story.
• Seteth, the school’s administrator, is the male protagonist.
• Zara, my thirty-something lead, would body swap into Byleth’s unoccupied female body (the player chooses which version of Byleth to play when the game starts).

Beyond that, everything else was up for grabs. Or so I thought.

In Chapter 1, the Goddess Sothis wandered into my adaptation and handed down the terms for a classic golden route.

With a year of hindsight, it was a wonderful decision. Rewriting FE3H as a golden route added richness to my adaptation.

Okay, what is a golden route?

In video games, a golden route maximizes positive resolutions across the board. For example, the main characters all live, peace is restored to the land, terrible choices are avoided, secrets are safely shared, and everyone gets what they want (at least in part).

Unlike Triangle Strategy, another popular video game, FE3H has no golden route. No matter what you do, at least one of the house leaders ends up dead, often alongside key supporters who won’t join any of the opposing armies.

Adding a golden route to the romance plot raised the stakes for all the characters and dramatically changed storylines for the house leaders who play supporting roles in my version of the story (e.g., Claude, Edelgard and Dimitri).

Writing a Golden Route also meant I could:

• Adapt the story’s overall ending.
• Avoid the five-year time skip written into the game’s original story, keeping us in the more idyllic, academic setting that all the routes share in the first half of play (“White Clouds”).
• Write new battles with the story’s best antagonists in ways the game doesn’t allow.
• Change all the endings for the major house lords, supporting players, and non-combatants.

Didn’t that torpedo the story’s conflict?

In short: no.

FE3H has layers of misunderstanding and betrayal baked into the narrative. Despite the wide-ranging success conditions, my adaptation had plenty of tension.

For example:

• Lady Rhea, the archbishop of Fódlan, is a character with deep secrets, a flawed psyche, and a decidedly amoral approach to statecraft. She remained a morally gray character in my work.
• The Agarthans, the true villains of FE3H, rarely get to fight the primary heroes (the game’s Verdant Wind route where you side with Claude is the exception). My adaptation sets them directly in opposition to the united school in ways that were new to readers. I used the game’s existing Agarthan spies and turncoats to foster suspicion and fear.
• Macuil, one of Seteth’s mysterious brothers, plays a minimal, off-screen role in the canonical story. Bringing him into the main plot and putting him at odds with Seteth allowed me to wrap lore drops in provocation. Macuil also let me build a unique supporting character since he’s absent for so much of the canonical experience.

Given the fraught, interconnected character histories, Zara’s and Byleth’s efforts to unite the house leaders still required care and discretion. They’re always on the edge of being found out, often in explosive ways.

What I learned

Fishpond follows the canonical story to a point. Reshuffling the possibilities around an outcome that readers had never seen in the game added extra intrigue.

After spending so much time on this thought experiment, I understand why FE3H doesn’t include a golden route:

• The extra scenes, maps and battles would mean a lot of complexity and development for a game that was already four months late when it was published in 2019.
• Fans complain that some routes aren’t as well developed as others (consensus seems to be that Azure Moon is strongest and Silver Snow weakest, though the debate continues).
• Adding the extra scenes required to support a new route would also mean more character dialogue. FE3H already has four routes + 1 partial DLC route, along with a full and excellent cast, so that’s a big additional cost.

Thanks to the comments, I know that some readers gave Fishpond a shot because it was tilting at this particular windmill, not the romance premise (Seteth is not as popular as the students for obvious reasons).

Conversely, writing an original female character, even one who spends much of the story wearing a body that is part of the game, meant some fans wouldn’t read my story. Some readers only want original pairings; others dislike the Isekai structure.

Either way, writing a golden route gave me another hook to Fishpond’s pitch. It’s an impulse that I’m glad that I embraced.

Other posts in this series:

• My AO3 stats model
• Overturning my Internet Bullshit: That time I wrote romantasy action on AO3

The post What Writing on AO3 Taught Me: Golden route = Powerful premise appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

New Growth Show: Topics covered

• • 00:00 — Navigating the weird world of marketing in 2025

• • 02:59 — The Journey of EMW: From Marketing to Fantasy Writing

• • 06:03 — Building a Community: The Importance of Beta Readers

• • 09:03 — The Role of Subject Matter Experts in Storytelling

• • 11:50 — The Power of Feedback and Sensitivity Reading

• • 14:57 — Marketing Strategies for Indie Authors

• • 17:52 — The Impact of Online Communities on Writing

• • 21:01 — Fan Fiction and the Evolution of Writing Perspectives

• • 23:50 — The Role of AI in Creative Work

• • 26:56 — Future Projects and Marketing Innovations

• • 29:56 — Closing Thoughts and Community Engagement

• • LinkedIn: Jess Joyce, Tiffany Da Silva

• • Jess’ website, Tiffany’s website

• • Youtube: New Growth Show

• • Instagram: New Growth Show

The post I’m on the New Growth Show! appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

While writing Into the Fishpond, a novel-length fan fiction story set in the “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” universe (FE3H), I built a growth model for tracking my readers’ engagement.

The story is long: forty-seven chapters, and over 200,000 words.

When I finished the initial story in August 2024, I copied my model and populated it with a fake/sample data set for other writers with a growth marketing mindset to use.

This post explains the model and my thinking, and contains a link to the Google Sheet for those who wish to apply it to their own projects.

Why I built a growth marketing AO3 stats model

In my day job, I’ve been the head of marketing for several tech companies and worked with many talented growth marketers. If you haven’t heard the term, it’s the field of marketing most concerned with how you grow and sustain a customer base.

Or, in this case, a group of engaged readers.

On whim, I started writing Fishpond on February 9, 2024. I didn’t know what I was doing or why, but I decided to post chapters beginning on February 22.

As a writer, I was completely new to AO3. I didn’t have any presence or following when I started. I had read some FE3H work by other writers dealing with this particular character pairing, but only as a guest. In the beginning, it felt like I was publishing the story for myself. I was skeptical that it would find readers. 

Case in point about how little I knew — I didn’t discover the “Statistics” tab in the home screen until after I had published Chapter 14.

By mid-April, Fishpond had reached 1,000 hits. I told a growth marketing colleague what I was doing. 

My colleague: “What’re you doing for Analytics?” 

Me: “Not much. All the site data is in the moment. There’s no time-based record of the metrics at all.”

My colleague: “How about we fix that?”

We built out a Google Sheet to track what was happening with the story. My colleague also encouraged me to adopt a regular posting schedule given my steady output. 

My use case and assumptions

I started applying my data model when I published Chapter 17 of Fishpond on April 26, 2024. Thanks to back-and-forth texts with my colleague, I had some historical data from screenshots dating from my first weeks of publishing.

My numbers were and are limited to what appears on AO3’s summary page:

Beginning with Chapter 17, I posted twice a week on Monday and Thursday between 4 and 5:30 pm EST. That pattern continued until I reached Chapter 38. After that, my writing process got complicated. I needed more time between instalments.

By July, I’d switched to a weekly model (Thursdays) with Chapter 39. At this posting tempo, I saw significant growth between with each chapter. I’d now recommend going weekly or monthly, although it requires more patience.

True experiments, where marketers control everything except one variable to determine which option wins, are harder to do with fiction. The stories themselves vary. Knowing whether audiences are responding to the frequency or the content would be next-to-impossible to parse out (unless AO3 itself did a study).

As you’ll see, my AO3 Stats Model has two primary tabs: 

• General Growth by chapter, which tracks the baseline AO3 stats — I updated this sheet once a week in the 15 minutes before the next chapter went live. It contains a trend line that changes trajectory as you feed it more data, and a table for tracking overall audience engagement by chapter (kudos, comments, bookmarks and subscriptions). 
• Chapter Growth by key metrics, which tracks activity within the first 24 hours and until the next chapter is published — I track hits, kudos and subscriptions (capped 15 minutes before publication). 

You can’t beat email subscriptions for reach

Growth marketing focuses on actions that reduce friction between user and product. That’s why brands ask you to subscribe to their marketing newsletters when you buy something or to provide an email address before you see a demonstration.

Growth marketers love email because it partially solves the tug of war between social platforms building for self-serving needs and content creators trying to gain an audience. It’s a medium we control end-to-end. 

AO3 is more like a library archive (with a beautiful tagging system) than it is like a social platform. It doesn’t have or need an algorithm with filtration power like you’d find on sites run by Meta or TikTok.

The subscription feature that AO3 provides is similar to email, but not the same. I can’t see the names addresses of anyone who subscribes; AO3 handles the actual emailing of updates I make.

But in principal, it’s close.  

What I tracked

Hits are a key AO3 metric because they’re the way to know how many visits a work has had. Long-time AO3 users know the site counts a hit as one visit from an IP address within a 24-hour period. Multiple hits are not recorded, nor are hits from writers to their own work when logged in.

You can read more about how it works in the AO3 FAQ.

Kudos, the site’s equivalent to likes, indicate a work’s popularity and act as social proof that a story is engaging. Some writers particularly value them from registered accounts. Most platforms have a like/heart/Kudos function. I’m grateful to every single person who gave me one, whether from a registered user or a guest account.

Subscriptions, either to a work or to everything an AO3 writer publishes, mean readers get emailed every time you update. That makes a subscription the single most valuable metric to a growth marketer over time.

Why? Because the engagement action is a single click from your email inbox. As my subscriber count grew, so did the hit and kudos count week-to-week. I’m grateful to every reader who subscribed to the story or, eventually, to me.

My model only includes work subscriptions and not user subscriptions. When I started, I didn’t have any user subscriptions. You could adapt the model to track them separately or together as you see fit.

I can tell you that as Fishpond got more popular, I received double the subscriptions in the period 24 hours after a chapter published compared to the first 24 hours.

Why aren’t bookmarks tracked in Chapter Growth?

When a reader sets a bookmark, they still have to actively remember to check it to read the next piece of story, and some readers have dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of bookmarks.

Readers can choose to make bookmarks private. That means the public-facing bookmark count on a story’s summary doesn’t give the whole picture.

I did love seeing my bookmark number rise; I tracked it in the General Growth tab.  I also really love it when someone annotates their bookmark on my story — I can sometimes tell from the description how far they’ve read or which kind of reader they think story would appeal to. 

But as growth stats go, it’s not as active or transparent an indicator of interest as a subscription.

Why aren’t comments tracked in Chapter Growth?

Comments are great. I love them.

From a growth perspective, their numbers are misleading, especially for works like mine. I responded to all my comments. That’s why I track them in the General Growth tab.

I respond to all of my comments because I enjoyed the interaction with the audience. They were a great source of qualitative feedback about whether the audience agreed with my instincts for the characters and plot — but I don’t count my comment responses in the model.

Given the number of people who never ever comment but will happily give a kudos, my colleague and I opted to give the kudos metric more weight.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think AO3 should count responses from creators on their own stories, either. Writers know we’re engaged in what’s happening with our work. I’d exclude them from the Dashboard counter.

Your mileage may vary and you can adapt your copy of the sheet how you like. Make it work for you!

If I could change one thing about AO3 stats  . . . 

I’d want to know how many users hit all the chapters in a work. Or, I’d ask for a ‘percentage read’ number or ‘completion rate’. Given how the Hit counter works, the number I see could easily be many, many people reading the first chapter and then stopping.

That’s why comments or annotated bookmarks are so nice when they crop up. It’s the only way to get a sense of how far people are reading. But I don’t believe they’re an accurate measure.

Growth marketers can be a bit obsessive

In general, growth marketers are data-driven people. We can be a bit (a lot?) obsessive about things we track.

Getting accurate numbers requires manual updates a couple times a week. I’m comfortable with that, but you may want to change it up. 

If the sheet is too much, feel free to cut back for your copy, adapt it, or ignore it. Track whatever feels right for you.

My goal is to give you a tool, not an obligation.

Data trends take time to develop on any platform

If you’re new to any Internet platform, it takes a while for people interested in your content to find your work.

I saw a big inflection point for Fishpond in Chapter 16 and again in Chapter 27. When I moved to the weekly model, I again saw a big jump with Chapter 39. 

My data and publishing frequency prior to Chapter 15 were erratic. If I’d decided then to pass judgement on whether the story was a success or failure, whatever answer I gave myself about what was happening would probably have been wrong.

It was simply too soon to know. 

Be patient with your work. It takes time to find an audience and for people to get invested.

That’s the lesson I’m taking forward with The Xenthian Cycle.

Other posts in this series:

• What AO3 Taught Me: Golden Route = Powerful Premise
• Overturning my Internet Bullshit: That time I wrote romantasy action on AO3

The post My AO3 Stats Model appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

Meeting your writing heroes can be a fraught exercise. It’s easy to put people on a pedestal and meet your idea of the presence rather than the person.

Luckily, by the time I crossed paths with the late Ursula K. Le Guin in 2005, she was adroit at managing her public persona. I suspect she was very aware of what happened when she entered fan spaces and how to slip through those expectations.

She’s also the reason why I have a rare advanced bound manuscript of Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris.

How’d I meet her? Here’s the story. 

Las Vegas and fantasy legends

I’ve written before about my early career ambition be a science fiction and fantasy academic. I loved reading and academia, and SFF was my favourite genre. It was a place to get my bearings while I figured out what to do with my life.

While exploring this idea, I attended the Science Fiction Research Association and gave papers (circa 2003-05), including the original paper that became my TedxTalk on why we need new stories about female superheroes. That paper led to my work on The Xenthian Cycle when I realized I wanted to use my writing as a place to address the problems I’d identified.  

Las Vegas’ Tropicana Hotel hosted the 2005 meeting. Ursula LeGuin was the guest of honour and one of the big reasons I was determined to go. I brought copies of A Wizard of Earthsea and Rocannon’s World for her to sign.

Like a lot of Canada over the last few years, California was burning that spring and summer. It made for an apocalyptic atmosphere. Environmental concerns form a large through line in Le Guin’s work, so that also felt on point.

If you’ve never been, Las Vegas a weird place. Beyond the artificial glitz and gambling, the windowless rooms, strange chemical smell and strong scent of wildfire on the wind made for a strange conference.

What was Le Guin like?

Let me be clear: I didn’t know Le Guin as a person. I encountered only her public author persona. So take this all with a grain of salt.

My first impression was of her height. I’m quite tall. Le Guin, in her mid-seventies by this point, was maybe five feet.

But her presence unquestionably made her a giant.

She attended some of the academic talks and sat in the back. The panelists and the audience were definitely aware of her in the room.

At one panel, I remember she listened quietly until they made a point she clearly disagreed with. Le Guin put her hand up, gently deflated the hyperbole, and shifted the discussion to another tangent.

I remember thinking that she wasn’t interested in protecting her position as the most influential author and critic in the room. She struck me as someone accustomed to side-stepping her own reputation. There was a deftness to how she reacted whenever people deferred to her.

Later, when being announced at the dinner in her honour, she made a funny squealing noise and threw her hands in the air. It was playful, a little silly, and another way to demonstrate that she wasn’t there to take herself too seriously.

I spoke briefly with her during the signing session. She was definitely intimidating to my mid-twenties self, but also kind.

I expect you don’t have a career like hers and not know the effect you have on younger readers and writers. I remember her saying she hadn’t seen this edition of Rocannon’s World in a while:

There are so many questions I wish I had asked her now, but our time to speak was limited. And I was too chicken-shit to approach her outside of that opportunity.

2005 was a big year for writing heroes

In that same year, TOR also published Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. He’s a juggernaut now and a writing hero to many SF/F readers. At the time, no one knew who he was or what he would begin in The Cosmere of connected worlds with that first book.

Ahead of publication day, publishers and indies give away advance reader copies (known as ARCs). People from TOR Books (Sanderson’s publisher), were also at this conference. I vaguely remember finding a pile of ARCs in the middle of a table. Maybe at dinner? Maybe on another day?

In my memory, the ARC piles were distributed at the big dinner tables, but I might be wrong about that. Perhaps because it was bright yellow, I picked up Elantris (more pictures here).

I sometimes talk about this experience to people in their twenties when we’re discussing the importance of going to in-person events. Flying to the States is not cheap from Canada, but I’m glad I went (also online attendance options weren’t available back then).

If I hadn’t gone, I never would have met Le Guin, heard her speak, or returned with so many treasured memories.

A writing career for the ages

Le Guin remains a posthumous influence on SF/F and American letters.

She is credited with coining the word ansible, a literary device used by many SF authors to explain communication across the stars. Gender, sexuality, identity and cultural expectations are frequent themes in her work, and she wasn’t afraid to acknowledge her growth or the flaws in her past work.

I was sad when she died in 2018, and glad I contributed to Arwyn Curry’s documentary about her life and work, Worlds of Ursula Le Guin, which was raised nearly $250,000 USD through Kickstarter.

Ursula remains one of my writing heroes. If you’d like suggestions on where to start with her books, visit my Substack for a list.

The post Writing Heroes: Ursula K. Le Guin appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

I’d seen Gilbert’s Tedx talks about creativity and working through her phenomenal writing success after Eat, Pray, Love. When I learned she was publishing a non-fiction book about living with creativity, I devoured it in print and audio.

That first read was a revelation. I admired the way Gilbert punctures the fallacy that living an artistic life means suffering. “If the art legitimates cruelty, the art may not be worth having,” she writes.

Her approach to creative living is decidedly anti-elitist. I’ve written about how Big Magic encouraged me to cast off my outdated, ignorant opinions about fan fiction. It also cemented my conviction that self-publishing was absolutely the right choice for me.

I read it again before I launched Chaos Calling, certain that I understood what Gilbert meant when she wrote, “The outcome does not and cannot matter.”

Spoiler alert: I had no fucking idea.

I’ve talked about how challenging it is to write a series, particularly as an indie. It’s time-consuming and expensive.

My newsletter subscribers also know that editing Chaos Armor’s fourth draft has taken longer than I’d planned. I wanted to publish it in 2025. That deadline has slipped. To be kinder to myself, I won’t name another date until I can meet that promise with certainty.

Immediately after sharing that delay, I received devastating news.

My book is among the millions of texts first pirated by LibGen and then stolen by Meta and other unethical tech companies to train their AI engines.

When pirates aren’t cool, just gross

I work in tech. Toronto is a well-regarded hotbed for AI research (e.g., Geoff Hinton). Tech investment is soft right now. Guess what’s still getting funding? AI projects.

Over the last five years, I’ve also listened to my peers and friends get increasingly enthusiastic about the various chatbot tools. As with environmentalism, DEI concerns, or flagrant violations of human rights, speaking up about the ethical quagmires AI presents may threaten your livelihood in tangible ways.

Many job descriptions in tech require fluency with AI skills, processes, and prompting. Recruiters want to know you can use it appropriately.

I’d been watching all of these trends with a mix of interest and skepticism.

But it’s one thing to suspect a technology billionaires are pirating books to feed their data-ravenous algorithms. It’s another to know that your work is among them.

When I read Alex Reisner’s article, “The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem” in The Atlantic and found Chaos Calling in the searchable database, my stomach lurched the same way it does in a fast-moving elevator.

Who do the other 121 results belong to? An academic who also publishes as E. M. Williams. Pirates have also stolen her published papers. The LibGen dataset includes millions of academic and non-fiction publications, along with novels, short stories and poetry collections.

Nearly every writer you can think of has likely had their works pirated by LibGen, a decentralized system that reminds me of the early days of Napster and KaZaA. LibGen includes original works, translations, and audiobooks recorded by equally talented voice artists.

Meta then scraped that pirated archive to train its engines because it didn’t want to pay market cost for acquiring data.

Elizabeth Gilbert (117 records) is also among the thousands of affected writers, academics and voice artists. Like her, many writers have lost the work of their entire careers.

What kills big magic? Despair

Without a publishing house or agent to commiserate with, I spent the next few weeks in a fog.

Writing felt impossible. What was the point? Why was I living my life on hard mode? Why should I bust my ass (and wallet) to write and publish another book when some combination of pirates and tech autocrats were going to steal my work the second I hit ‘upload’?

Worse, when I talked about what had happened, colleagues were sympathetic to a point, but it’s clear no one thinks the open exploitation of creative people means we should put AI back in the box.

Part of me understands. AI is the big trend. The hiring market is already precarious. No one wants to be left behind.

On another level, the whole thing made me want to lie down and never get up.

“Fear gets boring after a while”

In March, my book club picked Big Magic as our monthly read. I snagged the audiobook from Toronto Public Library. While I listened, I asked myself what Liz Gilbert would say about my piracy/theft situation.

No one was worried about AI when Big Magic was published. Gilbert does, however, write at length about, “me, creativity, and fear, advancing once more into the wide, terrifying terrain of UNKNOWN OUTCOME” [capitals mine]. After all, she says, “Uncertainty is what we sign up for.”

No kidding, Liz.

I kept coming back to these and other lines, which so accurately capture the hardest parts of pursuing a creative project. To write is to wrestle with uncertainty all the time.

But I’ve also experienced indescribable joy when an idea blooms in my mind like a flower, and bubbles of delight when a reader tells me how much my work means to them. Over the last three years, I’ve had so many of these moments. Am I prepared to never have those experiences again? That’s a far steeper price to pay.

When I launched Chaos Calling, I also had no data to temper my wild, first-time novelist ambitions. In 2025, I know better.

Sure, I’ve had sales reports with weeks and weeks of nothing. I’ve got scores of TikTok videos and other social posts that flopped. It’s hard to psych yourself up to run through another wall when you’ve still got bruises on your face and a bum knee from your last attempt.

At the same time, writing Into the Fishpond showed me that you literally cannot see the shape of your story’s success or the following it may amass until you’re at least seventy-five percent of the way through.

Chaos Calling is only twenty percent of The Xenthian Cycle. Until I publish Book IV or V, I truly won’t know what I’ve got.

As Gilbert writes:

“How you manage yourself between those bright moments, when things aren’t going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your craft and how equipped you are for the challenges of creative living. [ . . .] “I am asking you to put aside your innocence for a moment, and to step into something far more bracing, and far more powerful:

There are no guarantees for anyone. Will you put forth your work anyhow?”

I know that I suffer when I’m not writing. Which means there’s only one viable answer.

The most bracing Big Magic

Every writer has an outside story we draw upon when asked to explain our inspiration. We also have an inside story—the personal motivations that drive our work.

When I’m outside my courage, it’s the inside story that keeps me going.

I remember sitting on a footstool in my kitchen at 1:30 a.m. one cold December night in 2015. Unbeknownst to me, I’d finished my second-last day of work on the first manuscript. I recall tipping my head back against the cabinets and staring at nothing, exhausted by and astounded at what I’d captured.

Later, I stood behind one of the swivel chairs in my living room, consumed by my story’s propulsive potential. This book has legs, I thought. This book can go the distance.

If I give up now, I’m turning my back on that younger and more courageous version of me.

If I give up now, the technocrats win.

And, as Liz Gilbert would no doubt remind me, nothing about writing has ever been certain.

Actions I’ve taken:

• I wrote an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asking for better policy to protect the work of Canadian artists. It’s posted on my work site.
• I finished a short story set in the world of The Xenthian Cycle. More details to come, but I hope to have it out soon.
• I’ve made Into the Fishpond visible only to registered AO3 members. Doing so adds another layer of protection from data scraping. The title page also includes a disclaimer stating my opposition to AI engines mining my work.
• Future editions of my book will explicitly call out AI scraping or training on the copyright page as something I do not consent to for any reason.
• I’m evaluating which digital platforms make sense for Book II’s release (I may also opt to sell it directly, who knows).
• I continue to work on Chaos Armor.

“Argue for your fears and you get to keep them,” Gilbert writes in Big Magic. “Fear gets boring after a while.”

Learning about the piracy and theft of my work definitely rekindled many of my writing fears.

It’s been true before and it will be true again—only way out is to keep moving.

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From the outset of a new manuscript, I begin with a vision for what I want to achieve. Inevitably, as the draft gets longer, my ideas about what I’m doing shift.

Sometimes, it’s because:

• I’m building new skills to fully achieve my ambitions.
• My ideas about the story have irrevocably changed.
• My attempt failed.

That’s part of the journey and somewhat understood by people who don’t write.

Writers may not agree on much when it comes to the creative process, but we do seem to agree that writing a second book is always a different psychological experience than writing a first.

I think that’s partly because your idea about the kind of writer you’re going to be changes when your first book is out.

The moment you publish, you burn your dearly held dreams about who you might be in the fire of who you’re becoming. If you’re lucky and your book finds readers, that group’s feedback may also shift your perceptions (positively or negatively).

I’ve experienced a little of that. But after publishing Chaos Calling, I also experienced a deeper loss.

And that’s also something many writers navigate.

My recent chaotic loss: Richard Rudy

In August 2022, my family lost a stalwart, lifelong friend in Richard Rudy. Cancer claimed this wonderful person far too soon and with little warning.

Rick and I first met through the University of Waterloo’s Fencing Club. We shared an understanding of depression and mental health. He loved fantasy books (especially Dune, C. S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy and Wheel of Time), and was a staunch supporter of my creative work.

We stayed friends as we began our careers. He worked in graphic design and development, while I focused on communications and marketing.

Rick quietly orchestrated my first date with my husband (they’ve been friends since grade school). We later attended each other’s weddings and welcomed children into our families.

Over time, Rick and I collaborated on dozens of marketing projects. Working with him was fun and productive. We developed a short hand and an unbreakable trust. At his funeral, peers confirmed his talent for design and web development, and his willingness to pitch in during a crunch.

Most importantly, he was a devoted father, friend and husband.

A stalwart supporter

Rick took the black and white headshot of me that appears in my Tedx talk intro on YouTube. He built all my websites, including my first blog. I later lost it when payments on his servers failed before I could get into the back end and move the site.

His illness progressed so rapidly. By the time we realized how sick he was, making time for technical administration was out of the question.

In the final year of his life, Rick designed and built the first iteration of emwilliams.ca. His version was active from March 2022 to June 2023. He also delivered an eleventh-hour tweak to Chaos Calling‘s paperback cover, removing a smudge and somehow fixing a file error that had dogged the project without even knowing what he’d done.

If I had known how little time he had left, I don’t know if I could have asked for his help. But he was that kind of friend.

With hindsight, I also see how fearless he helped me be when pitching. With Rick in my corner, I knew he’d either work with me to solve my technical challenges or bail me out if I got overextended.

Beyond the milestones he lost with his family and friends, I deeply regret that Rick never read Chaos Calling. I can’t remember how much we discussed the story. Unlike many friends who volunteered to beta read, Rick wanted the polished version.

I trust that he’s at peace, and he knows how deeply we love and miss him.

Chaos Armor is dedicated to Rick’s memory.

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How did I end up with a rare ARC of Elantris, Brandon Sanderson’s first book in the Cosmere universe? 

Sanderson is a juggernaut in science fiction and fantasy. His work is so popular that when he announced four secret book projects in February 2022, he raised over $41 million from over 185,000 people.

I’ve done crowdfunding for work (never at that scale, jees) and that kind of audience response is no joke!

So why do I have this book? It’s a long story. 

How I got a rare ARC of Elantris in 2005 

If you know my background, you may know that at point I thought I’d be a science fiction and fantasy academic. I loved reading and academia, and SFF was my favourite genre.

Slam dunk, right? (Well, except for the part where I needed a job and money. But I digress.)

While pivoting into a career in marketing, I went to a few conferences with the Science Fiction Research Association and gave papers (circa 2003-05), including the original paper that became my TedxTalk on why we need new stories about female superheroes. That paper later led to my work on The Xenthian Cycle when I realized I wanted to address the problems I’d identified through my own writing.  

Las Vegas’ Tropicana Hotel hosted the 2005 meeting. The late and great Ursula LeGuin was the guest of honour (she’s the reason I went). 

It was also the year that Elantris, Brandon Sanderson’s first novel, was published.

Ahead of publication day, publishers and indie authors give away advance reader copies (known as ARCs) to hype the reading audience.

People from TOR Books, Sanderson’s publisher, were also at this conference. I vaguely remember finding a pile of ARCs in the middle of a table for the academics to pick up (and, presumably, read and write papers about). Perhaps because it was bright yellow, I randomly picked up this copy of Elantris.

On the inside, someone has written the number 13 in pencil, so there must be at least 12 of these books in existence (maybe more).

I did a little research via the Sanderson Collectors Guild, the discord server for Sanderson’s fans who collect his work. One of the moderators reached out and kindly shared that ARCS of this book run in the $1000+ range at auction.

What I have is technically an advanced bound manuscript (the yellow version). To the moderator’s knowledge, it’s never come up for auction. The only copy he knew of with certainty is on a shelf in Sanderson’s office, though I did see a Reddit post where someone talked about finding a copy at a yard sale.

There’s a weird little white mark on the cover, but otherwise my copy is in pristine condition.

And I’ve never read it. 

You never read your rare ARC of Elantris?!? 

Nope. It may seem hard to believe, but for a long time, I low-key forgot I had this copy of Elantris.

It moved from my room in my parents’ house to our first apartment to our first house and to our current home in Toronto. 

When I get an ARC I’m not looking for, it doesn’t hold the same priority as books I’ve actively requested. 

For example, that happened with Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory. I got a copy at ComicCon 2022 when I bought a copy of Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby from the TOR Books table. The sales clerk was like, “oh, take one of these,” and handed Tesh’s book to me. It went on to win the Hugo, which is awesome

Have I read either of those books yet? No, I have not (I did eventually read Glory). This is a peril of being a book dragon.

I want to be clear that I have read other Brandon Sanderson books.

I’ve read and enjoyed the two Mistborn trilogies. The Stormlight Archive are on my TBR along with, like, 700+ other books (update: I read The Way of Kings in 2025 and really loved it). I prefer to read Sanderson’s work in audio format, largely because I adore Michael Kramer and Kate Reading as narrators. They did the original Wheel of Time audiobooks, which is how I fell in love with their voices. 

I intend to read Elantris one day. And when I do, I won’t be reading this ARC because doing so would ruin it (the type inside is very close to the margin). 

I’ll definitely go audiobook when the time comes.

Will Chaos Calling‘s ARC ever be that popular?

Ha!

The odds are extremely long and I have no illusions about that, but it’s fun to dream that someday that they could be. After all, dreaming is why writers do what we do.

I’m happy for all the fans and readers who are attending Dragonsteel Nexus this weekend. There’s something so joyful about being in person with people who love the things that you love. And my husband is among the readers looking forward to cracking Wind and Truth open this holiday season.

Some day, I’ll get around to reading it and the rest of The Stormlight Archive, too.

For now, I’ll keep working on getting Book II of The Xenthian Cycle out for next year. 

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Her episode aired on November 4, 2024. Here’s where you can listen:

• Apple
• Spotify
• Listen Notes

On the How Did I Not Know That podcast, Conny brings her listeners information about crucial topics they missed out on in school. She uncovers knowledge, explores fascinating facts, and discussses pressing issues.

Conny and I connected through Growclass, where we’re both part of the Internet’s kindest marketing community. Since she knows me professionally, I appear as both my writing and marketing selves in this episode.

We had a great conversation about writing The Xenthian Cycle and my journey through self-publishing. We also talk about Taylor Swift’s choice to self-publish her Eras Tour book and the pros and cons of going it alone.

Topics we cover on How Did I Not Know That?

• 1:20 — My journey into self-publishing, and my TedxTalk about women, superheroes and power
• 3:00 — How my work and life combines my passions for books, marketing and career strategy
• 4:40 — How The Xenthian Cycle evolved, and my background in crowdfunding
• 6:10 — Who self publishing is for and Taylor Swift’s decision to self publish her Eras Tour book
• 7: 15 — The traditional publishing path
• 9:00 — Celebrity and book publishing (Taylor Swift, Keanu Reeves, etc.)
• 10:00 — The importance of the backlist for indie authors
• 10:25 — Building in public before your book launches and the pitfalls of Internet piracy for authors
• 13:10 — The pros and cons of self-publishing vs traditional publishing
• 15:30 — Why money generally flows to the author if you go the traditional path, not the other way around
• 17:10 — My advice to aspiring authors: Pick an idea you love, finish it and get private feedback
• 18:00 — The stages of manuscript review and book promotion (I refer to Travis Baldree’s guide to self-publishing)
• 21:10 — Why finishing a project is so important and so hard
• 22:10 — How I find time to write, before and after Covid-19
• 23:20 — Writing and AI

Note that in the section about Taylor Swift, I mentioned that I thought the Eras book was coming out next year. My mistake! It’s coming out in November as the tour ends.

For more, you can follow Conny Lee and the How Did I Not Know That podcast:

• LinkedIn: Conny Lee
• Spotify: How Did I Not Know That? show page
• Apple: How Did I Not Know That? show page

The post I’m on the How Did I Not Know That Podcast! appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

Live long enough, and you may overturn your past self’s Internet bullshit.

I’m a case in point.

Me circa 2015: “Fifty Shades of Grey is the hottest thing in publishing and I have formed negative opinions about fan fiction.”
Universe (grinning): “Hold my beer?”

Unpacking bullshit can be a long process

I’ve spent a lot of my middle adulthood digging out of elitism as a life choice. I’m also old enough that parts of that journey are visible in my Internet long-tail.

I grew up excelling in academics, and liked both school and learning. I won scholarships, awards, and medals. My family valued my achievements.

As I approached the end of my undergraduate degree, I had no idea what would make a viable career. What I wanted to do was write books. I didn’t believe that career would pay for my life, and neither did my family. At a loss, I leaned into earning a PhD in Science Fiction & Fantasy.

That way, I’d meet the writers I admired and study the books that I loved. Win-win, right?

Diligently, I earned a Master’s degree in Literary Theory. At some point on that journey, I realized I was more interested in writing books of my own than in talking about other people’s work for a living.

I started working, first in communications and then in marketing, and writing on the side.

Like many creatives, my ambitions and opinions about what makes a great book exceeded my ability to execute for a long, long time. It was frustrating. I despaired and felt envy for people I perceived as having what I wanted.

During this time, I wrote some unfortunate, judgemental things about fan fiction. The original essay isn’t worth your time.

My karmic turn in the river

In 2016, I read Liz Gilbert’s Big Magic. In it, she brings a non-elitist approach to creativity’s importance in our lives, while pointing out the elitism that exists in how we’re taught to think about how art and how it gets made.

During this period, I was also active on Twitter, which expanded my creative horizons. I listened to a lot of conversations about how widely people read, what participating in a fandom can mean, and why folks like what they like.

Reflecting on both experiences and my first essay after finishing Gilbert’s book, I realized I was doing nothing more profound than letting my fears about my writing prospects grab the mic while crapping on other people.

So I wrote “Death of a Fan Fiction Snob” to take myself to task.

For years, I thought that was it—lesson learned.

The muse had other plans.

The Switch game that changed everything

In 2019 and 2021, I played Fire Emblem: Three Houses (FE3H) for the Nintendo Switch.

It’s a strategy game set in a fantasy world with great characters, some heartbreaking choices, and a high degree of re-playability. I was quickly hooked. As I played the first of four possible routes, my passion for the game prompted me to read fan fiction for the first time.

Last February, I started rewriting the game as a romantasy action story on an Archive of Our Own, one of the biggest non-profit sites for fan fiction.

It’s called Into the Fishpond: A Three Houses Alliance. And it’s finished.

While Fishpond has a small yet kind following (~7,000+ hits), I’ve had some wonderful interactions with its readers (~170+ comments). Since it’s over 215,000 words, Fishpond is the longest story I’ve ever written. It taught me lots about writing faster, structuring scenes, and building sexual tension.

Like Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, which loosely inspired the title, Fishpond is a portal story about someone from our world who ends up in the portal world.

It’s also got:

• A romance between two people dealing with grief (if you know FE3H well, Fishpond is loosely a Setleth ship)
• Found family
• Dragons
• Intense battle scenes (surprise!!)
• Magical twins (again!?) whose sibling bond low-key powers the whole thing (picturing your shocked face)
• My first non-binary character
• A lot of non-canon lore that I made up as I went along

Want to know more? Here’s the plot teaser from Fishpond’s intro on AO3:

Zara has just finished playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses for the fourth time when she’s struck by the injustice of watching her favourite characters die time and again. Why can’t she save all of them?

Fortunately, the Goddess Sothis agrees that this is a problem worth solving.

Into the Fishpond by E. M. Williams

Getting over your Internet Bullshit

My Internet bullshit almost stopped me from writing Fishpond. I was embarrassed to have once held negative opinions about an activity to which I was now devoting so much time. At first, I spent a lot of time minimizing this new novel and what it meant to me.

Some kind friends pointed out how deeply sad I got writing Chaos Armor, and how much joy came into my face when I talked about Fishpond. I’m glad I listened to them.

Besides great joy, this creative side quest proved I can build an audience entirely separate from my social circles and professional network.

I don’t expect the crossover audience for Fishpond to be high. Without game context, I’m not sure how much sense the story makes to Xenthian Cycle readers, although I did get comments from some people who’ve never played the game and enjoyed it.

Either way, I’m proud of the work and wanted to share that it exists.

Here’s to living long enough to set your Internet bullshit on fire.

Other posts in this series:

• What Writing on AO3 Taught Me: Golden Route = Powerful Premise
• My AO3 stats model

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