In this episode we get into why the Christian bookstore market has narrowed itself into a corner, what spec fic offers that Amish romance structurally cannot, and why the supernatural elements of the faith are actually best explored through fantasy and horror rather than avoided. We also cover what 12 years of editing academic history for a general audience teaches you about making hard things approachable, why women writing male characters keep defaulting to two broken archetypes, and what Kaylena learned about finding readers by showing up at craft fairs instead of book festivals.

In This Episode

• The Christian Market vs. Christian Writers: Why the gatekeeping isn’t coming from outside the faith — it’s coming from inside the bookstore — and how the spec fic community is building an audience anyway.

• Realm Makers and the Third Option: The community of Christian writers that aren’t shelved in the Christian aisle, but are still explicitly rooted in a theological worldview, and why that distinction matters for marketing.

• Positive Masculinity in Fiction: Why Kaylena builds worlds where men are expected to be virtuous, what she thinks is driving young men toward toxic archetypes, and what fiction can offer that YouTube rants can’t.

• How Women Get Male Characters Wrong: The Homer Simpson idiot husband, the impossible romanticized ideal, and why both archetypes are doing the same damage from opposite directions.

• Naming the Dragon: Why writing about supernatural evil is a specifically Christian act, what Chesterton understood about dragons, and why fiction that can’t be conquered is not just unsatisfying — it’s dishonest.

• History as a Spec Fic Engine: How a decade editing academic Christian history for lay readers quietly loaded Kaylena’s fiction with monastic life, warrior monks, and recurring theological themes she didn’t have to invent.

• The Craft Fair Discovery: Why Kaylena outperforms at community craft festivals compared to book festivals, and what that tells you about competition, traffic, and finding readers who weren’t already looking for you.

• Substack Over X: Why notes and genuine interaction on Substack are working when the Twitter/X algorithm has become actively hostile to organic discovery.

• Write Because You Love It: Why indie authors who are racing generative AI output to become millionaires in two years are playing the wrong game, and what the actual long game looks like.

Guest Links

• Read the Elmnas Chronicles by Kaylena Radcliff: https://a.co/d/06ybrcfG

• Website: https://www.kaylenaradcliff.com/

• Substack:

Kristin’s Links

• Editing Services: nonsensefreeeditor.com

• Newsletter: https://www.fictionalinfluence.com

• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@nonsensefreekristin

Timestamps

00:00 - Meet Kaylena Radcliff.

00:30 - Inside Christian History Magazine.

02:31 - Editing for Clarity.

04:06 - From Lit Degree to Editor.

05:38 - Day Job vs Fiction.

07:41 - Genre Fluid Spec Fiction.

09:18 - Realm Makers and Branding.

11:25 - Writing Virtuous Men.

13:40 - Christian Market Pushback.

17:06 - Getting Male Characters Right.

18:41 - Why Fiction Matters.

20:38 - Why Write the Supernatural.

21:33 - Naming Evil to Defeat It.

22:23 - When Horror Feels Hopeless.

23:25 - Discernment and Speculative Worlds.

24:58 - Angels Demons and Theology.

25:57 - Indie Publishing Reality Check.

29:05 - Finding Readers and Platforms.

30:58 - Substack Voice and Notes.

32:07 - Selling Books In Person Again.

34:27 - Rapid Fire Advice and Wrap Up.

About This Podcast

Nonsense-Free Kristin is where independent authors and creators learn to build their platforms, master their craft, and create on their own terms—without begging for permission from gatekeepers who hate them.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

In the book, the protagonist tries to enlist in the Marines at fifteen, gets arrested hitchhiking across the New Mexico desert because he has no identification and refuses to give the police his name. He goes home, finishes high school with a 4.0, joins the Army at eighteen, and deploys to Korea with the 187th Airborne. He meets a couple of Green Berets on a train in Germany, volunteers on the spot, and earns one of the first berets issued by the newly formed Special Forces.

He deploys to Vietnam five times, where he trains irregular forces in the jungle, conducts night raids along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and is shot in the knee, the ankle, the foot, and the forehead during a single engagement at Bong Son. Left between the lines and presumed dead by the enemy, …

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The system that asked Frank Castle to kill on its behalf, that deployed him in a black ops unit so classified it didn’t officially exist and expected obedience, turned its full institutional weight against his family when he became i…

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We love this guy. We put him on motivational posters. We name business schools after him. We tell our kids about the young man who walked into a CEO’s office with nothing but a pressed suit and a firm handshake and walked out with a career. We treat self-reliance like a sacred American value, right up there with free speech and the Second Amendment, and we should, because it is.

So why does everybody act so confused when seventy million Americans actually go out and do it?

The American Ronin

In feudal Japan, a ronin was a samurai without a master. He carried the same swor…

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She found her living in a converted stone barn on the Scottish coast, writing Victorian murder mysteries under the name Anne Perry.

By 1994, Perry had published fifteen novels. Her Thomas Pitt series was a bestseller. Her agent, Meg Davis, had no idea her client had beaten a woman to death at age fifteen. When Ferguson’s story broke, Davis called Perry in a panic, ready to phone the lawyers.

“I’m afraid it’s true,” Perry said. “You can’t ring the lawyer. It’s true. I am Juliet Hulme.”

Stra…

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Or the one-star review from someone who powered through the book anyway, furious that the author had wasted their time with a character who wasn’t nice.

This is the likability mandate, and it’s killing fiction.

“Likable” Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

Sorry to steal the politician’s favorite stalling phrase, but let me be clear about what we’re discussing. The demand for likable protagonists isn’t about wanting well-drawn characters, or characters with interiority, or characters whose choices make psychological sense. Those are reasonable expectations. The likability mandate is something else: the insistence that protagonists be good—or at least someone you’d want to get a drink with.

It’s the reader saying: I will only spend time with fictional people I approve of.

It’s …

Read more

Nobody wanted to be the kid who played D&D. The social cost was too high, and in the mid-nineties, the stakes felt existential in a way that’s hard to explain to anyone who grew up watching Stranger Things. Those kids were worse than nerds. In the minds of concerned parents and local news anchors, they were potential cultists, possible Satanists, one bad gaming se…

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Probably not what you hear very often on the internet about corporate jobs. But as someone who went all-in on my own business for a year, met all my financial goals, and then CHOSE to go back to corporate, I thought I’d share my experience with you.

And it is MY experience. Other full-time writers/creators likely have a different outlook. But if you’re looking to leave a day job at some point, I thought it would be good to give you an alternate take.

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The Unbearable, Unending Task List

When going full-time on their own business, whether that’s novel writing or content creation, most people think only of the money. What needs to come in to accommodate what goes out?

Doing the math was a high priority to me, and to make it work, I started adding income streams (a premium author group, a digital magazine) and increasing existing ones (YouTube, Editing Business). That meant producing new, original content almost daily, making long-term plans, and tracking upwards of 50 clients’ novels at a time (I have 5 editors and a VA working for me).

Instead of having more time without the annoyance of my stupid day job, I had less time to do anything but have my face in my laptop. I couldn’t miss a video because if I did, the YouTube algo would ding me. I couldn’t miss a Substack because whenever I do, I get unsubscribes. I DEFINITELY couldn’t miss a case study, article, or Zoom meeting for my premium group. These authors were paying good money to learn and grow.

I’ll pat myself on the back that it took several months for the cracks to show. Probably because being a workaholic was a good way to distract myself from the grief of losing Gemma.

But defense mechanisms don’t last forever, and when the spackle stopped working on the leaks… it all blew up big.

Hate Your Audience a Little. But Not Too Much

I have a naturally melancholic personality and it’s nothing to get excited over. I suspect a lot of writers are the same way. However, when the melancholy turns to aggression, it’s a good sign something is wrong.

I actually grew to hate it whenever a video or article did well, as I would be deluged by comments from people not already in my audience.

“This thing you wrote doesn’t match my experience. You’re obviously LYING.”

“Ackshually, this author who sold a million copies is doing it wrong.”

“I hate when ugly feminist cat ladies talk about relationships. You have no eggs!”

“Hey this is mostly a good video but the lack of a step-by-step business plan for me to follow is disappointing. Maybe you can do better next time.”

“I like your tits. Can you wear the green shirt next time? I like you better in green.”

These are all paraphrasing of course, but not by much. Comments like these are part and parcel to having any kind of presence on the internet and you have to be able to roll with them. And for a while, I did.

Until I couldn’t anymore. Instead of an eyeroll and a cheeky rebuttal posted to Twitter, I boiled with hatred for every errant comment, letting it sour my mood for hours.

“Hey, are you okay?” became a regular inquiry from Hubs and my parents on our weekly calls. “Of course I am.” But I wasn’t.

The unending pressure of my own perfectionism worsened my natural melancholy to unhealthy levels. I took no satisfaction in any success. No number of editing orders in a month was correct. It was either too little (“I’m failing my editors!”) or too many (“I’ll have to push out the delivery date. My clients will be disappointed!”). The positive reviews for my books or my business, the praise on any video or article, felt like pity. NOT GOOD ENOUGH. None of it.

Some of you have correctly identified the name for this condition. And yes, I am working with someone on it now, which meant following their directions, even when I felt like there would be horrendous consequences for doing so.

Spoiler alert: The advice was correct and the doom I predicted did not occur

Pulling Out of the Skid

YouTube is full of creators celebrating their ability to go full-time on their channels. Some writers also make videos about the moment they could quit their job. But there are so many more detailing their success even as they KEEP their day job. For me, obviously, this is the path to follow. I had a year of being all in on my own. And I did. not. thrive.

So the relief of my new job is overwhelming. From 8-5, I only focus on this one job. I go to the gym on the same days at the same time throughout the week. I don’t need the notifications on my phone to ping me constantly, lest I fall short of a client’s or viewer’s expectations.

Yes, the hours I spent this week on a webinar about how to use email and the history of the company could be perceived as tedious. And would have been, if I’d been subjected to this at my old job. But my attitude has shifted. I know all this stuff, but perhaps the other newbies don’t.

There is a lot of malice for the modern HR-driven corporate culture, and justly so. We all joke about the “office culture” and sobbing on the way to the “job I begged God for.”

But for me, this is basically a reward for a long and frustrating job search. I got three interviews (total) after hundreds of applications. For one job, I made it to the final round, but didn’t get it. Another, I was always a long shot, but I appreciated the hiring manager taking a chance on a dark horse candidate. And the third one, I got. After a very long process that involved fingerprints and a piss test. But in the end… I got it. And I am relieved.

What Now?

I promise this isn’t some prolonged announcement of me shutting down my Substack. Far from it. This place (and YouTube) will continue as they always have. My VA Trent is wonderful and makes the workload possible. Likewise for the outstanding editors who make my side business a success. But I am shrinking my overall presence. Twitter overtly sucks now and I pretty much scroll for 30 minutes, check DMs, and post and ghost my content. Ya’ll, it has NO EFFECT on my incoming editing work. It was never a requirement or part of my income. It was just pressure I put on myself.

As it turns out, skipping a week on Substack doesn’t make people unsubscribe. Boring content does, though. So if I don’t have anything interesting to say on a particular week, it seems better to just skip it.

And though the YouTube algo isn’t in love with me right now, that’s okay, because the right people still find me. The big benefit of keeping a day job is that my bills get paid regardless of follower count, which goes a long way in making my days feel light instead of heavy.

Coming Soon…

I’ve created a personal curriculum for a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, based on what a mid-tier university would have offered in 1997. This is for my own enrichment but I’ll be documenting it here and on YouTube. Maybe it’ll be fun for you too.

In this episode we get into his framework for using AI as a creative amplifier without letting it touch the writing, why comedy with heart works when pure gag writing doesn’t, what 12 years of physical overhead teaches you about find an audience and why pity marketing is not a business strategy. We also cover why showing up at conventions changed his career trajectory more than any online platform, how he landed four anthology deals simply by being a recognizable presence in the right rooms, and why the introvert excuse is the most expensive story authors tell themselves.

In This Episode

• AI as a Creative Amplifier: How David uses large language models to manage a brain running at a hundred miles an hour without letting them anywhere near his characters, dialogue, or narrative arc.

• The Two Golden Rules: Never let AI write for you. Never let it edit for you. Where the line is and why it matters.

• Comedy With Heart: Why humor works as a storytelling device rather than a genre, what incongruity actually means in practice, and why the Passion of the Christ Netflix and Chill scene lands.

• Brick and Mortar vs. Author Marketing: What 12 years of physical overhead, postcard campaigns, and newspaper ads that flopped teaches you about testing, iteration, and knowing your numbers before authors figure out what a funnel is.

• Stop Being On 40 Socials: Why spreading yourself across every platform is actively shrinking your reach, and the two platform rule that actually works.

• Pity Marketing: Why knocking your book to 99 cents and posting about it on X is not a strategy, and what sustainable audience building actually looks like.

• The Introvert Excuse: Why introversion means you recharge alone, not that you’re exempt from showing up, and what David got by showing up anyway.

• The Convention Opportunity: How being a recognizable presence in the right rooms directly generated four anthology deals and an anime showrunner credit.

• Who Are You: Why authors who can’t answer that question in one sentence are invisible no matter how good their book is.

• The True Scotsman Fallacy: Why the writing community’s favorite game of “you’re not a real author unless—” is the single most self-defeating thing creators do to each other.

Guest Links

• Read It Came from the Trailer Park by David Badurina: https://amzn.to/4qmacBY

• Youtube: @QuillfireSound

• Website: https://davidbadurina.com/

• Substack: @QuillitwithFire

• X: @DavidBadurina

Kristin’s Links

• Editing Services: nonsensefreeeditor.com

• Newsletter: https://www.fictionalinfluence.com

• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@nonsensefreekristin

Timestamps

00:00 - Meet David Badurina.

01:12 - Multimodal Storytelling.

02:09 - AI Tools Not Crutches.

06:27 - Creative Boundaries.

09:34 - Prompt Fail Stories.

11:56 - Anti Gatekeeping Mindset.

14:13 - Comedy With Heart.

18:37 - Writing Humor Tips.

22:16 - Brick And Mortar Marketing.

24:50 - Product Market Fit.

26:00 - Thick Skin Online.

27:14 - Stop Doing Every Social.

29:33 - Cohesive Branding DIY.

32:03 - Using LLMs Smartly.

33:54 - Doing It Yourself.

35:40 - Fear Of Speaking Up.

37:41 - Multiple Income Streams.

39:44 - Networking Beats Introversion.

44:22 - IRL Connections Pay Off.

46:35 - No More Pity Marketing.

47:16 - Where To Find David.

47:50 - Projects And Wrap Up.

About This Podcast

Nonsense-Free Kristin is where independent authors and creators learn to build their platforms, master their craft, and create on their own terms—without begging for permission from gatekeepers who hate them.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

But for those of us swimming in the third-world slop fountain of Twitter dot com, Louis Theroux’s carefully curated cast of clowns in the documentary barely raised an eyebrow.

This is because the “outrageous” opinions expressed by the dusty-hued foreigners in the documentary have long since become mainstream in online spaces. Spearheaded by the “Trad Cath” and “Theo Bros” of Twitter, there is an entire conversation about what should be done with women to fix society. Western societies specifically. Despite being framed largely by nominal Christians, the prescriptions bear a striking resemblance to Islam.

Weird.

The prevailing Twitter advice for women is often as follows:

1. Marry young. As young as possible. On your 18th birthday if you can

2. Do not go to college

3. Do not work outside the home

4. Do not vote

5. Have babies as soon as possible and as many as possible

6. Be pleasant, thin, and beautiful. Always

But really, it’s for their own good. If women would only do this, they would be better off. Dare we say… they would be happy. All of them. And society would, at last, be as it should be.

It’s possible (even likely) that many of these gender-slop commenters say these things not with sincerity but to maximize post impressions and, by extension, maximize their profits. And it works.

Women roll into the comments like clockwork, calling names, citing themselves as exceptions to female stereotypes, and of course, invoking the specter of male violence as a rebuttal to this and all prescriptions for female behavior.

The anger from women surrounding these types of conversations is always most baffling to me.

My sisters in Christ, surely you realize that when these Very Online Men talk about women… they’re not talking about YOU.

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When “Women” Doesn’t Mean Women

The sole non-foreign-born clown in the Manosphere documentary was Justin Waller, a genuinely successful construction magnate who came from the worst parts of Louisiana. He was already wealthy and successful, truly a picture of the American dream, when he started posting internet gender slop content alongside his friends Tristan and Andrew Tate.

Cousin Justin has prompted much anger for his takes on women due to his high-profile appearances on the Whatever podcast, the Daily Wire, Tate content, and most recently, the Netflix documentary. To be clear, he is not my first cousin, but looks as though he ought to be, so here we are.

Because he makes appearances on “normie” shows, he is the most known among non-terminally-online people and most likely to be sharply criticised for his misogyny.

If you want a good metric for how thoroughly normie women revile him, check out Galatea’s TWO-HOUR takedown of him:

HOWEVER… unlike his bestie Andrew Tate or the bestially stupid Sneako, Cousin Justin has a ready defense against accusations of misogyny. And in all seriousness, it’s a good one.

The leadership of the highly profitable construction business he owns is all women.

Yes, that’s right. His right-hand woman is a middle-aged, stocky built, highly competent woman, and his respect of and affection for her is palpable. He also employs younger women to liaise between leadership and construction teams because “there’s less friction there.”

This might seem like a contradiction from a man who says on camera that he does not participate in household chores or tending to the children; these are his wife’s domain. He also asserts the right to sleep with other women, even as his wife must remain faithful.

But his rules for “women” (and there are many) do not seem to apply to any of the women in his employ. Or even employed women in general.

He’s not alone in this seeming contradiction, as noted by :

So a weird thing has happened, where in the past few months I have discovered that multiple clients I have worked for for YEARS are either hardcore right-wing ultra MAGA types…

… these are people who post as if women should be chained to a stove and are too emotional for business…who are also willingly paying me a lot of money per hour to give them advice about their business. They don’t have to do that, that’s what they choose to do.

And they’re all unfailingly polite and kind in dealing with me directly, and talk me up to others. I also know for a fact that ALL of these guys also have a female CPA who runs all their finance and accounting stuff, and half of them also have a female general manager who basically runs their operations.

So basically these are dudes who are telling the world on a daily basis how women should all be trad wives, yet are paying tons of $$$ to mostly women who are actually running their business empires.

So what is up with that?

… A ton of the supposedly ultra conservative and right-wing public figures out there spouting off about the evils of women working are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to women who are running their legal, accounting, ops, and business management. Now that I’ve realized it, I can’t stop seeing it.

Don’t believe the hype. For guys who talk a big game about how women should be at home and never weigh in on business or politics, they sure have a lot of women on their payroll.

I’ve abridged her quote, so I recommend reading the whole thing (and following her cuz she always has good stuff), but her main point stands: many, if not all, of the “women shouldn’t work” types are only speaking about a specific subset of women.

In their minds, there is no contradiction.

When these men talk about “women” and what they should do and how they should look and act, they’re only talking about females between 18 and 25 who are probably white (possibly Asian), thin, bubbly, with long flowing hair, and rock the “clean girl” aesthetic.

Basically, only the girls they want to fuck. It’s horny posting cleverly disguised as life advice, driving the women who don’t meet the fuckability criteria to anger. “I can’t get a rich husband who lets me do pilates and shop all day! Not for long, anyway. How dare you suggest I leave myself vulnerable!”

And they’re right. But not for the right reasons. If you want to be mad at these posts and the men who make them, there’s an excellent reason to do so.

The Different Categories of Women

Being the disagreeable, freedom-above-all woman I am, allow me to woman-splain why these trad-man posters should be chastised: They actually think people, women specifically, can possibly exist in one specific category.

Like the factions in the Divergent series, somehow these fellas have so little experience with women that they think the foids come in one of five non-overlapping flavors:

• The Wife: Dutiful, beautiful, domestic. A status symbol.

• The Mistress: Beautiful, highly sexual, yet still devoted until it’s time to replace her, then she goes away quietly and with dignity

• The Whore: A collection of body parts and a repository of sexual knowledge; designed to teach young boys the ways of men with women, an outlet for frustration and backed-up rage. Not really a person at all.

• The Servant: The competent woman. Smart, skilled, sexless. Age is irrelevant. The servant woman is well-kempt, often a “handsome woman” but not wife material. She makes a man’s life possible and as easy as possible. She is paid for her time and knowledge, gladly. As long as she stays in her place.

• The Nanny: The elder woman, past childbearing potential. Ready with encouragement and a soft smile, generous with back pats and humorous stories from days gone by. Nanny can be an employee, a relative, or a highly treasured volunteer.

This is how we get the advice of “women should be virgins upon marriage, but men should be experienced.” Like clockwork, the feminists will pipe up: “Who are the men gaining experience with? You’re obviously all FAGGOTS!”

Remember kids, homophobic slurs are okay if you do it wokely.

But what the nose-ring-wielding feminists don’t see, or what they pretend not to see, is that no, these men aren’t gay. At least not most of them. It’s just that the women who must remain virgins are an entirely different population than the women they pay to “gain experience” from.

Those women don’t count. They’re not wife material. If we’re being honest, they’re not even people. Not to these types of men.

And that is why they’re wrong, annoying, and stupid in their prescriptions for societal healing. “If only women would just…” No. You’re dumb, and it’s embarrassing. If you’re going to be an online misogynist, I must insist you do it correctly.

The “Good” Misogynists

Luckily, there are male creators who do “misogyny” correctly.

I put misogyny in quotations because the nature of internet discourse dictates that any man who criticises the behavior of any individual woman or group of women, even once, must ever-after be described as a misogynist.

If you think female child molesters should be put to death alongside their male counterparts? Misogynist. She needs therapy, not judgment. After all, she was probably abused by some man.

You think a woman who is unfaithful in her marriage should be cut off from any money from her husband’s assets? Misogynist. The husband was obviously emotionally abusive and drove her into the arms of another man.

I’m not exaggerating. And if you are as unhealthily online as I am… you know I’m not.

The right kind of internet misogynists are the men who devote themselves to the “manosphere,” that is, to helping men in their dating life or their existing marriage, and in their self-image, whether women approve of their methods or not.

Strangely, none of these men, who have been at it for years, some from the beginning, were not interviewed for Louis Theoroux’s documentary. Nor were they asked.

They have their fair share of haters though, especially among women. They are merciless to online female personalities they perceive as nags, for instance. They are blunt in their rebuttals of Christian virtue signalling. And sometimes they’re downright mean.

But they’re also balanced in how they view women. We are not one category of person, and part of their coaching is to help men realize that women are not just one thing.

We’re people. And unlike the third-world-inspired “manosphere” creators who fuel the outrage clicks, these guys aren’t mad at the fact that we’re people… with all the good and bad that implies.

A woman is both slut and angel at different points of her life and is neither to be condemned nor pedestalized. This refusal to abide by the ideological binary is what earns them the majority of their haters.

I’ll occasionally have female mutuals rage at my interview with or send me a tweet from one of my male mutuals: “How are you friends with him? Why don’t you call him out?”

Why would I? It’s not my job to correct men. It’s definitely not my job to teach them how to be men. Somehow women have gotten it in their heads it's our job to fix men, all men, collectively.

It’s not. And that assumption of a role that was never ours has driven us to some insane places.

It’s men’s jobs to sort themselves out, and I am giving you permission to hand that burden back to them.

Whenever you feel tempted to type a scathing comment to a man because he wished for an apocalyptic event so he can acquire grateful wives from the wreckage, don’t. Drop a link to one of ’s videos instead.

It’s men’s job to do the hard work of becoming someone a woman would desire.

Our job is to be a prize worthy of that great feat, in beauty and in virtue.

Of course that’s also no easy task… which is probably why nagging is the more popular option.

Submissions Open

Our first PRINT EDITION of Black Market Fiction will be released in June. The theme? “No Man’s Land.” This is the issues of Westerns and their spiritual successors (Space Westerns etc.)

If you want to be a part of this issue, you can submit your short story or article/essay by April 30th.

We go through what the Daily Wire, Angel Studios, and Taylor Sheridan are actually doing — and why none of them are discovering new talent, funding independent creators, or building anything resembling a conservative artistic infrastructure. We also cover the Oliver Anthony moment, what it revealed about how conservatives actually relate to art they claim to love, and why the Heritage Foundation spent decades actively fighting arts funding before noticing the culture had been captured by the other side.

The good news is that the three models that actually work have nothing to do with patronage, billionaires, or permission. Matt Dinniman built Dungeon Crawler Carl at cat shows during his lunch breaks. Seth Ring crossed seven figures without a traditional publishing deal. The Philippou brothers started on YouTube and ended up at A24. The tools are available. The question is whether you are going to use them or keep waiting for someone who is never going to show up.

In This Episode

• The Clifton Duncan Article: Why an actor’s excoriation of conservative culture warriors cut through the noise, and why the predictable response to it proved his point entirely.

• The Daily Wire Film Breakdown: A project by project look at what the Daily Wire has actually produced, who made it, and why there is not a single example of them developing new independent talent.

• Angel Studios, Same Pattern: Why every success story in the conservative film space traces back to Hollywood castoffs, nepo babies, and finished films they acquired rather than built.

• Taylor Sheridan, Accidental Icon: Why the man carrying Paramount Plus on his shoulders never set out to make conservative art, and what that tells you about what actually works.

• The Oliver Anthony Moment: What happened when conservatives found their mascot, what happened when he rejected the label, and what the fallout revealed about whether they actually care about the art.

• Conservative Publishing, Where Is It: Why right wing imprints exist almost entirely in nonfiction, who they serve, and why epic fantasy with wholesome values is nowhere on their radar.

• The Y Combinator Problem: Why the tech incubator model cannot be transplanted into the arts, and why buying 7% of a novelist is not a viable investment strategy.

• The Three Models That Work: The Sheridan model, the Dinniman/Ring model, and the Philippou model — all three have one thing in common.

• Nobody Is Coming: Why right wing billionaires have never funded independent artists, why they never will, and why waiting for them is the single most self-defeating thing a creator can do.

• What You Can Do Today: The tools available right now, the creators who used them to build something real, and the only question that actually matters.

Kristin’s Links

• Editing Services: nonsensefreeeditor.com

• Newsletter: https://www.fictionalinfluence.com

• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@nonsensefreekristin

Timestamps

00:00 - Super Bowl Culture Wars.

01:04 - Clifton Duncan Callout.

02:37 - Patronage Reality Check.

03:34 - Meet the Host Mission.

04:37 - Why Creatives Get Blackballed.

05:35 - Defeatism in the Comments.

07:20 - Stop Waiting for Billionaires.

09:30 - Conservative Media Examples.

10:38 - Daily Wire Breakdown.

13:19 - No New Talent Pipeline.

16:45 - Angel Studios Pattern.

18:40 - Taylor Sheridan Exception.

20:10 - Conservative Publishing Gap.

21:57 - Culture Wars Old News.

22:49 - Why Conservatives Ignore Art.

24:12 - Oliver Anthony Mascot Fight.

28:38 - Indie Authors Build Empires.

32:11 - YouTubers Turn Filmmakers.

34:27 - Why Art Incubators Fail.

35:58 - Three Models To Win.

40:01 - Stop Complaining Start Building.

42:07 - Art Matters Final Push.

About This Podcast

Nonsense-Free Kristin is where independent authors and creators learn to build their platforms, master their craft, and create on their own terms—without begging for permission from gatekeepers who hate them.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

We dig into what LitRPG actually is and why it has captured a voracious male readership that traditional publishing abandoned, the funnel Seth built from Royal Road to Patreon to Amazon that generated his first $50K, and why the actions that get you to each income threshold have to completely change to get you to the next one. Seth walks through each inflection point from $50K to $100K to $250K to seven figures, what he changed at each stage, and why community and relationships became the lever that moved him past the ceiling he kept hitting alone.

We also get into hybrid publishing, why Seth sublicenses his audio and physical rights while keeping his ebook rights, how to negotiate with traditional publishers when you already know your own numbers, and why the single most repeated mistake he sees from talented authors is having too much attachment to book one.

In This Episode

• What LitRPG Actually Is: Why LitRPG isn’t a genre but a stylistic choice, how it differs from progression fantasy, and why the game element changes everything about how stories deliver information.

• Why Men Only Read LitRPG Now: The real reason male readers are abandoning every other genre for this one, and what it says about what modern men are actually hungry for in fiction.

• The Funnel Nobody Talks About: How Seth moved readers from free web serials to Patreon to Amazon and built a loyal paying ecosystem before most authors know what a funnel is.

• The $50K Inflection Point: What gets you there, why it’s achievable part-time, and why the exact same strategy will cap you out and stop working.

• Books Sell Books: The single phrase that changed Seth’s business, and why most authors are too attached to book one to let it work for them.

• The $250K Ceiling: Why marketing levers and Facebook groups stop working at a certain point and why the only thing that moved Seth past it was walking into rooms with people who made more than him.

• Why Traditional Publishers Can’t Touch LitRPG: How the indie community built something trad publishing wanted a piece of and why the LitRPG crowd said no thanks.

• The Hybrid Model Explained: How Seth sublicenses audio and physical rights while keeping ebook rights, why that math works, and how knowing your own numbers changes every negotiation.

• Seven Figures and What Comes Next: Why distribution is the singular problem indies can’t solve alone, and how hybrid publishing fills that gap without surrendering creative control.

• The Most Common Mistake Seth Sees: Why talented authors stall out — and it has nothing to do with their writing.

Guest Links

• Read Iron Tyrant by Seth Ring: https://amzn.to/4qrJmsq

• Website:

  https://sethring.com/

• Youtube: @SethRingWrites

Kristin’s Links

• Editing Services: nonsensefreeeditor.com

• Newsletter: https://www.fictionalinfluence.com

• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@nonsensefreekristin

Timestamps

00:00 - Welcome and Guest Intro.

01:49 - Seth Ring Origin Story.

03:52 - Web Serials to Indie Publishing.

05:27 - Building the Reader Funnel.

08:09 - What LitRPG Really Is.

12:51 - Why LitRPG Hooks Readers.

15:33 - Best LitRPG Entry Reads.

19:05 - Trad Publishing Meets LitRPG.

21:33 - Indie Community and Success Metrics.

23:20 - Hybrid Without An Agent.

25:15 - Sublicensing Audio Rights.

26:36 - Ebooks Versus Print Strategy.

27:27 - Scaling Reach With Publishers.

29:48 - Income Inflection Points.

32:57 - From Ads To Networking.

37:08 - Hybrid In A Shifting Market.

39:50 - Biggest Author Business Mistake.

44:34 - New Series Iron Tyrant.

45:50 - Where To Find Seth Ring.

46:29 - Final Thanks And Wrap.

About This Podcast

Nonsense-Free Kristin is where independent authors and creators learn to build their platforms, master their craft, and create on their own terms—without begging for permission from gatekeepers who hate them.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

“I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.”

—Libby Day, Dark Places

Every time a book sells into the stratosphere, there’s an army of marketing experts who try to reverse-engineer its success. They advise publishers to mimic the cover, the blurb, the tropes… anything really, often charging insane consulting prices just to hold up a bestseller and say, “Do this… but different.”

Gillian Flynn wrote three novels and the third is the one that hit. Gone Girl sold over twenty million copies and spawned an entire subgenre of domestic thrillers with “Girl” in the title. Her second book, Dark Places, got solid reviews, a film adaptation that disappeared into VOD oblivion, and a readership that could generously be called “cult.”

Including me.

Those of us who consider ourselves honorary members of the Kill Club are often baffled as to why it was Gone Girl that took off when Dark Places was so …

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That’s what Jackson Reed has to go on when he starts investigating. His friend, an acerbic podcaster with a talent for saying inflammatory things, has vanished. No body. No crime scene. Just one molar, recovered from a location I won’t spoil, and enough unanswered questions to fill a case file.

Poor Charlie, the average thriller might want you to think.

Not me. At the time I wrote it, my feeling was more like: Fuck Charlie.

The Twitter Crush is a story about a girlie self-help guru who makes men disappear. Specifically, men who take pot shots at her work or, worse, look into her past. These men vanish. Nobody can prove anything. And her ghostwriter, the man who wrote the very words these podcasters mocked, slowly realizes that his missing friend might have had it coming.

The book doesn’t ask “whodunit.” You know who did it. The question is whether you approve.

I wrote the first quarter of this book in a…

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In Finding Forrester, Sean Connery plays William Forrester—a reclusive novelist who wrote one brilliant book, won the Pulitzer, and vanished from public life. The character is entirely fictional, but the archetype he represents is one we’ve been romanticizing for decades. JD Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye and retreated to New Hampshire; we’ve been obsessed with him ever since. Harper Lee gave us To Kill a Mockingbird and went quiet for fifty-five years. We made her a saint for it.

We love the writer who disappears. The hermit genius. The one-and-done legend who lets the record stand.

But there’s a catch: we only grant that mythology to writers who stop entirely. Writers who pivot—who keep working, just not in the form we want—don’t get the same reverence. They get suspicion. They get “What happened to you?”

Gillian Flynn hasn’t published a novel in thirteen years. Her Twitter bio reads: “yes, yes, yes, I’m writing the next book...I swear.”

Everyon…

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Mission Hills in January looked like a photograph from a magazine about wealth. The kind of magazine that didn’t acknowledge winter as an inconvenience, only as an aesthetic choice. Snow sat on lawns like it had been arranged there. Trees stood bare but dignified against a gray sky. The houses—mansions, really, though the people who lived in them would never use that word—were set back from the road behind walls and hedges and the particular kind of silence that money could buy.

Garrett Milligan parked his Civic on the street. It looked wrong here, like Comic Sans font in a legal document. Or any document, honestly. He sat for a moment with the engine off, watching his breath fog the windshield, remembering the phone call that had brought him here.

Margot’s voice had that clipped efficiency she’d inherited from their mother. No preamble, or “how are you”—they’d long since stopped pretending to care about each other’s lives. “Grandfather passed this morning. The …

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“If you want to see sin, forget Paris, go to Kansas City.” — Edward R. Morrow, Omaha World-Herald, 1936

The recent move of the Kansas City Chiefs from Missouri to Kansas had most of the country confused: “Wait… I thought Kansas City was in Kansas.” It is. And Missouri. The city is cut down the middle by the Missouri River, though united by common history–state lines be damned.

Wyandotte County—where Kansas City, Kansas, sits—is locally called “The Dirty ‘Dotte.” Most residents use the nickname with a kind of defiant affection. We’re not like neighboring Johnson County with its enviable average income level and near-nonexistant violent crime rates. The ‘Dotte still posts an astonishing murder rate, but because violent crime concentrates in a handful of blocks, most people barely notice. They drive past, windows up, and arrive home to tree-lined streets where it might as well be happening in another city.

This is how Kansas City works. Always has.

Drive through the Missouri side on a gray a…

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In this episode, I sit down with Nicholas Sheppard, AKA Echo Chamberlain, a traditionally published literary fiction author from New Zealand navigating the painful transition to indie publishing. Nicholas has 80,000 YouTube subscribers, has appeared on The Critical Drinker, and writes the kind of unflinching literary fiction that agents claim to want—but then quietly pass on. We also talk about grief, zeitgeist, male trauma in fiction, and what it actually takes to build an audience that crosses over into book sales.

In This Episode

• The Liminal Space No One Talks About: What it feels like to be a traditionally published author forced into indie publishing. Not by choice, but by a shifting market.

• When Rejection Is Personal: How detailed, thoughtful rejections can actually hurt more than form letters, and what they reveal about the current state of literary agencies.

• The “Not My Cup of Tea” Wall: Why male-centered literary fiction keeps hitting the same invisible ceiling, and why it has nothing to do with quality.

• Where Is the Zeitgeist?: Why men aren’t reading literary fiction anymore, and why the publishing industry is psychologically incapable of admitting it’s the problem.

• Literary Fiction vs. The Algorithm: The unique grief of a “prestige” writer discovering that Amazon doesn’t care about your Booker Prize aspirations.

• Audience Mismatch: What happens when you have 80,000 YouTube subscribers and your book video barely moves the needle.

• The Review Threshold: Why you should never drive traffic to a new book before you have at least five written reviews, and how to get them without begging.

• The Hugh Howey Model: How one indie author kept his ebook rights, signed a print-only deal, and changed the hybrid publishing conversation forever.

• Amazon’s 180-Day Assessment Window: Why a slow start doesn’t have to be a death sentence, and how to use that window strategically.

• Cream Still Rises: Why good writing still matters in an algorithmic world, and why word of mouth hasn’t actually died.

• Variations on a Theme: Nicholas’s Amazon-exclusive novel exploring how cultural attitudes toward abuse shift over a lifetime.

Guest Links

• Read Variations on a Theme by Nicholas Sheppard: https://amzn.to/4sBE9QO

• Youtube:

• X: @EchoChamYT

• Substack: @echochambaerlainwriter

Kristin’s Links

• Editing Services: nonsensefreeeditor.com

• Newsletter: https://www.fictionalinfluence.com

• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@nonsensefreekristin

Timestamps

00:00 - Meet Echo Chamberlain.

05:20 - Submission Rejections Explained.

07:27 - Grief and Going Indie.

09:27 - Ideology and Agent Tastes.

12:22 - Male Trauma in Fiction.

14:51 - Where Are Young Male Authors.

17:24 - Zeitgeist and Men Reading.

20:33 - Platform First Marketing.

22:11 - Audience Conversion Struggles.

24:01 - Open Bar and YouTube Growth.

26:30 - Why Media Commentary Not Writing.

28:10 - YouTube Pile On Culture.

28:45 - Fragmenting Your Audience.

29:44 - Star Trek Aesthetics Rant.

31:27 - When To Plug Your Book.

32:50 - Ads Inside Novels.

34:23 - Indie Marketing Reality Check.

34:57 - Reviews And Social Proof.

36:39 - Getting Early Reviews.

37:58 - Amazon Algorithm Fears.

40:35 - Hybrid Deals With Publishers.

43:19 - What Comes Next Writing.

45:44 - Where To Find You.

46:22 -Book Pitch And Wrap Up.

About This Podcast

Nonsense-Free Kristin is where independent authors and creators learn to build their platforms, master their craft, and create on their own terms—without begging for permission from gatekeepers who hate them.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

Web novels are not fan fiction. They are not Wattpad cringe. And they are definitely not a niche hobby for teenagers. They are a $34 billion industry growing at 15% year over year—and most traditional authors aren’t even paying attention.

In this episode, we tackle the elephant in the room: if you’re unhappy with your author career, it might be because you’re forcing yourself into a publishing model that doesn’t serve you. Amazon is not the only game in town. Men didn’t stop reading. Readers didn’t disappear. They just migrated to platforms built for screens, serial storytelling, and mobile-first consumption.

Web novels are exploding, but serial fiction isn’t new at all. If you’ve been feeling stuck, invisible, or boxed in by “the way publishing works,” this episode might shift your entire perspective.

In This Episode

• The Most Confining Author Is You: Why many writers are miserable because they’re forcing themselves into a model they don’t actually enjoy.

• Men Are Still Reading: They’re just not at Barnes & Noble. A look at where male readers have migrated and why.

• The $34 Billion Web Novel Market: The explosive growth of platforms like Royal Road, WebNovel, Inkitt, Patreon, and more.

• Amazon Saturation Reality Check: When 11,000–20,000 books drop daily, discoverability becomes a structural problem, not a personal failure.

• Serial Fiction Isn’t New: Uncle Tom’s Cabin was originally published as a serial. Format shapes storytelling, and it always has.

• Mobile-First Storytelling: Why writing for screens requires shorter chapters, tighter pacing, and structural adjustments.

• Community vs. The Void: The dopamine and feedback loop of chapter-by-chapter publishing versus throwing a novel into algorithmic obscurity.

• Why Web Novels Get Sneered At: The TikTok attention span myth and why it misunderstands how serial readers actually consume.

• The Twitter Crush Case Study: Kristin’s own mobile-first serial thriller built specifically for online readers—and for a male audience.Stop

• Constricting Yourself: Writing isn’t one thing. Publishing isn’t one path. If traditional novels serve you, great. If not, experiment.

Kristin’s Links

• Editing Services: nonsensefreeeditor.com

• Newsletter: https://www.fictionalinfluence.com

• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@nonsensefreekristin

Timestamps

00:00 - Writers Trap Themselves.

00:23 - Men Still Reading.

01:14 - Web Novels Beyond Wattpad.

01:59 - A Massive Market.

02:25 - Amazon Saturation Reality.

03:40 - What Web Novels Are.

04:12 - Mobile First Formatting.

06:12 - Serial Fiction History.

07:34 - Why Readers Are Switching.

08:30 - Community And Feedback.

09:50 - My Substack Web Novel.

10:23 - Twitter Crush Premise.

12:46 - Read Subscribe And Share.

13:14 - Final Takeaways.

About This Podcast

Nonsense-Free Kristin is where independent authors and creators learn to build their platforms, master their craft, and create on their own terms—without begging for permission from gatekeepers who hate them.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

He hadn’t asked what precipitated those two big rules. They were reasonable enough. But now, alone in the lab on a Friday night, he took a moment to wonder if playing Real Time with Bill Maher on the wall-mounted television was a fireable offense.

Not that it mattered anymore.

“What are those little shits going to do? They can’t even fly in an airplane without an emotional support animal. Sorry, I won’t be taking budgetary advice from self-proclaimed autistics who can’t do fractions.”

Congressman Richard Brennan laughed at his own joke, looking at the rest of the roundtable guests to join in, which they did, but with the decency to raise their hands to their lips, half-covering their smiles.

“Damn Yankee, confirm your dispersal units,” Owen said into his headset, voice steady despite the rage that Brennan’s smugness always tr…

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