Doing My Part: The Journeyman Creator

Success for Writers Looks Different Now

Since I got an influx of new subscribers, I thought I’d do something of a reintroduction of myself and what we do here in this little corner of the internet.

If you didn’t bother looking at the byline before clicking SUBSCRIBE, I’m Kristin McTiernan and I’m an author, YouTuber, and publishing services provider who works outside the traditional systems. Stories are how we learn, grow, and build community, so I don’t believe in waiting for a company or an industry to select you before you’re allowed to tell yours.

I started Fictional Influence to write essays about morality, culture, and the stories that shape how we see each other. Men and women. Creators and audiences. Institutions and the individuals they claim to serve. If you're new here, that's what this place is. I have a few set topics: being an independent creator, movies/tv, and gender dynamics, which typically brings in the most views, as you can see by my best-performing articles.

The YouTube channel, Nonsense-Free Kristin, is where I do long-form interviews with independent creators: authors, filmmakers, people building careers outside the traditional system and, often, surviving cancelation. The podcast version goes out on every platform, including here on Substack every Wednesday. The tagline is "Be your own signal," which is both a marketing phrase and the actual thesis of everything I produce.

No One Cares

As you can see from the video titles is I keep banging the drum about the fact that no one will pluck your book (or screenplay, or artwork) from obscurity and make you famous. If Hollywood or trad pub come calling, it will only be after you’ve created success for yourself.

For some reason, that bums people out; they take it as some kind of Debbie Downer pronouncement. But for me, it’s a good thing, as I value freedom and autonomy over almost everything. Sometimes it’s hard for people to realize that the “market” is now a bunch of fractured little communities, and if they do, they’re not happy about it. But I am, because now more than ever, you can share your art, make money from your art, and not mess with insane power-hungry moguls sticking their fingers in your soup. Metaphorically speaking.

What that looks like for me is my novels, my YouTube, and my digital magazine, where I feature other independent authors with stories to tell, stories that don’t get the attention they deserve. We’re on our third issue now, and gearing up for our big print edition release.

Spaghetti at the Wall Model

There’s this idea that every project you undertake has to be this BIG. SERIOUS. THING. Or it will quickly grow into one. That’s not true. There’s a lot writers could learn from 90s garage band culture, honestly. Oh, and since I’m an elder millennial, there’s a lot of 90s and early aughts references throughout my work. Not sorry.

The tools exist now for a single person with a work ethic and a point of view to do what I just described. Write the books. Edit other people’s books. Record the interviews. Publish the magazine. Ship the essays. Every week. Town to town, commission to commission, building the thing in public.

Which brings me to what’s ahead.

I released The Twitter Crush earlier this year across all major retailers. And I’m working on the sequel. But I am ALSO writing a pulp novel called Blood and Tits. Yes, that is the real title, and yes, I am having an extremely good time with it.

It’s set in a dying Arizona boomtown where a brothel madam named Della Cord goes to war with a railroad baron after he kills one of her girls and the law looks the other way. There will be two cover options, one of which is NSFW.

The thing about Blood and Tits is that it will be available exclusively to Fictional Influence and Black Market Fiction subscribers. I’m not sending this one to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et al. This book goes directly from me to the people who showed up for the work. That’s the journeyman model. That’s what it looks like in practice.

I am also producing two physical issues of Black Market Fiction this year. And there is one more book that may happen if the schedule allows. I will say more about that when I have something worth saying.

For those who want the physical products, the printed magazine issues, the books, the stuff you can hold: Fictional Influence has a founding tier called Literary Fellows. It costs more because it includes more. You get everything I make in every format I make it.

I bring this up reluctantly, because I’d rather just write the essays and let the work speak for itself. But the journeyman only keeps working if the people who value the craft support it directly. That was true in the 14th century and it’s true now. The difference is that today you can choose exactly which craftsmen deserve your money, instead of having some guild or publishing house or algorithm make that decision for you.

I’ll be here next week with another essay. And the week after that. And the week after that. I’m glad you decided to join in on the crazy.

Kristin