As of 25th July 2022, Beyond the Empyrean, my labor of love sci-fi space opera is completed. You can buy it through Amazon. I have also created an illustrated primer for the book, which you may enjoy. Support for this breakthrough novel with a gay male lead is slowly building, but I need more time to spend writing more books and not constantly promoting BtE.
When I started writing BtE, I had no idea it would take me four years before it actually appeared on shelves, virtual or otherwise. My plan from the very beginning was to sell it to Big 5 publishing.
The reason for this goal was chronic illness. I had a limited amount of financial resources that would enable me to survive long enough to write the book and sell it. It was perhaps an unreasonable gamble in retrospect, but I was not in a position to take any kind of employment at the time. I had hoped an advance from a publishing company would have allowed me to devote myself to the next book and build a career in writing, which would have enabled me to work around my symptoms and schedule my own time for when I'm not sick.
While it only took me six months from writing the first draft to start querying, the process dragged on and was much harder than I'd anticipated (despite having heard all the warnings about how hard it is). Now, the gamble is over; I've been forced to self-publish, which can be a great thing—a big success would mean all the profits are mine. But, in the meantime, my financial resources have dwindled to near nothing. I'm supporting myself to some degree with freelance graphic design work, but, nevertheless, debt is building. While I enjoy graphic design work, my health problems still limit me a lot, and I need time to write the sequel to Beyond the Empyrean.
If you can help me by contributing, I'd really appreciate it.