Bulls and Phoenix

As stated in my last post, I’ve set out on a new journey to retool as a writer. What a breath of fresh air it has been! My writing passion is returning, and that feeling of joy as I put words on the page is back. The ashes are stirring as something will be reborn.

My first step was to stop marketing. My books are still available on Amazon, but I am not advertising them, and what a relief that has been. I was spending a lot more time than I realized, and I’ve now focused all that newfound energy on writing. 

For example, I was on Twitter for about five months going full steam. Within that time, I got 92K impressions and over 2,500 followers. I posted at least 15 times a day, every day, and utilized about 15 different video ads and six longer trailers that I created (all of which took a lot of time). After all that work, I got maybe a handful of sales (part of the problem is there is no easy way to know for sure). I looked through my followers and saw a bunch of struggling authors like myself, retweeting other struggling authors’ book ads. None of us were getting to any real readers, and few of us intended to even look at the ads. Read each other’s books? Forget about it. It was just a mindless retweeting loop and would be quite comical if it weren’t so sad. Twitter isn’t the right path to get readers. I mean, the whole premise of the platform caters to a short attention span. 

Then I added together the time for maintaining other sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, AllAuthor, Goodreads, etc. before I knew it, I was wasting my whole day for no real payback in sales. Yes, this blog also takes a lot of my time, but I enjoy this, and as it is still writing, it is not a fruitless pursuit. I finally made the difficult realization that the problem may not be the marketing. It was the product I am trying to sell and is where I needed to devote my attention. 

So what have I been doing with all my new time? I’ve begun step two of my plan and started rewriting The Slaying of the Bull from the beginning. I’ve invested so much time, energy, and soul into the story to let it fail. It has to be successful. The tale is a great one, and I need to work on telling it right.  

You may ask, why not just give up and move on to something else? It is a valid point and if it were any other story, like the Island of Stone, I would agree with you. But, at the core of The Slaying of the Bull are my beliefs forged through years of contemplation and study. Never one to swallow the dogma fed to me, I went out into the world and discovered my path to answering life’s big questions outside of the walls of organized religion. Are all the ideas original? No, of course not, but I’ve taken the time to dig deep into the philosophy and the history to find what resonates with me. Will it resonate with everyone? Again, of course not, and some of my reviews may indicate that. Much of the religion in The Slaying of the Bull will rub people the wrong way, and I am prepared for that fallout because supporting this story is real history. 

How do I have the presumption to mess with religion? The formation of all the major religions of today was a messy affair, and Christianity is no exception. Many very religious people, who go to church every week, fail to realize that. They follow because they were told to follow. The bible is a hodgepodge of beliefs that men decided to include (yes, I use men here purposely). The book didn’t just descend from the heavens in a beam of light. It was the fruit of civilized debate in some cases, but more often, it was the spoils of war. Factions broke off and fought in a real struggle, with death, personal interests, greed, and just about every other sin thrown into the mix. Those who rose in power during this struggle virtually erased those things they found threatening to their interests. Sounds innocent enough, like sweeping a dirty secret under the carpet, but it was not. When I say erased, I genuinely mean genocide and the burning of books. It wasn’t until discovering the dead sea scrolls (and other lost texts), hidden deep in caves in the middle of nowhere, that we realized the diversity of early Christianity. By default, we also learn the extent of the destruction of Christ’s core belief systems and teachings and how much influence men had on the apparent words of God. It was an all-out war with the destruction, chaos, propaganda, and deception that accompanies humankind’s worst trait.

I’ve never followed a path chosen for me, and I’ve struggled with not taking religion at face value, especially something full of antiquated superstitions. If something is to be cannon, it should stand firm against a philosophical argument. In researching The Slaying of the Bull, I struggled to discover a fundamental essence until it made sense to me. Encapsulated in Isa’s story is my own journey of self-discovery. Is it perfect? No. Will it shake worlds? Again, no. I have no presumptions of even a little greatness. But it is an exciting yarn? Yes, I genuinely think so because it is not an empty story. 

But again, it is not the tale that is the problem. It is the craft. So how do I go about getting it right? I’ve started going back through chapter by chapter, keeping what works, cutting what doesn’t, and adding a few little things to keep the action moving forward. You may ask, why didn’t you do that in the first place? Well, first off, I would say that I did. When I published The Slaying of the Bull, the story was there, and I was happy with it, but since then, I’ve received some constructive criticism and feedback on my writing that I am trying to address. Secondly, as I started working on the sequel, a more precise road map of the entire Tocharian Gospel saga appeared. This retooling gives me a perfect opportunity to tweak the Bull to better accommodate that path. For example, I am currently working on a critical chapter that details a prophecy set down in a mosaic (images here about midway down the page). The chapter has been a recurring pinch point, and I decided to rewrite it entirely (this would be the 5th time). Initially, it focused on the year 1241 and the events in The Slaying of the Bull, but this is just one book in a series that follows Isa’s journey. So I’ve changed the prophecy to focus on Isa and his entire mission. 

I understand this is a long post, but for those that care about me and my writing, I think it is crucial to convey the reasons behind my decisions. Some people have feared that I am giving up, and I am not. I’ve learned some lessons, and as is the right thing to do, I am applying what I’ve learned to improve my writing. Keep an eye out for the second, much improved, edition of The Slaying of the Bull. It will take some time, but ultimately, it will be worth it. In my next post, I will explain what the title, The Slaying of the Bull, actually means.

Cheers!