I’ve been quietly making changes to the way I work for a while now, not for privacy reasons, but because contrary to all appearances I actually hate to talk about myself unless it’s to explain a particularly stupid thing I’ve done.

I’m splitting up the band my work from here on out, and I’m focusing on being a Legit Working Author because let’s face it: it’s the only marketable skill I have. That means I gotta do stuff all business-like (gross). Cecil Wilde will continue to exist–it’s gonna be my actual real legal name very soon–but I’m already not publishing certain things as myself, and I intend to move stuff to other noms de plume (I’ve probably fucked that up trying to make it plural, don’t ask me to do your French homework) as and when the rights to them revert to me.

I also intend to make all my pennames public knowledge (unless I discover there’s big money in necro or something) because: literally everything I write is trash and I’m not worried about people knowing that. Also because I have enough trouble being one person, being multiple people seems very hard. But primarily because–and this is why I published everything under the one name to begin with–I want people to see how much work I’m actually doing, and what it looks like. Not to brag, but as an example of what it actually takes to eek a living out of words.

The heart books will be written as Cecil Wilde. The books that I know won’t even pay for my time writing them. Those books, I will own under my own name. Everything else is going to pennames. The first of these is E.J. Waugh, who writes primarily about exotic dicks on shifters and dudes getting pregnant. It’s a living. I am, frankly, proud of this work, but in the way a commercial artist is proud of their work. I am hella proud of the smut-in-progress I have open in another tab, which will go under a second name. I’m excited to write the contemps I’m plotting in the back of my mind for a third name. I am not ashamed of this at all, it’s what I do (or will do, at least), for a living.

I love books like Defying Convention and A Boy Called Cin and a bunch of spec fic stuff I’m working on slowly because I can’t afford to dedicate a lot of time to it and also feed my cat. I like feeding my cat. My cat likes me feeding my cat. So the compromise is: I don’t have to have a real job, but I need to be a grown up about my not-real-job job. I am okay with this. I’ve reached a place of perfect stillness with the universe by accepting it.

Why am I telling you all this?

Two reasons. One, I need to get it the fuck off my chest. Two, because a lot of people at the beginning of their authorly journey come to me for advice, and I always say ‘I can tell you how to make a living writing, but you won’t like it’. I’ve known how to do this for years, but I’ve resisted it and I cannot, honestly, tell you why. I’ve been extremely stupid about it.

I’ve also known this was coming since Legally Wed came out. I wrote it as an experiment to see how much money there is in writing to trend. The answer is: six months’ income out of one book that took three weeks to write. When I started getting emails from the press to say ‘wow this is doing well’, I knew this was going to happen. When I finally saw my royalty report, I couldn’t justify walking away from that kind of money. My mental health is a fragile beast and the only way around it is cold, hard cash. Security, one might say, in less vulgar terms.

So. Cash money comes first, writing the things I want to write for funsies comes second. You’re all invited to my sweet pervert mansion when I hit the NYT Bestseller list with dragon dicks and personally ruin books for everyone.