Chapter 62: Thoughts on Going Premium

Exactly one year later, while rewriting the “Carnivore” arc, I figured I’d write a few words for the premium launch.

A year ago, when the book first went premium, I was a clueless rookie who thought I knew everything. I’d also just had major surgery and, before I’d fully healed, threw myself into writing. The result was a mess for readers: constant hiatuses, random disappearances, wild swings in quality, moods that yo-yoed out of control… It took me a full year and 1.3 million words just to stabilize my head and learn how to write web fiction.

Reading my old drafts now, they feel immature, so I’m rewriting them.

Normally an author would use this post to beg for subscriptions, but I don’t dare.

I can’t say how far this story will go or whether the coming plot will still win your hearts.

I could quote game theory and claim that buying in early is profit—after the rewrite you’ll essentially get two versions for the price of one.

I could brag that, while my craft is 0 % technique and 100 % raw feeling, the schemes and flashes of inspiration are one-of-a-kind and absolutely worth the price—

but false advertising and empty promises get you flamed. I prefer talking calmly with everyone.

On the bright side, I don’t really need to push for subscriptions; because I revise so often, the pirate copies are Frankenstein monsters—if you want the real, up-to-date text, you have to support the official Qidian release.

Of course, given this book’s numbers and my current health, I honestly don’t know what tomorrow looks like.

Fewer than fifty readers are following new chapters. I still have the “Boutique” badge, but average paid subs have slipped below three thousand and keep dropping.

No algorithm push, no fresh faces. I refresh the author dashboard eight hundred times a day and never see a new comment or paragraph note—it’s pure solo mode.

Recently they found another breast nodule; odds are I’ll need surgery again over winter break. I’m resetting my sleep cycle with melatonin and spend whole days in a fog, half convinced I won’t live to thirty.

My GPA is grim; my parents have had several “talks” telling me to quit web fiction, focus on school, then take the grad-school or civil-service route to a “real” job.

I can’t see the future, so I’m treating this book as my last—my only one. I may spend my whole life writing it; after all, many people don’t get that long, and I might be one of them.

As one reader told me, “Better to kill the hope early.” After struggling for a year, no amount of reluctance or regret is worth picking it back up.

Looking back, though, the year was mostly bitter and painful—I’ve squeezed out half my life to write—but I’ve gained something too.

I’ve met many fellow authors and readers, added WeChat and QQ with writers I used to idolize, and through trial and error finally learned what I truly want to write.

In high antiquity, writing was a spell only shamans could wield; to write was a pilgrimage, a rite of worship.

I want to write beauty: the beauty of death, of terror, of dripping blood and heart-stopping awe—cruel, dark, bizarre, sinful, sublime. I chose the infinite-flow genre just so I could follow Qi Si’s footsteps into world after world, witnessing or creating every beautiful scene.

No wonder many say my stuff is unpleasant; even my editor often stares at my openings, speechless, calling them grotesque and incomprehensible.

I’m a psychologically warped deviant, destined to edge through crowds hunting the few kindred lunatics—to share a secret smile or mutually destroy each other.

The tone of this book is already on full display. It’s fated to be anti-mainstream, niche from first page to last, utterly incompatible with bestseller logic. It’s perfectly normal that almost no one reads it.

From here on I’ll write slowly, write earnestly, write the story I truly want to tell.