You made this possible

We got WBTH to the top 10 in Amazon!!!

I didn’t want to send you an email right away after last weekend as I had already sent a lot, but I wanted to share this with you.

We climbed from somewhere in the thousands up to the number 2 spot for Humorous Dark Comedy, in one evening. About 80% of total downloads came from this newsletter, so thank you!

But that’s not all. I also reached number 1 for Poetry About Death (if you’ve read the On-Series, you’ll see why that is a very apt category for the book) and Contemporary Poetry. I think I’m about as contemporary as a poet can get. With the darkly satirical slam poems in WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? I intended to create my own new style, something that would be so obviously ‘Phillip’ that nobody else could do it. The On-Series poems appear at regular intervals (once per two stories) like a comet. That was intentional. The whole structure and ordering of the book took four months to get right. Writing the thing was easier.

For a weekend, I took over Amazon. Couldn’t have done it without you. Being number 4 in Science Fiction Anthologies is honestly incredible, as that’s one of the more competitive categories. It was surreal seeing myself there, and it’s given me a lot of motivation to keep improving as an artist and as a publisher.

So if you are enjoying WBTH, I can assure you the next book will be even better.

But that’s still not all. False Vacuum and Branch Density also climbed the charts, with FV being number 2 for dark poetry for a few hours. I didn’t get to screenshot it all in time, but I’ve got a lot to brag about in my stocking queries now.

So thank you. You all made this very weird week possible!

In a few days, all my subscribers will get an audio version of the short story TARDIGRADE, so stay tuned.

---

Spoilers

For the paperbacks of BD and FV, I plan to use this image going across both covers, with half my face on one, half my face on the other. There is a mysterious third poetry book in the works, which will fit between them and show the robot skull. I need to finish up the Lego render as well, you’ll notice a bit of my beard missing over on the left. That would be a 1x2x2 reddish brown bracket which I forgot to put back in during development. Oops!

My real face has all the brackets it needs, and more.

---

My week so far

This past week has been interesting. I’ve got at least one new 5 star review for Who Built The Humans from someone who likely blasted through the whole book in a few days (you can see page reads on amazon, but not who reads them).

I also went to a poetry/fiction/comedy night and performed a ‘serious’ poem for a change, which people laughed at, because apparently going back through time to argue with my teenage self about a breakup is funny? That poem is called Geodesic and if you didn’t catch False Vacuum whilst it was free, the poem is available for free here.

I’ve also looked into doing comedy. Right now my author instagram has turned into a meme page because it is the only way to advertise funny stories that isn’t immediately killed by the awful instagram algorithm. I’m also working on my sci-fi comedy play, which features Tin foil Tim after his escape from the universe of Who Built The Humans? It gets weird. I plan to take it to the Edinburgh free Fringe in 2023. That is, if it’s ready and if it’s any good.

I killed my website a few weeks ago because it was a waste of money, and I am researching how to move its domain name over to here. If that sort of information would be useful to any of the writers following me, let me know and I’ll make a post about my findings.

I have bought some new Lego, which is a hobby of mine, and moved my bedroom around so I can start posting video excerpts of short stories, and get back into my talk show.

I have organised some of my vintage sci-fi paperbacks, tried to read a few, enjoyed a few short stories (including a Ray Bradbury one about a therapist/submariner) and considered selling them to make room for my Lego collection, as I am also getting back into being an online Lego person. I was on the original episode of LEGO MASTERS back in 2016, which was fun, but stressful. I’m also a Legoideas designer, which means I create things I think should be official sets, and wait for 10,000 people to agree with me so it might actually happen.

I’ve rebranded the talk show to THE PHILLIP CARTER SHOW just for the sake of following convention, and also to be more open to people who aren’t just writing ‘strange stories’ but who might be writing comedy or acting.

I’ve got back into my old soundcloud and dug up some ancient, dusty, stinky ideas for a comedy newspaper that I intend to bring back to life. That might be its own newsletter you’ll have to sub to separately, just to keep this one clean.

I’ve also been looking at a separate newsletter for my company Halfplanet Press, as I am launching an anthology next year (maybe you can be in it) and Substack is by far the best place to host anything remotely literary. It works, it’s quick, it’s fresh-faced, and it isn’t intrusive. It’s also no effort to get to. If we had a conventional website, you’d have to manually check if submissions had opened, whereas on substack, we can just email you once every few months and say “Hello, send us silly poems please.”

Much easier for everyone involved.

I am also preparing for what is probably my final self-employment meeting, which I wasn’t looking forward to, but now a few more books have sold, I think it might be okay. I’m still not looking forward to it, but I have something to show when I’m there.

---

Conclusion

I am many things, but this week you’ve all given me a lot more motivation and confidence in myself as a poet and as an author. Let’s see where the comedy takes us next. Probably somewhere dark and cosmic, that seems to be the pattern.

Thank you for all your support. You’re keeping the dream alive.

---

If you missed the freebie weekend or want to check out my other stuff, click this link. It has a 7% chance of harvesting your organs, which is lower than usual.