Frequently Asked Questions

I don’t have one. If you want to keep up to date on site happenings, use the email notifications functionality (this doesn’t require a site account, although a site account makes it easier for you to manage) or the RSS feeds.

I use Plottr to plot things out and as a ‘series bible’ keeping track of characters and locations. I draft in Scrivener. My writing computer is a Framework 12 laptop (Sage colourway, 64GB RAM, the i5 processor, running Fedora with KDE and complete overkill for what I use it for) and I’m usually on the couch in front of the TV when I write.

I’m sick of being reliant on other platforms. I want a space I can control. I’m happiest when I have my own little community of people whom I can sometimes shove creative things at and get fed by feedback in return.

In addition, other platforms come with a lot of expectations for success. You need more followers, you have to publish more, there’s always someone doing better than you to chase. To succeed in a creative industry, consistency is king. Self-publishing on Amazon buries you beneath everyone else unless you release a work every thirty days. Platforms like Royal Road reward people who output prodigious amounts on a regular schedule with features like Rising Stars. I’m disabled, I have a day job, and I’m tired. Consistency is not my strong suit. Hosting my own space lets me set the rules and expectations and I can actually have fun sharing my work instead of obsessing that I’m not playing the game right.

Maybe, but not at this time. I don’t want to say ‘never’ because I do have gratitude to anyone who throws money my way to support the costs of creativity, but I first and foremost want to share what I’m doing with people. Early access to content seems like a good compromise.

‘Ash,’ you say. ‘You have no update schedule and no guarantee of any extra goodies for a paid tier. Why does it exist?’

Great question! The reasons are twofold:

1. Sharing stuff on the internet costs money. Everything goes to paying for web hosting, the email notification service (please use it, I’m paying for it anyway), development costs, and paying artists fairly for cover art. I’m lucky and have a day job to fund this, but if anyone feels like they get value from my stuff being available and want to chip in, this is how.
2. Tax fraud. Completely legitimate tax tactics. If I run this enterprise as a business, I can write off losses against my income and lower my taxable income. To run this as a business, I have to ‘intend to and have a prospect of making a profit from [my] activities’, which means giving people the ability to pay me for said activities.

As funny as it would be to have people tip me in chapters where I kill off their blorbos, it doesn’t make financial sense. Payment processors charge a fee per transaction. For simplicity’s sake, let’s compare a $15/yr subscription to someone tipping $1/post for 15 posts:

The only other alternative would be making a ‘token’ system where you buy, I dunno, site-based AshCoins and can spend them on posts, but that sounds like hell to set up and maintain and would bring no additional benefits with it. Subscription is, unfortunately, easy mode for now. Thanks, payment processors.

I chose $15 because a book costs about that much and you’re probably maybe getting that much content in a year (no guarantees). Also, in the interest of fostering that community feel I mentioned, returning subscribers should get a $5 discount automatically per year.

Your first comment is automatically held for moderation. Additionally, any comments with more than two links are automatically held for moderation. This helps combat spam. I’ll free legitimate comments from the filter as soon as I can!

You don’t have to! Everything is (currently and planned to be) available for free. You can, however, register for a free account. This lets you:

• Access (free) member-gated content
• Have greater control over editing, deleting, and private comments
• Track your bookshelf and bookmarks across devices
• Pick your own avatar to show in comments (this can also be done without an account if your email address is linked to Gravatar)
• Self-manage your data, including deletion of account-specific data
• Manage your email notifications more easily by linking them in your account
• If I figure it out I should be able to give people cool lil badges in the comments as well, that’s kinda cute right

At the bottom of Story and Chapter posts, there’s a ‘Subscribe’ button. Click it, then click ‘Email Subscription’. This will pop open a modal that asks for your email address. Enter your email address, use the checkboxes to define what you want to subscribe to, then click ‘Subscribe’. You will be sent a link in your emails to confirm your subscription.

If you have an account, you can then link your email subscription on your profile page with your secret code to manage it easily in future.

Go to any Story or Chapter post, click the Subscribe button, and click the ‘edit or cancel’ hyperlink. Enter your email address and secret code (available in every email notification sent to you). You may then edit or cancel your notifications.

If you have previously linked your email notifications to your account, you can also manage this from your account page.

Fictioneer, by Tetrakern, lightly modified to co-operate with all my bloody plugins and display chapter warnings. Fictioneer is absolutely gold standard for webnovels, it’s so well documented and Tetrakern’s a patient and helpful legend.

• Da Reactions for the reactions, customised to recognise custom post types and integrate with Fictioneer.
• Paid Memberships Pro for the membership/account creation functionality
  • A customising plugin for PMPro that adds automatic post unlocking after one week and a loyalty discount for continuing subscribers
• Zesty CP Types for PMPro because I’m not paying a goddamn subscription fee for PMPro to recognise custom post types
  • I probably could have coded this functionality myself in the customising plugin for PMPro but I tried and failed and this plugin already existed. Thank you Zesty.
• Yoast SEO for the sole purpose of forcing OpenGraph rich previews for social media
  • Turns out that doing this for custom post types is a premium feature but if you look around the web you can find plugins to augment that functionality as well.

You don’t want me to do that. I am hitting things with a hammer until they fit together. If you don’t have the WordPress know-how to get there with the theme and listed plugins, I doubt I’ll be able to help any further.