One last job. Then she’ll retire. But this job just might kill her. Isn’t that always the way?
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I’ve been thinking about my career alot as I near my 40th birthday next year. For the first time since I started doing this, I finally feel like I’m in a good place. It might not last, but it finally feels possible that this could be a long-term career for me.However, it took literally until last year for me to feel that way, after 15 years doing creative work.
It’s been a wild roller coaster of a ride that often felt like it was going to pop off from the tracks, and other times seemed that there were no tracks at all.
I know many of you are struggling through that “trough of obscurity”, wondering if there will ever be a light on the other side, so I thought I would show you all the ups and downs of my own career, as best as I can remember them.
Here is a short rundown of the biggest “hits and misses” of my career up until this point, starting all the way back when I was 18, through today. I tried my best to get the dates right, but I may have misremembered dates.
As you will see, there were a LOT of misses at the beginning, and the bad dominated the majority of my career, until recently.
06/2001 – I graduate high school. I wanted to go to NYU to film school, but couldn’t afford it, so I settled for journalism school at University of Maryland, where I made a very mediocre to straight bad documentary called Culture Shock. I won an award for best director for that one, and I think my teacher regretted giving that to me when it was all over.
12/2004 – I graduated college, determined to make films, even though I had never made a film. I did a lot of journalism in school, though, which I think helped me a lot in what I do now.
01/2005 – I got my first job as a camera operator on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. I worked mostly with FOXNEWS, which meant I met all the worst Senators, and burned out quickly.
06/2005 – I left that job to start my first companies, RPN Photography, and (Insert Name Here) Productions. I took out $35,000 in credit card debt to finance this company.
09/2005 – Started production on my first short films, including Going Home, which eventually turned into Connections, my first web series.
06/2006 – Closed my first company, (Insert Name Here) Productions due to irreconcilable differences.
09/2006 – Flew to Denmark to help shoot a movie. Made barely anything on the production, but got a $10,000 vacation out of it and had a good time for three weeks, so at least it was something. I ended up spend more preparing my gear than I made on the shoot, in the end, though.
11/2006 – I don’t remember the exact date, but at some time around here my dad retired, and ended up moving in with us for several months before he relocated to Pennsylvania with his wife. We were really struggling, and this helped. After he moved out, my best friend moved into our second bedroom so that we could afford our place, and stayed there until we moved to California.
12/2006 – Started my first producer job, executive producer for 100Dimensions, a nascent internet TV platform. I produced a TV pilot and commercial while I was there, including securing over 1,000 hours in content for the channel. Even though this job paid well, we were in so much debt my dad kept living with us during his transition so we could stay about water.
01/2007 – Started production on my first full length movie, Connections. It wouldn’t come out until 2013, and has currently made -$30,000, including literally $0 in revenue.
09/2007 – Directed a reality show pilot called Sabers and Roses, a show that went nowhere past a trailer, though I was paid for it, which was nice. The trailer looked okay, too.
01/2008 – Got in a major car accident and lost my job b/c I couldn’t work. I couldn’t do anything for six months, which is when I started writing hardcore. This is still the only job I’ve ever had that paid me a regular salary for being a creative, aside from the ones I created for myself. This was when things started spiraling.
04/2008 – Closed RPN Photography since I couldn’t use my gear any more due to my injuries. I sold almost all my gear, too.
06/2008 – Moved to Los Angeles at the beginning of the financial crisis. It was not the business, and there were no jobs at all. I ended up on unemployment for the full 99 weeks that Obama approved.
02/2009 – Got my first manager, and he got me zero paid work over several years working with him.
03/2010 – Directed the web series Save Point, a web series that was never finished because the producer decided to not pay for compositing and abandoned it.
05/2010 – I don’t remember the exact date, but we closed BNS Media Group around this time, as the movie was still not done, and we all moved on. It would take three more years for Connections to finally come out, and when it finally did it wasn’t long enough for a feature so we cut it into a web series.
07/2010 – Brought my first comic to SDCC, and was roundly rejected from every publisher, and laughed at by some. I came back and vowed to make the kinds of books I wanted to make. I literally dropped thousands of dollars on this book, and we didn’t have money, so it was really hard to hear that rejection.
09/2010 – At some point around here, my car accident settlement came in after literally years of negotiation, and torching my relationship with my lawyer. I promptly used this money to fund two comics you might have heard of: Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter and Katrina Hates the Dead. Without that settlement check, I would definitely not be here today, as it kept me going for a couple of years.
11/2010 – Signed my first publishing deal for Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, for $0. I never made $1 on this publishing contract. This directly stemmed from getting rejected at SDCC.
07/2011 – Did my first signing at SDCC, while launching my first (failed) Indiegogo campaign for Katrina Hates Dead Shit for $1340, the first real money I ever made on my own work.
01/2012 – Launched my second (failed) Indiegogo campaign for Katrina Hates Dead Shit which made $145.
03/2012 – Ichabod was initially released from my first publisher. Again, never made $1 on this book.
06/2012 – Signed by first novel publishing contract for Gumshoes for a $0 advance.
11/2012 – Signed by first option deal for $0.
06/2013 – I had my Ichabod rights returned to me.
07/2013 – Had my first signing for Katrina Hates the Dead at SDCC as a trial for a publisher, and sold out of all the book we brought. However, we didn’t end up signing with that publisher.
06/2014 – Gumshoes published. Still have made $0 on publishing.
09/2014 – Ichabod Jones Kickstarter launched. This was the LITERAL first success I ever had with a project after almost 10 years of trying. I made more on this launch than all the rest of my books combined.
10/2014 – Recovered rights to Gumshoes from publisher and founded Wannabe Press. I had to pay a bunch of money to recover the rights to my books, but it was worth it.
02/2015 – Released my first slate of books.
06/2015 – Left my job as a sales manager to pursue my company full-time. It was a very, very, very hard time, and I barely made it through the first year. I did not leave my job amicably, but I felt I had no choice but to quit, which put me in a tough financial place.
08/2015 – Signed my first option that PAID for My Father Didn’t Kill Himself, which netted me few thousand dollars, more than I made for the Kickstarter that I would run a couple years later.
09/2015 – Launched Katrina Hates the Dead on Kickstarter. This was my first “hit book”, literally 10 years after graduating college and trying to make it as a creative. This book kept my company in business for two years by itself.
01/2016 – Launched My Father Didn’t Kill Himself, which, while successful, raised less than half of Katrina.
05/2016 – Launched the first and only book I published by another person, which scarred me so bad I vowed never to do it again. It raised barely half of My Father Didn’t Kill Himself.
08/2016 – Launched Spaceship Broken, Needs Repairs, which made even less than my previous book.
11/2016 – Not only did my grandfather die, but our house was robbed, and they stole the last of my camera gear.
02/2017 – Launched Monsters and Other Scary Shit, my first bonafide hit, when I was 34. Up until this point, I was barely holding it together, and barely able to keep the lights on. This was 16 years after graduating high school, 13 years after graduating college, and 12 years after starting to try making a go of it.
09/2017 – I launched Pixie Dust, my second hit, cementing that I wasn’t a one-hit-wonder. I had my first $100,000 year.
09/2018 – Launched Cthulhu is Hard to Spell, my biggest title ever, which was delayed for three months from fulfillment by the first and only time I have used a fulfillment house.
03/2019 – Launched the first Godsverse titles on Amazon/other platforms and they went so badly I literally became suicidal because I thought my career was completely over and I had just spent over $15,000 on making books that weren’t selling.
09/2019 – Launched Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter #5, trying to jumpstart something, and it raised over $16,000.
01/2020 – Relaunched The Godvserse Chronicles on Kickstarter and recouped all my money, along with enough to pay for a fifth title.
03/2020 – Launched Cthulhu is Hard to Spell: The Terrible Twos, which raised over $30,000. Meanwhile, shows literally dried up and I lost all revenue outside of Kickstarter.
06/2020 – Released my Summer Slate of books, which raised over $9,000 and repaid all my production costs.
09/2020 – Launched Ichabod Jones volume 3, and it raised over $20,000.
11/2020 – Released How NOT to Invade Earth and made over $3,000, paying off my production costs for this book that I drew.
01/2021 – Launched the second Godsverse Chronicles Kickstarter and broke through the $10,000 barrier.
03/2021 – Launched Ichabod Jones volume 3, and raised over $22,000.
04/2021 – Finished production on The Godsverse Chronicles, my first long series, which I started in June 2017.
That brings us up to today, where there are more ups than downs. instead of more downs than ups. Some years a lot happened. In other years barely anything happened. Still other years mostly bad stuff happened, and I prayed for the days when nothing happened.
It looks like it’s all good now, and in many ways it is, but for the first nearly 15 years of my career it was a lot of downs and very few ups. Still today, there are plenty of bad things happening I don’t talk about – projects that stall, money wasted, launches that don’t go as I planned – but there is enough good to wash that out and keep me moving forward.
I spent over $100,000 before I started to turn it around, and figure I only broke even on all that money in 2017 after a lot of long-suffering years.
It’s not hard to see why I favor self-publishing, is it, as every traditional publishing deal has made me a combined $0, and I have had to claw my rights back, which with self-publishing I have made hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Still, for any of you struggling right now, just know, you are not alone, and you can recover. There’s still hope.
I’ll be honest, I only made it here because my wife believed in me. I didn’t believe myself most days. In fact, for the first decade of my career there was incredible guilt as she carried me financially and emotionally.
It’s only now that I don’t feel that anymore, and that the imposter syndrome has worn off. However, truth be told, I still feel like that some days.