This is an excellent reason one should never keep decaf in the house.

So yeah, the firefighter--he knew the host because she is also a firefighter (...and hot. Sigh). Apparently he got into it initially from reading reddit!?! where they discussed how it worked, and he was like "dude, I could make money!" He started doing the kindle self-publishing thing, especially the books you can read on kindle unlimited. I tuned into the conversation when he was explaining the popularity of vampires, and from there we discussed how kindle unlimited recently changed how they pay authors (it used to be if someone "borrowed" your book, you got a flat fee provided they read more than 10%, but now it's based on how much of the book they read, and there are tricks to making sure your scene peaks on 11% and so on and so forth). He writes a lot of M/M and MMF erotica, apparently (he is straight), and we also discussed bizarro things like shifters (he thought it would be hilarious to write a were-buffalo) and milking porn (...I know too much about things I do not want to know about). He said he knows now he's never going to get rich off it, but he's making his way from writing short stories to more novellas, and feels like he's getting better at it, and is enjoying himself. He was a pretty interesting dude. His 5 year old daughter was there and was hilarious.

Spent the 4th binge-watching Bosch and keeping an eye on the pups. Not a bad evening.

He said he knows now he's never going to get rich off it, but he's making his way from writing short stories to more novellas, and feels like he's getting better at it, and is enjoying himself.

I don't know about getting rich, but an online friend of mine made $35K a couple of years ago, doing that. Paid for her grad program. It's apparently very by the numbers, but if you put out content on a regular schedule, if it's even okay quality, you get a lot of people dropping $3.99 a hit on you. If I had any interest, I'd give it a try for kicks, but I'm crap at writing erotica.

Hm. I'm actually good at writing erotica. I should look into this.

I am now envisioning you all becoming characters on Questionable Content. Please make this happen.

we also discussed bizarro things like shifters (he thought it would be hilarious to write a were-buffalo)

Yeah, this sounds similar to the things I'm hearing from fannish friends doing this. I'm not surprised there's a market for it, but I do find it cool that a straight dude is writing it and having fun. If I actually could get myself writing again I'd consider giving it a whirl.

Your firefighter sounds like a Marty Stu. Did he have violet eyes by any chance?

Heh, I could pull an EL James and swap out names on my fanfic....

Heh, I could pull an EL James and swap out names on my fanfic....

Oh, man, I could totally do that. Most of my fanfic was never even published anywhere. Where do we go for information on how to do this?