Richie Billing
Fantasy author Richie Billing returns to the Future Lab Podcast to talk about The Breakaways, a dark fantasy comedy about a crew of spectacularly useless monster hunters. He and Lee Schneider discuss mixing grit with slapstick, writing a novel in weekly chapters on Patreon, and why selling books directly to readers lets authors keep up to 97% of each sale.
After writing the political novella Together We Rise, Richie Billing wanted something lighter. The result is The Breakaways, a "sitcom" set in a dangerous fantasy world. A crew of underqualified monster hunters take on a job they can barely handle, with funny and sometimes fatal results.
Chapters:
- (00:43) The Breakawaysand blending dark fantasy with comedy
- (04:05) Writing in chapters and getting to know the characters
- (07:06) Meet the crew: making incompetence relatable
- (10:28) Genre rules, slapstick and schadenfreude
- (14:08) Why go direct to readers through Patreon
- (18:35) Lee's serial stories, Hollywood Extinction Event
- (20:31) Building a audio player with AI
- (21:30) Mailing lists, traffic and the economics of selling direct
- (24:30) Marketing for introverts
- (27:53) Teaching, map-making and a book-promotion vlog
- (31:48) The "Fixing Bad Writing" exercise
- (34:55) Why people are reading less
- (39:19) Clear prose and shorter attention spans
- (42:54) The future of books
- (43:39) Where to find The Breakaways
Links:
- Richie's website: https://richiebilling.com
- The Breakaways in weekly chapters, plus the audiobook: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/cw/RichieBilling
- Also on Amazon and other major stores
