Where in the World Is Dustin?

Alright, so it has been a while since I’ve updated my author website. Don’t worry, I came with excuses! Just give me a moment to remember what they were. . . .

I used to love the fact that this website is a static website, which means everything you see is pure HTML, CSS, and a scattering of images. Nothing more. As such, it costs a grand total of $0 to host.

I can be very frugal.

But while “frugal” might save money, it rarely saves time, which is money. Indeed, time is money. I’ve been doing things a bit backward, investing all of my time and energy recreating solutions to save myself $2 here and $2 there.

Hey! That stuff adds up. You know?

So . . . I think I’m at $4. . . .

I now have so many subscriptions, I stopped tracking. I’ve played with every development tool (there are so many!), every AI service (art, music, animation, text, coding), and I’m currently listening to music on a subscription.

Crazy stuff.

I probably won’t keep the music subscription. Amazon gave me five months for free, so I thought, “Why not?” I just don’t understand you (normal) people. Why pay $120+ a year when you can buy a dozen albums for that amount and keep those songs forever?

Back to the point: saving time.

This website is cool, but the code is meh. Give me C-styled code any day.

Not this . . .

{{ if ne $index 0 }}

That’s the pretty version.

It’s the opening conditional that will let the nested HTML render if it’s not the first element in an array. It’s just overly ugly and convoluted. I love my website, but I hate looking at the code.

Why use it? Well, if you play with this black magic, sign a deal with the devil, and give up your firstborn, you can save yourself $10 a month on hosting. That’s like a bag of gummies in this economy! Who doesn’t like gummies?

Alright, the code might suck, but the open-source developers who maintain HUGO are amazing, wonderful people. I’ve just moved on. I love my power tools. And it’s hard going back to the default answer of, “Can I do this?” being, “What’s the opposite of hell yes!”

Which brings us to where I’ve been: Arachnomancer.com.

I built this website using Laravel, Filament, and Livewire. These are my new power tools, and with them, I set off on a voyage of great ambition and time-wastingness. And I wouldn’t change a thing.

You learn an insane amount by pursuing hard things. The Arachnomancer website took everything I knew about designing and developing a website and pushed the envelope. There are blended dual backgrounds, patterns galore, chopped dom elements, animations, a music player, and more.

The handful of daily users might not have been worth the time investment, but what I learned from this project has made me a 10x more valuable freelancer. Freelance money allows me to pursue my creativity without stress. It also allows me to take risks, like I did on the few thousand I spent on ads.

Not only did advertising make back the money, it septupled (that’s 7x) my sales and—much more importantly—introduced my work to new readers. I aim to entertain. It is you who makes the endless hours of toiling on my projects worth it.

Of course, advertising took a solid month out of my schedule. Everything has a learning curve! It’s a good thing I like learning. :)

I knew marketing was the missing puzzle piece to my success as an author. I just had read horror story after horror story of people losing money for months on end and, “Don’t tell my wife,” etc. I was too busy and too frugal to want to risk the investment. And now, I feel empowered.

Books don’t sell if no one knows about them. For years, I thought I was just not good enough. It’s so heartening to get emails from readers expressing the joy they’ve had reading my stories.

I always appreciate emails, so email away!

Through all of this, I feel like I am finally ready to deal with Dungeon Runner. The launch last year went so horribly wrong, I nearly left the author business. My mentor says most authors hit rock bottom at least three times in their lives. That was Dungeon Runner. Rock bottom.

But I’m still here. And that’s important. It’s powerful. It tells me (and you, if you care) that I am where I want to be, even if it’s hard. I love what I do. I just don’t love updating my blog. . . .

Maybe it’s time I break out the power tools and rebuild this site. :)

I apologize for my inactivity. It’s easy to get buried under an infinite task list of things to do. I’ll strive to do better. In fact, I’m already halfway through writing my next post. Woot!

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Thanks for reading, and have a great day!