Purgatory feels like Tartarus

This is my first official blog post on The Djinn Trials. I attempted starting it before, but now the software is working much more fluidly. So here's some random ramblings of a random mad man trying to stay sane.

It has been a good 3 years since I published my first novel, "Dreaming", and 16 years since I first started writing the original version. You'd think after all that time, the game would get easier. I have 5 novels published, and I still have plenty of stories to tell. I'm gaining new readers and learning new ways of reaching them, but I still have so much to learn. With Amazon changing the game every day, with Facebook screwing around with who sees the posts, and with advertisers I was using getting the plug pulled for seemingly unknown reasons, it feels like no one knows what's going on. Every time I think I got a grasp on it, the publishing world seems to change. I assume this is what Tartarus is like. Just when you think the puzzle is almost solved, it changes. Just when you researched it all, you realized all the information is obsolete. Just when you reach a bigger audience than ever before, it's a short lived high. Just when you think you have a polished gem and all the blemishes are fixed, someone walks over and craps on it, leaving behind a vague and useless 1 star review. Who in their right mind would subject themselves to such rigorous mental torture? What madman keeps going? What is this craziness infecting my brain that tells me to keep going? Is it that I've invested too much time to quit now? Is it that I've created such a spectacular story that I won't stop until everyone read it? Or is it that the dream of being successful is just too strong to let go? But what is success? At this point, it's making back the money that fueled this enterprise. I'd like to think it is actually making a living doing this. And I hope it means that I can make a retirement plan out of this. I don't know what point I'm trying to make here. I just wanted to get some thoughts down, perhaps to look back on in the future. Perhaps to remind me where I was in the beginning of 2017. To remind me that I was a crazy man chasing a wild dream. Wish me luck! And hopefully 2018 will prove that I wasn't so crazy after all. Here's looking at one more year of sorting through the bowels of Tartarus and coming out of Purgatory alright.