Okay, I told the story of Operational Realities already. How some idle teenage musings about high school cliques might turn into tribes in a post-apocalyptic world turned into a far-future military sci-fi universe. But I’ve never really told the full story of Jerry and the Goddesses. Which is a shame, because it’s an interesting story.
So to begin with, I was in the midst of writing Operational Realities. If I recall correctly, I was right about where Jimmy hooked back up with his team after his daring escape. I was taking a breather from writing and doom-scrolling Reddit (as one does) when I came across a post to r/WritingPrompts. If you’re not interested in clicking that link, know that the prompt was that the MC had jokingly tried to summon an ancient goddess, who shows up in their room later that night, eager to please her first worshiper in centuries. Emphasis added, but the wording of the prompt kinda implies it in the original.
I wrote a joking comment, saying that I was torn between writing smut, and writing nerdy humor. I got quite a bit of engagement, mostly encouraging me to write nerdy humor, so I went for it, leaving just the barest hint of smut in there.
In writing it, I kinda pulled everything out of my ass. The main character was basically a knockoff Jimmy; a nerdy, insecure your man named Jerry (originality in names is hard). I did give up all of Jimmy’s martial abilities, because that let me set up one of the jokes. The whole thing was just under a thousand words, and it was just a quick vignette. Jerry gets frustrated trying to research an obscure, ancient goddess, summons her in a fit of dramatic pique and goes to bed. He’s woken up in the middle of the night by the thoroughly unfamiliar sensation of a naked woman (a cut & pasted Manic Pixie Dream Girl, no less) in his room. Hilarity ensues.
I expected that, as usual, my submission (which was not the first one, which has a small advantage in the voting) would be a middle-of-the-pack finisher in the competition that each thread is. To my surprise however, one of the common threads in all of the feedback I got was that the person commenting wanted more.
So I started thinking up ideas for another vignette, and the best idea I had (which some commenters also had) was Jerry defending his thesis, in which he’d cited his conversations with a literal goddess for many of the claims. At the very end of that, I added a joke specifically at my wife’s urging; I implied that Jerry had been offering a sacrifice to Inanna, goddess of love & sex (and war, but that was immaterial for the joke) by masturbating while saying her name, in the desperate hope of losing his V-card.
Now, as you can see, I was leaning hard into the tropes to make the jokes. I liked the idea of brushing up against the dirty without actually diving into it. I was getting a lot of positive feedback, but this is kinda expected for an r/WritingPrompts submission. There were more calls to write more, but given the interest my wife had taken, I pushed back against them, as I felt like she’d ride me to write straight up erotica.
So I went to bed that night. And I woke up the next day to an explosion of Reddit notifications.
The vast majority were possibly the most surprising; people following me. Now, as I understand it, getting followers on Reddit isn’t all that common. Because the way Reddit works, when you follow someone, all that does is allow posts made to their profile (rather than to a subreddit, which is far more common) to show up in your feed. And I had over a hundred people follow me that night. I started with 11 followers, and ended with something like 300, or possibly more. I can’t remember.
Now, as a guy writing a book which I knew would sell seven copies in total (because that’s how that works when you self-publish without thousands of dollars in advertising budget), I recognized that this was worth putting some effort into. So I went ahead and wrote a third part, introducing Inanna and ending with her pouncing on Jerry, who loses his virginity between the third and fourth parts.
For the fourth part, I copied the first three to my profile (for the sake of all those people following me) and wrote it there. And it was a hit. More people continued to follow me, and to comment on the original submission. I ended up with 1700 upvotes, whereas the runner-up had about 540, which is rather unusual for an r/WritingPrompts thread, where people will often upvote multiple submissions. And the runner-up was a really good little story. I recommend reading it.
I continued to write new parts. Another r/WritingPrompt thread inspired me to include Ixlublotl, or Ixy (pictured below) to the cast.
Eventually, writing new parts as comments got cumbersome. And finding the new parts was a mess, as well, as lots of people were chatting me up about aspects of it. So I asked the people what I should do, and they strongly supported me starting my own subreddit to hold the story. So that’s what I did.
When I first made the subreddit, it got about 80 members, and I had about 40 people unfollow me. Over the next several months, I’d slowly gain subscribers to the sub (up to about 230), and slowly lose followers (down to about 230).
I also began to plan out the future of the story. I had introduced a new character, Gary (because I giggled at the thought of his name rhyming with Jerry’s, and wrote him as sort of the polar opposite of him), by way of a plot device I thought up; Jerry joining the CIA.
Originally, this was just that; a plot device. A way to get Jerry into situations where hilarity could ensue. He got captured by an Afghani criminal gang and showed off the first instance of his habit of wetting his pants when things get violent. Good times. Having Gary around helped to contrast Jerry. Having Gary be a laid back, badass retired Green Beret really helped to emphasize Jerry’s manic histrionics and nerdy incompetence with anything that isn’t academic.
But I knew myself, and I know a thing or two about compelling stories (not nearly as much as I’d like to know, though). I knew that continuing to write stories about a stressed out nerd, in some freaky situations over his head would get old. So, in my usual fashion, I began adding elements.
A quick digression is warranted here. So, if you don’t follow me on Twitter, you won’t understand that I have an odd writing process. I start each story as a “panster”, meaning I basically fly by the seat of my pants, letting the characters lead me where they will, adding in elements as the whim takes me or I think would work. But at a certain point, I need to nail down the plot, so I will start planning (see the same link) and become, not a “plotter” exactly, but something in the middle, sometimes called a “planster”. I put together an outline, and then I let the characters lead me to each point, and often to a couple of new points in the process.
So at this point, I’m still in the panster stage. I needed something to work with, so I just started assembling new elements. A villain and a “dragon”; the villain’s chief henchman. I came up with a quest for them to go on, and I created a new character, Kathy. Once I had all of those, I just ran with it for a bit. If you’ve read JatG, and noticed that the villain, Astoram, doesn’t really have any impact on the first half of the book… Well, now you know why. I’m following the main characters, same as the reader. The villain just needed to be there, so I could do something with him when I was ready.
Eventually, I had written enough that I knew I’d just keep following the characters forever if I didn’t do something, so I started planning. And during the planning stages, I was re-reading, and I noticed something. Something that would make for a big plot twist, near the end. I giggled maniacally as I jotted that one down.
And by the end, I had a plot outline. And the rest, as they say, is history. Well, not really. It’s another urban fantasy adventure in a huge sea of them, with a relatively tiny audience. And there were a few notable things, such as a couple of plot points that I simply winged as I worked it. One of these was the setup and eventual inclusion of a recurring POV character who was one of the mooks. This character, Glenda Wilmington, would end up being the MC of the very next story I wrote in this universe.
Another one was the corruption of Kathy. That was actually borne of some regret over something I’d written before, something that seemed out of character for her, but which was the best I could come up with at the time. It was basically a retcon, one that both explained why she did this out-of character thing, and let me draw out the main plot just a little bit longer.
And that’s all, folks! That’s the story of how I wrote what is, to this day, my most popular work, ever.
The sub currently has 390 subscribers, and there are 20 people in the Discord I set up for it, plus me and one bot (named SarisaBot, after the original goddess of knowledge from the first part). Only about 5-6 of us are regularly active there, but there’s another 4-5 who are occasionally active, and another 4-5 who will respond if pinged. I’m pretty sure most people just use it for the announcements SarisaBot makes when there’s a new part of the story posted.
I’ve also got some of the readers writing their own stories, set in this world. One of them even created a character who has a recurring role in the second book in Jerry’s story. I love going over these stories with their authors and finding ways to implement their characters and plots into my world.
I’ve worked hard to make sure that all of the stories are real stories, with themes you can sink your teeth into. The first book, Jerry and the Goddesses, is really about Jerry’s growth from an insecure, nerdy young man with no discernible spine, into a powerful warrior, bound and determined to save the world.
The second story, Jerry and the Tradecraft deals with the ending of the first, exploring the nuances of Jerry’s savior complex and the way forces beyond his control might turn him into a man he doesn’t want to be, unless he’s on his guard. No spoilers for how this one ends, though.
The spin-off is less comedic, owing to the characters having dark pasts, and less patience for nonsense, but was still well-received, and favorably compared to Supernatural and other small-town monster stories.
The whole series has some really dark scenes, and judging from the reactions of my readers, I’ve managed to strike a good balance between the humor and the serious subject matter.
Both books are also raunchy, irreverent and chock full of toilet humor; Inanna’s insatiable sexual appetites, Jerry’s highly visible long-suffering patience with (and indulgence of) her, Jerry’s much less visible delight in becoming a virile Lothario himself, the inhumanly sexual prowess of Yarm (a supposed neanderthal who was resurrected to aid the heroes in the first book, and takes over Inanna’s godhood in the second) and the myriad of ridiculous nonsense these factors produce.
If you haven’t read it, I highly suggest it. As it’s my most popular work, I think it’s also the one with the best chance of entertaining the most people.