Where Did Vacancy Go?

This is not a question that anyone is probably asking, but just in case I wanted to put this out there: I privatized all my Vacancy posts. The written web serial is no more in anticipation of the release of The Vacancy Series of novels I’ll be publishing in 2021.

There are a few reasons for this, chiefly among them being Amazon’s publishing rules. They aren’t completely clear, but when you self publish via Amazon and you include your work in the KDP Select program (for higher royalties and Kindle Unlimited access), you state your work is not digitally available anywhere else. Technically I don’t believe I would be violating this by leaving up the serial as the content is heavily revised at this point; however, I don’t want to leave anything to chance (or lawyers).

I was very torn about doing this because I always wanted Vacancy to be free, but at the same time I feel as though the new version of this story is a higher caliber. The novels are different from the serial not just in plot or character development but in effort, time, and money spent. And that sort of leads me into the second reason for privatizing the old serial: bad content.

Vacancy was a way to showcase my writing, to get eyes on my work, and hopefully lead to future interest and sales. I’m sure I’ll feel this way about lots of stuff I’ve posted and published come the future, but as the serial stood it was too low quality to be a representation of work that I have for sale. It was certainly accurate four years ago, but I’ve improved, and I’d like to highlight the best of what I can do here. Maybe that best still sucks to some people, but I’d like to meet my own standards at the very least.

Finally, I don’t want the unfinished story that is Vacancy, The Serial out there on the off chance someone starts reading without realizing, actually enjoys it and gets invested, and then the rope just gets dropped, the story stops, and it’s like “haha, sorry, you gotta buy this now, sucker!” I mean, I know I left it up unfinished since it’s inception, but I’m a better person now, okay?

So, RIP Vacancy, The Serial, we knew you okay enough, and hopefully you will rise from your own ashes like a phoenix, be the best version of yourself, and actually make mama some moolah.

The books will be out in 2021 (and if you’re reading this in the future you can find them here!) Please enjoy this image that I made as ridiculous as possible in the meantime: