 What's shaking, guys? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. So, I have a confession to make. It's something that I actively avoid talking about on my channel. One year ago, I, Cam Wolf, committed murder. On the 3rd of August 2019, I uploaded a video to YouTube titled Making the Hard Choice, in which I explained, on camera, to my audience, that I had killed my four book fantasy series. The first and only full-length novels that I have ever published, as of right now, were the first two books in what was to be a four book fantasy YA series called The Architects of the Gifted. Some of you may remember those books. Some of you may even have a copy. If you do, keep all of it. It's a collector's item now. Those books are effectively gone now. I killed them. Today, I want to tell you about what happened. I want to tell you from the beginning. I want to tell you what went wrong, why I took them down, and how people reacted. I am going to tell you everything. On the 23rd of March 2016, I self-published my first ever book, The Architects of the Gifted, The Scarlet Reaper. An adventure fantasy story inspired by the likes of The Hobbit, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Del Torre Quest, and all of the other stories from my childhood of whimsical fantasy. It was about a young man named Carter Becker, who finds out that he is among a very rare group of people who have special abilities, abilities that were passed down from an omnipotent deity called The Architects. After a rogue soul reaper crashes down the earth and takes Carter's love interest captive, he gets grouped up with a ragtag gang of retired adventurers to go and rescue her. I remember the first time I opened that box from Create Space, with my books inside, and I picked it out and held my book for the first time. Still to this day, one of the most incredible feelings I have ever had. I doubt I will ever forget it. This was also quite a bit of time before I was on YouTube, so I did all of the marketing by just telling my family and friends, and buying advertising, I think on Facebook mostly. In the beginning I even hand-delivered some of the books, like I loaded up my car and I would drive there and I would give it to them in person, with a little custom-made bookmark that I made, assuming they lived close enough, pretty much just so that I could save money. But it was when I listed the ebook for free for one whole week that things really kicked off for me. I attribute it to the really great book cover that I had at the time and raw luck, but in the week that my book was up there for free, it was downloaded by people all over the world about 400 times. The book even rose and sat at the number one spot in the free action and adventure category for like a couple of days on Amazon, I mean. So that's another memory that I really treasure about that first book that I had. I know that it was mostly just people downloading whatever free books they could get their hands on. I get that. And I would be willing to bet that most of the people that downloaded it never even read it, and that's okay. But you have to imagine what it was like for a fresh-faced, self-published author to see your book in a number one spot in any category on Amazon. It's just, it was just crazy. It was insane. Anyway, the initial reception was actually pretty good. The reviews were mostly positive. And with that in mind, I got to work right away on the sequel. I think the sequel was the fastest I've ever written a book in my life. I had already planned all of the major plots over the full book series. I'd already planned what the connecting arc would be between them as well. And with a start like I just had with this first book, I thought I'd struck gold. Only six months later on the 7th of December, 2016, I published The Architects of the Gifted, The Whisper War. It was longer, it was better, and it aimed to rock it up the intensity. By this time, I'd also just started on YouTube. I think one of my very first videos actually was me unboxing this book. And the ratings for The Whisper War were pretty good as well. Everything was looking pretty damn bright for me. I really did think this was the start of something special. So a year passed, a whole year passed as I was working on the draft for The Third Architects of the Gifted book. And month by month, I felt my confidence in the series and my confidence as a writer just crumbling away. I'd written the second book and had it published within like six months and this one was taking twice as long. So I felt like I was doing something wrong. The truth is that in the beginning, I had thought that I had it all figured out. And the more I became involved in the writing community, the more I realized just how inexperienced I actually was. The more I learned, the more I started to doubt those first two books. The more I started to see issues that I'd previously been blind to. Issues that had been pointed out in some reviews, both positive and negative, but issues that I had never thought much of. The grand plan I had to tie those four books together was also looking a bit weak. It was looking a lot more feeble than I had originally thought. The more I wrote, the more I realized just how much it wouldn't really work. I was very quickly losing faith in my series. The problem was I was an author tuba and these were my only books. If I didn't have these books up for sale, how would anyone take me seriously? How would people think I'm a real author tuba? How would people take me seriously as a writer at all? I couldn't stop now halfway through a series. I was positively stuck and as month after month passed and people started to ask about book three, I started to wonder if I had made a huge mistake. More time passed. Two years ago from now, I uploaded a video called Facing My Writing Mistakes and I still believe that it is one of the best and most freeing videos that I've ever made on YouTube. In fact, I like to think of that specific video as the point where I started being more honest and open and transparent about myself and my writing here on YouTube. I stopped worrying so much about what people would want to watch for clicks and views and just started focusing more on enjoying the content that I made. When I made that video, I still thought that I was going to finish the series but in that video, I list out point blank all of the issues with those two books. The damsel in distress, the weak romance, the rough pasting, the wasted potential with the villain in the second book. The list goes on. I didn't and I still don't think that they are horrible books but they did have a lot of issues that could have easily been spotted and fixed if I had just taken my time. All I wanted was to write and publish, write and publish, write and publish just because I thought that I could. I thought I was good enough. I thought I was talented enough to just do that. But I wasn't. I was wrong. So one year ago, I uploaded a video called Making the Hard Choice and I finally did what I knew that I had to, what I'd known for a while. I confessed that I had written myself into a corner. Either I could keep trying to finish and keep writing on a series that I had no faith in and best case scenario, end up making something subpar or I could just take them down. So that's what I did. I didn't want people reading or buying a half finished series, a series that would never be finished. So I removed them. And I honestly thought that that is where my channel would die. I thought people would refuse to keep watching an author Tuber who doesn't actually have any books out. I thought that people would think I was just trying to hide from bad writing or pretend like it never happened just to make myself look good. I thought people would think that I was using this as a get out of jail free card and maybe in some very small way that last one is true, but I just didn't know what else to do. To my surprise, the overwhelming majority of people were actually very supportive about my decision. Almost everyone who watched that video was not just understanding, but supportive. I can't even describe how good it felt to have so many people tell me that they understood and that they would still stick around and support me on my writing journey. I'll never forget it. That is really what kept me on the platform of YouTube. I have those people to thank. A few people did take issue with my decision and I'm okay with that. I get it, but an even smaller number of people actually used that as an opportunity to like attack me online. But that was less people than I can count on one hand. So I get it. It's okay. I'm the one putting myself on YouTube. Stuff like that is bound to happen. I had a very bad start in my writing career and while I won't bring it up much and while I will avoid bringing attention to it, I will never deny that it happened. All I wanted was a fresh start, a clean slate where I could approach writing as someone who knows they still have a lot to learn rather than someone who thought I was already a great writer. Someone who thinks they're already as good as they need to be. I don't really know why I made this video to be honest with you guys. I guess I just needed to prove to you and myself that I'm not pretending that stuff never happened and that I'm not letting myself forget what rushing through writing a book can do. It's a reminder that I'm not the best I can ever be at writing. It's a reminder that I shouldn't get too complacent. It's a reminder that I should keep trying to get better. Anyway, bit of a weird video, I know. Thanks for watching and thanks so much for sticking around this far in the video. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. Let me know if you've ever had any similar experiences or if you actually read the architects that the gift did back in the day. Let me know. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next one. Catch ya.