Back to Basics
With my kickass novel Leverage available for sale across the empire, I've achieved my goal of becoming one of America's final published authors.
Sadly, but predictably, neither fame nor fortune followed. And to rub salt in my self-inflicted wounds, my once enthusiastic publisher dumped me. To wit, they declined to exercise their exclusive option to purchase my next novel, an in-progress project I've now sidelined for several reasons.
The rational path forward would be to quit writing altogether and move on with my pointless and irrelevant existence. A big part of me wants to do just that. But, on balance, I'm a fancy motherfucking artist, and I don't do rational.
Despite—or perhaps in spite of—humanity's laziest and stupidest impulses, I'm gonna try to convince myself to keep producing killer creative work. To steadfastly pursue this futile, quixotic, profit-free quest—and to ensure I'm ruthlessly protective of my precious time and attention—I will henceforth navigate the digital wasteland as follows.
Website, Blog, and Email Newsletter
Over the years I've exhausted myself (and you people) by analyzing the pros and cons of the newsletter business model. No matter how much I piss and moan, however, I always come to the same conclusion: Of all the attention-sucking and soul-crushing tools available online, an email newsletter is the least useless option.
As such, expect more of my eclectic mix of humorous essays, satirical flash fiction, razor-sharp recommendations, and real-talk parenting riffs going forward.
Freed to Read: Protecting my artistic output from the prying hands of Big Tech was always wishful thinking. Also, believing for one nanosecond I could generate fiat currency from my creative writing was hopelessly naive. I’ve therefore released dozens of pieces from the performative paywall and made them open access for everyone. Happy freeloading, you cheap fucks!
Dead Weight Defenestrated: The most ball-busting aspect of running my newsletter on Ghost is having to spend my wife's money to host disinterested and disengaged dipshits. Following the Leverage launch, I finally rectified this problem by dumping tens of thousands of pounds of dead weight from my subscriber list. If you’re no longer interested in my bullshit, I applaud your sanity and encourage you to depart in peace. If you stick around and waste my wife's money, however, I will find out, and I will defenestrate you with extreme prejudice.
TikTok
My alter ego Kash "Money" Cash had a good run on TikTok, and performing tasteless jokes on the batshit crazy platform produced some fun—if degrading, demoralizing, and dehumanizing—moments.
Despite Kash's unlimited reservoir of venom, my doppelgänger completed his objective and my gut told me the gimmick had run its course.
I, Amran Gowani, non-famous Author Guy, assumed control of the account in Kash's stead and, to put this mildly, TikTok makes me want to scoop out my eyeballs with a rusty spoon and pour hepatitis-infected blood onto my brain.
In accordance with said disdain, I viciously and violently whacked said TikTok account.
When my literary career suffers its inevitable and ignoble death, and my wife kicks me out of the house, I'll be forced to make a nightmarish choice: self-terminate or limp back to Corporate America. I don't own a gun, so I'm reluctantly keeping my LinkedIn account active.
I plan to use this platform to share links to my stories, announce professional updates, and toss out the occasional one-liner.
If you're a depressed corporate cuck, you can follow me by clicking HERE.
Bluesky
I deactivated my account on this utterly depressing and shockingly humorless platform and instantly felt saner.
CuckStack Notes
As expected, CuckStack's enshittification death spiral has continued unabated.
Worse still, these days I'm neither famous enough, nor thirsty enough, nor bitter enough, nor "race realist" enough to use the once simple newsletter platform turned half-baked social media site—which ludicrously fashions itself as the home of "great culture."
While I’m always game to guest write or collaborate on a piece, and I quite enjoy participating in Live discussions, I’ve chosen to unfollow everyone on Notes. I made this choice to avoid getting sucked into the doomscrolling vortex—and I strongly recommend this strategy for everyone.
Nonetheless, I'm fond of many people who use the platform and will continue to check in periodically.
Conclusions
In sum, life is meaningless, modern culture is vacuous, and being on the internet in 2025 chugs donkey dick. The good news is we’ll all be dead sooner than we suspect.
Until then, I'm going to focus on creating and consuming art, not content. I advise you people to do the same.
As always, stay frosty out there.
—Amran
