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From: Ahasuerus <ahasuerus@email.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: BC: Velociraptor Jogging - Eric Flint that died
Date: Mon, 5 May 2025 08:04:14 -0400
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On 5/4/2025 9:21 PM, Chris Thompson wrote:
> Ahasuerus wrote:
>> On 5/3/2025 9:58 PM, Chris Thompson wrote:
>>> a425couple wrote:
>> [snip-snip]
>>>> Turns out, it was the Boundry 'co-author' Eric Flint that died.
>>>>
>>>> from wiki
>>>> "Since both the Grantville Gazette and the Ring of Fire Press had 
>>>> ceased operations shortly after Eric Flint's death in 2022,[3][4][5] 
>>>> the series was originally expected to be concluded after manuscripts 
>>>> that had already been submitted to Baen prior to Flint's death were 
>>>> published in the upcoming year or so.[6] In June 2023, it was 
>>>> announced that a new company, Flint's Shards Inc., had signed a 
>>>> contract with Lucille Robbins, Eric Flint's widow and heir, to 
>>>> produce a new electronic magazine called Eric Flint's 1632 & Beyond 
>>>> that was scheduled to be released bimonthly on the first day of odd- 
>>>> numbered months ,with Bjorn Hasseler as editor-in-chief, starting 
>>>> inSeptember 2023.[7]"
>>>
>>> If you enjoyed the Flint/Spoor collaboration, their book _Fenrir_ 
>>> will be coming out in June. Ryk is posting teasers, links to which 
>>> can be found on his Facebook feed. _Fenrir_ may well be Eric Flint's 
>>> last book to see print. Dammit. The eARC is available at Baen.com.
>>>
>>> (Ah, _Fenrir_ is not a continuation of the _Boundary_ series, nor any 
>>> other. It might be the first book of one, though. Ryk seems to have 
>>> about 30 irons in the fire atm.)
>>
>> Hopefully the financial complications that followed Eric Flint's death 
>> have been resolved. Back in October 2022 David Drake wrote (https:// 
>> david-drake.com/2022/newsletter-128/):
>>
>>  > I got to thinking about success. I always figured that a writer 
>> could expect three material things from his work: money, readership 
>> and awards, I wanted enough money for a comfortable life and enough 
>> readers to sustain that income. I never cared about awards.
>>
>>  > My friend Eric Flint wanted a fourth thing: fame. How different 
>> that is from the other three was driven home when his widow had to 
>> declare bankruptcy. Eric was a good writer and apparently (to me) 
>> successful. It turns out that it’s expensive to keep up the appearance 
>> of being successful–being famous, in other words. Eric spent more 
>> money on this than he earned, so he died famous but owing a lot of money.
> 
> That's really sad. I knew there were financial difficulties but I didn't 
> realize they were bankruptcy-level bad. I wonder if bringing new writers 
> along through the Ring of Fire stories had much to do with it. It 
> certainly seemed like Eric Flint should have had a comfortable living.

Whether an author has a comfortable living is determined both by how 
much he earns and by how much he spends and, according to the Drake 
quote above, "Eric spent more money on this [keeping up the appearance 
of being successful] than he earned".

As Wilkins Micawber said in _David Copperfield_:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and
six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." 
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/766/pg766.txt)

 > Then again, I don't really know how much money an author actually nets
 > from their works.

For authors who use Patreon, there is this list of "Top Patreon Earners 
- Writing" - see https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-earners/writing. 
Note that most authors use the "per month" model, but some, notably 
Seanan McGuire, use the "per story/creation" model.