Approaching My Next Book

So I have been thinking all week about whether I should bother to write another work of non-fiction.  My last book sold very well for a book by an otherwise unknown author.  It was reprinted once and sold some 3,000 copies.  Better than I expected (well that's not true I like every other idiot writing a book thought that somehow - miraculously - with no press coverage, an obscure topic and absolutely no profile my book would somehow sell 20,000 + copies).  Let me say that knowing what I know now about publishing I think 3,000 is a respectable number.  Not great but something to build on.

So know I am seriously considering putting all the ideas I develop at my blog developed into a FICTIONAL WORK.

Yes, I know my critics will delight in exclaiming 'I told you his stuff was fictional' and the like but really - when you really think about it - aren't works of non-fiction pretty much obsolete in an age where I get forty people to read my blog on a good day?  What am I going to do differently with a work of non-fiction?  Arrange the ideas better?  Okay that's true.  But I can do that on my own and self-publish a work like that.

I remember I had a conversation with Robert Eisenman on his boat before I even wrote the Real Messiah and he suggested writing fiction.  Not because he didn't like me or my research.  His point was what's the point of doing all this work for nothing really.

I can't see how a follow up work of non-fiction would sell better than the Real Messiah.  It's not that I am ONLY interested in making money.  I write the blog for free.  The blog never references the Real Messiah unless I am asked by a reader to explain something so I can't be accused of using the blog as a promotional tool.

If anything the fictional work could be used to promote the ideas of the Real Messiah better than any blog.  There is all this upside I can't argue against it save for the fact that my regular readership might be disappointed that I decided to 'go commercial' and sell out.

Now with that said there are too massive obstacles for developing the Real Messiah into a work of fiction.  I have no experience writing commercial fiction.  As such (a) I don't know if I could even pull off such a book and (b) even if I could why should any publisher believe in me as I have no experience writing fiction.

I don't know.  I look forward to any suggests from my readership ranging from 'don't do it' to 'I can help.'  I do think there is a compelling narrative here.  I just don't know how much damage I would do to the 'franchise' (if there is such a thing) by succeeding at getting a book like this published and then ultimately doing a disservice to the truth by some formulaic piece of garbage.

Then again, the absolute worst case scenario is that I write three or four chapters spend all this time trying to get a book deal and then it all goes down the tube.  Do I need to team up with someone to engineer a successful work of fiction?  Are works of fiction ever written by a team of authors?

What to do, what to do ...